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Hug Story
By
Charlotte Fairchild Copyright 2010
All fiction. No one is real in the story below.
Ali and Ryan met at an ivy league school, just pick one. They bumped up against each other at a library and decided they liked each other. Not because of the charm, but because they showed so much spunk to each other and they fought for truth from the other person. No subterfuge, and absolutely no bull feathers. From the beginning they were real to each other, and when they could trust that realness, they were kind to each other.
Their dates were normal sports events. He played hockey or something, and she watched him play his best. Somehow he made it without losing teeth. A broken nose sometimes, but the teeth were OK somehow. Sometimes they ate pizza together. They met each other’s parents, except her Mom. Her Mom was married to someone else in another country, maybe Russia. She was shopping one day and met a cryogenics scientist. So they ran off together, and left her. Maybe one day everyone will be friends again, but it will be a while.
So after Ali meets Ryan’s family, they find out with surprise that no one has any say about who Ryan is going to care for, and Ali is surprised that instead of a family with close boundaries, Ryan’s parents have very distant boundaries from him. He is their only child, and they spent so very little time together, what with prep school, sports and college. This was how Ryan’s father was brought up. It was not a shift in their family history. this was not a new family system for this family.
Ali knew no better, so she did not have the refrain, “If it feels like home, RUN!” But she did feel like a fish out of water in this huge museum Ryan’s family called home. She did wonder about what they wanted from her. So she did her best to show grace and caring with her boyfriend’s family. They disapproved of a woman who was so unlike anyone they had imagined for him. She was bright, but her family was quite different, and her background was even more different.
They left his parent’s place and returned to his frat house. After making out for quite a while, they talked about what they wanted to do. They exchanged words of love. In the beginning it was a shock to realize they loved each other. They argued. But then they settled into being friends and getting along. They got married. They invited both sides of relatives. Ryan’s relatives didn’t show up, but Ali’s father came with trays of great finger foods from his bakery. They were married outside in a park with a white gazebo with the sun rays beaming down through the tall trees, and Ali wearing a crown of baby’s breath.
For a weekend they were alone in a tiny apartment. Ryan studied and Ali tried out for bands. She wanted to teach, but the pay was terrible for most schools. She did contract work at a few studios, and brought in a decent salary, putting her new husband through law school the usual three years. What did he major in? Business management for some reason. He figured he would be able to survive one way or another, but graduating as Valedictorian of one ivy league school and then going to a different ivy league university for law school gave him new perspectives. Ali was near, and came home every night. They were warm together every night.
He finished law school while working on the law review for the university as editor. There was no spare time. It was amazing how he juggled everything and still remained in love with Ali. Most guys with his background would struggle with this course in life he was paddling. He gained weight because he wasn’t skating, and they were still eating a lot of foods like pizza. She lost weight with all the practice and recording gigs she had. His first job surprised both of them. It was the best law firm in town, and he was made a junior partner. More than he could hope for. To prove himself he worked just as hard in his job as he had in law school and college.
The time Ali and Ryan spent together seemed less and less unless they were cuddled in bed together spooning. When she went to a doctor to see why they were not getting pregnant, he informed her she had leukemia. She started doing research and she found a nutritionist who believed in fresh foods and cleaner water. She started yoga, drinking cleaner water, and chlorophyll rich foods. She drank water until she thought she would explode sometimes.
She gained 4 pounds. Her color changed and she became pinker. Ryan was eating at work and at bars with happy hour, and coming to bed after midnight as though he was still at the universities. Before they were 27, they both had a wake up call. Ryan found that his clothes didn’t fit, and Ali found that the only way she could escape illness was a diet filled with the most green she could find and loads of water. It didn’t appeal to the status quo of her successful but husband who kept getting sicker and fatter and balder. He was getting grey hair and he wasn’t even thirty! She became healthier and healthier. In a month she returned to the doctor, and he was shocked. He asked her what she had done to reverse her disease. She just said, “Water and chlorophyll, doc.”
She didn’t preach, or anything. She went on her merry way after getting back into her street clothes to her next music gig, and then her yoga in the park. Most of the time she did this with a group of people, but sometimes she just took a mat and did simple meditation in the Sun in a half lotus position, or standing with a foot resting on the leg while standing. It was a happy time for her. She didn’t remember all the moves. And then she went to work again, and returned home to plan for the next day, practice piano on her keyboard similar to the keyboard at the studio, and try her hand at writing a new song or tune or both. One day she got a cat.
