She just keeps coming back…

I find myself discomforted by the way Rosa keeps popping into my life. Surprisingly, I think this bothers me a lot more than it does Vicky… and I have no idea why.

Case in point: the quiche pan. When Rosa and I split up in May of 2000, I figured it was assumed we wouldn’t be buying each other anniversary gifts that year. Our wedding anniversary was on May 21st. Sure enough, though, Rosa gave me this quiche pan as a gift. It was obviously an expensive one and, knowing Rosa, it was also obvious that she’d bought it as an excuse to see me and remind me how we were still bound together. She said something about how she’d like to be there when I made my first quiche, as I was the more culinarily gifted of the two of us, and I’m sure I said something like that I’d let her know when I decided to. I didn’t even take it out of the box. I put it away and I tried to forget.

And, as they do, the years passed.

When Vicky and I moved in together, she found the box packed away. I don’t even know if I packed it intentionally but I know I’m far too practical to throw it away. She had to ask where it came from, of course, and I had to tell her. And then, she asked me, “What are you going to do with it?”

Vicky was not too practical to throw it away. It may have given her a little pleasure to do just that. But I said, “No.” After all, I may want to make a quiche one day and then the pan would come in handy…

More years passed.

Before we reached one decade since Rosa gave me the pan, Vicky said “use it or lose it”. I guess she was getting tired of me insisting that I might make a quiche one day, holding onto a pan that had far fewer practical applications than sentimental ones.

The results of my quiche making are over on One Path. The practical results of the pan. As for here, the sentimental ones… I doubt I’m unique. I doubt I’m the only one who feels a crack in their heart every time the past reaches up and taps at it with its cold, silver hammer of regret. I’m sure there are many who can understand how difficult it is to be rid of those haunting memories that hurt you and how it is important at the same time to preserve them.

But it surprises me still how nearly a decade has passed since we decided to split… how it’s been over half a decade since I found Vicky… and things still feel so broken inside of me. And it might sound obtuse but I’m reminded of Europa’s cracked and sundered surface and how so much of that occurred hundreds and thousands of years ago and I think, “That’s life…”