Ryan barely knew she was sick for a time, but when she changed her diet, he noticed a difference in the refrigerator, and her coloring becoming bright and pink again. They spent so very little time together. Their affection for each other never changed, but he wondered why they didn’t have children. Finally he called her from work, and asked her if she wanted children. She said, “Ryan, you are such a guy.” Sometimes she called him Preppie. “When do we have time for children? If you want to have children, we have to slow down from work, and spend more time together, and we might have to adopt if we don’t want to wait more than a decade.”
“Don’t you want to go to get checked out, Ali?” Ryan asked.
“Not really, Preppie. The doc told me I had leukemia and I got over that in three weeks of salads and filtered water! Why would I want to go to a doc to find out you have a problem?”
He rolled his eyes, and she could imagine him doing it.
“OK, I will go see if I am shooting blanks. I will find out as soon as I can. You get on it and find out what adoption agency we need to go to.”
“Hey Preppie Dear, what if the adoption agency is for an embryo?”
“I don’t care Ali.” It just means waiting for 9 or ten months.
“What are you doing to do, Ryan, about working so many hours?”
“I guess I will have to hire someone to take up some of the research, and maybe the reading.”
“Silly Preppie, in other words you are saying you are stuck with your workload, and there isn’t much you can do to get a life?”
“Oh, Ali, let me think about it. There has to be a way to be more sane about this life.”
“What do you want in life, Ryan? Do you want to sail on a sailboat?”
“Ali, why do we have to talk about this now?”
“Ryan, I will give you until Sunday to come up with some danged good arguments about your lifestyle, your diet, and what you want from me in the way of family. Dream up something outrageous, or dream something wild. Just dream. And then we can explore it together.”
“Ali, thanks for the deadline.”
“Ryan, if I said next year, would it make anything better? If we decide to do something together in this marriage, adoption, splitting, or drifting along, it is good to decide something sooner than later.”
“Great, no pressure.”
“Ryan, this is nothing compared to what you get at work. This is just an imaginary trip I am sending to you. What you have to do every day is major reality, and I want you to spend some time with dream time fun.”
“Ali, you know that at this moment it sounds pretty lame. It isn’t realistic.”
“I know, Preppie. But I have confidence in you. I believe you can make a difference for your law firm, and in the lives of people you serve, and most of all, create a big difference in your life so that you just might, if you have enough fun, out live me!”
“Woman?”
“Yes, Preppie.”
“I will be home early.”
“Oh you will, Preppie?”
“Yes, I will, Woman!”
“Bye then, Ryan!”
“Bye Ali.”
Ali started getting out everything for her dinner. As usual she knew she was eating alone. She was really considering a cat or dog, and wished for a child. Not a baby, but an older child. Maybe a child who is 5 or maybe 8 years old. Maybe she would have a child who is musical or who likes to argue like Ryan. When Ryan and Ali were together they would take turns talking. How would things change with a child, she wondered. Would they ignore each other and become even less close? Would she fall in love with the child and feel like a single parent because he became even more involved in his career? She would only have her Pop to help her. Ryan’s parents never called or had anything to do with them. For all she knew Ryan never called them or wrote to them.
There had only been two years since her leukemia scare. Now she was a lot better, and Ryan wouldn’t change his diet or his life to be more active or eat more fresh produce. He wouldn’t spend time with friends or people who loved him. His whole life was work, and he was accomplishing a lot of good in the world, but he was also putting himself on the bottom of the list and aging faster than she was. Maybe he was still afraid she was not going to make it, and that is why he had withdrawn, or maybe he was bored?
So she started eating her salad with peppers, spinach, tomatoes right off the vine from her balcony garden, and the garlic, with the sprinkling of cold pressed olive oil, really dirty sea salt, and a few almonds soaked in beautiful water. It was so wonderful it tasted like a rhapsody! It gave her feelings of colors she remembered in the garden growing up. Bright and kaleidoscope colors! She finished eating, cleared the table and washed the linens. Sat down and began playing her keyboard slowly and kindly, and then switched over to a song she knew from childhood called Meditation by Massenet, and then a jazz piece she created on the spot. If she didn’t have time to play what she felt, she wouldn’t be able to do the work during the days in the recording studio for all those vocalists and all those bands. Good thing they paid better than the school system.
Every once in a while she would be asked to perform, and she had to negotiate a fee, and figure out what the audience would enjoy. It was never easy, but it was always a good stretch for her learning curves. It gave her a lot of joy to be able to be a part of an ensemble when she recorded, and yet it really felt good to be by herself and shine with one or two performances sometimes. Although she did bomb sometimes! Uncertainty and unbelief in her own abilities would hold her back from performing alone sometimes. She didn’t give herself enough time to practice alone and then it was always different to perform alone on a stage knowing hundreds of people were breathing below and above the stage in balconies. At times she quivered thinking about the feel of the performance. Knowing Ryan was there helped, because he seemed to adore her. Maybe it was lust, and she couldn’t tell. But whatever it was that kept them together, it was lasting through thick and thin.
November 1
By
Charlotte Fairchild Copyright 2010
All fiction. No one is real in the story below.
Ali and Ryan met at an ivy league school, just pick one. They bumped up against each other at a library and decided they liked each other. Not because of the charm, but because they showed so much spunk to each other and they fought for truth from the other person. No subterfuge, and absolutely no bull feathers. From the beginning they were real to each other, and when they could trust that realness, they were kind to each other.
Their dates were normal sports events. He played hockey or something, and she watched him play his best. Somehow he made it without losing teeth. A broken nose sometimes, but the teeth were OK somehow. Sometimes they ate pizza together. They met each other’s parents, except her Mom. Her Mom was married to someone else in another country, maybe Russia. She was shopping one day and met a cryogenics scientist. So they ran off together, and left her. Maybe one day everyone will be friends again, but it will be a while.
So after Ali meets Ryan’s family, they find out with surprise that no one has any say about who Ryan is going to care for, and Ali is surprised that instead of a family with close boundaries, Ryan’s parents have very distant boundaries from him. He is their only child, and they spent so very little time together, what with prep school, sports and college. This was how Ryan’s father was brought up. It was not a shift in their family history. this was not a new family system for this family.
Ali knew no better, so she did not have the refrain, “If it feels like home, RUN!” But she did feel like a fish out of water in this huge museum Ryan’s family called home. She did wonder about what they wanted from her. So she did her best to show grace and caring with her boyfriend’s family. They disapproved of a woman who was so unlike anyone they had imagined for him. She was bright, but her family was quite different, and her background was even more different.
They left his parent’s place and returned to his frat house. After making out for quite a while, they talked about what they wanted to do. They exchanged words of love. In the beginning it was a shock to realize they loved each other. They argued. But then they settled into being friends and getting along. They got married. They invited both sides of relatives. Ryan’s relatives didn’t show up, but Ali’s father came with trays of great finger foods from his bakery. They were married outside in a park with a white gazebo with the sun rays beaming down through the tall trees, and Ali wearing a crown of baby’s breath.
For a weekend they were alone in a tiny apartment. Ryan studied and Ali tried out for bands. She wanted to teach, but the pay was terrible for most schools. She did contract work at a few studios, and brought in a decent salary, putting her new husband through law school the usual three years. What did he major in? Business management for some reason. He figured he would be able to survive one way or another, but graduating as Valedictorian of one ivy league school and then going to a different ivy league university for law school gave him new perspectives. Ali was near, and came home every night. They were warm together every night.
He finished law school while working on the law review for the university as editor. There was no spare time. It was amazing how he juggled everything and still remained in love with Ali. Most guys with his background would struggle with this course in life he was paddling. He gained weight because he wasn’t skating, and they were still eating a lot of foods like pizza. She lost weight with all the practice and recording gigs she had. His first job surprised both of them. It was the best law firm in town, and he was made a junior partner. More than he could hope for. To prove himself he worked just as hard in his job as he had in law school and college.
The time Ali and Ryan spent together seemed less and less unless they were cuddled in bed together spooning. When she went to a doctor to see why they were not getting pregnant, he informed her she had leukemia. She started doing research and she found a nutritionist who believed in fresh foods and cleaner water. She started yoga, drinking cleaner water, and chlorophyll rich foods. She drank water until she thought she would explode sometimes.
She gained 4 pounds. Her color changed and she became pinker. Ryan was eating at work and at bars with happy hour, and coming to bed after midnight as though he was still at the universities. Before they were 27, they both had a wake up call. Ryan found that his clothes didn’t fit, and Ali found that the only way she could escape illness was a diet filled with the most green she could find and loads of water. It didn’t appeal to the status quo of her successful but husband who kept getting sicker and fatter and balder. He was getting grey hair and he wasn’t even thirty! She became healthier and healthier. In a month she returned to the doctor, and he was shocked. He asked her what she had done to reverse her disease. She just said, “Water and chlorophyll, doc.”
She didn’t preach, or anything. She went on her merry way after getting back into her street clothes to her next music gig, and then her yoga in the park. Most of the time she did this with a group of people, but sometimes she just took a mat and did simple meditation in the Sun in a half lotus position, or standing with a foot resting on the leg while standing. It was a happy time for her. She didn’t remember all the moves. And then she went to work again, and returned home to plan for the next day, practice piano on her keyboard similar to the keyboard at the studio, and try her hand at writing a new song or tune or both. One day she got a cat.
Ryan barely knew she was sick for a time, but when she changed her diet, he noticed a difference in the refrigerator, and her coloring becoming bright and pink again. They spent so very little time together. Their affection for each other never changed, but he wondered why they didn’t have children. Finally he called her from work, and asked her if she wanted children. She said, “Ryan, you are such a guy.” Sometimes she called him Preppie. “When do we have time for children? If you want to have children, we have to slow down from work, and spend more time together, and we might have to adopt if we don’t want to wait more than a decade.”
“Don’t you want to go to get checked out, Ali?” Ryan asked.
“Not really, Preppie. The doc told me I had leukemia and I got over that in three weeks of salads and filtered water! Why would I want to go to a doc to find out you have a problem?”
He rolled his eyes, and she could imagine him doing it.
“OK, I will go see if I am shooting blanks. I will find out as soon as I can. You get on it and find out what adoption agency we need to go to.”
“Hey Preppie Dear, what if the adoption agency is for an embryo?”
“I don’t care Ali.” It just means waiting for 9 or ten months.
“What are you doing to do, Ryan, about working so many hours?”
“I guess I will have to hire someone to take up some of the research, and maybe the reading.”
“Silly Preppie, in other words you are saying you are stuck with your workload, and there isn’t much you can do to get a life?”
“Oh, Ali, let me think about it. There has to be a way to be more sane about this life.”
“What do you want in life, Ryan? Do you want to sail on a sailboat?”
“Ali, why do we have to talk about this now?”
“Ryan, I will give you until Sunday to come up with some danged good arguments about your lifestyle, your diet, and what you want from me in the way of family. Dream up something outrageous, or dream something wild. Just dream. And then we can explore it together.”
“Ali, thanks for the deadline.”
“Ryan, if I said next year, would it make anything better? If we decide to do something together in this marriage, adoption, splitting, or drifting along, it is good to decide something sooner than later.”
“Great, no pressure.”
“Ryan, this is nothing compared to what you get at work. This is just an imaginary trip I am sending to you. What you have to do every day is major reality, and I want you to spend some time with dream time fun.”
“Ali, you know that at this moment it sounds pretty lame. It isn’t realistic.”
“I know, Preppie. But I have confidence in you. I believe you can make a difference for your law firm, and in the lives of people you serve, and most of all, create a big difference in your life so that you just might, if you have enough fun, out live me!”
“Woman?”
“Yes, Preppie.”
“I will be home early.”
“Oh you will, Preppie?”
“Yes, I will, Woman!”
“Bye then, Ryan!”
“Bye Ali.”
Ali started getting out everything for her dinner. As usual she knew she was eating alone. She was really considering a cat or dog, and wished for a child. Not a baby, but an older child. Maybe a child who is 5 or maybe 8 years old. Maybe she would have a child who is musical or who likes to argue like Ryan. When Ryan and Ali were together they would take turns talking. How would things change with a child, she wondered. Would they ignore each other and become even less close? Would she fall in love with the child and feel like a single parent because he became even more involved in his career? She would only have her Pop to help her. Ryan’s parents never called or had anything to do with them. For all she knew Ryan never called them or wrote to them.
There had only been two years since her leukemia scare. Now she was a lot better, and Ryan wouldn’t change his diet or his life to be more active or eat more fresh produce. He wouldn’t spend time with friends or people who loved him. His whole life was work, and he was accomplishing a lot of good in the world, but he was also putting himself on the bottom of the list and aging faster than she was. Maybe he was still afraid she was not going to make it, and that is why he had withdrawn, or maybe he was bored?
So she started eating her salad with peppers, spinach, tomatoes right off the vine from her balcony garden, and the garlic, with the sprinkling of cold pressed olive oil, really dirty sea salt, and a few almonds soaked in beautiful water. It was so wonderful it tasted like a rhapsody! It gave her feelings of colors she remembered in the garden growing up. Bright and kaleidoscope colors! She finished eating, cleared the table and washed the linens. Sat down and began playing her keyboard slowly and kindly, and then switched over to a song she knew from childhood called Meditation by Massenet, and then a jazz piece she created on the spot. If she didn’t have time to play what she felt, she wouldn’t be able to do the work during the days in the recording studio for all those vocalists and all those bands. Good thing they paid better than the school system.
Every once in a while she would be asked to perform, and she had to negotiate a fee, and figure out what the audience would enjoy. It was never easy, but it was always a good stretch for her learning curves. It gave her a lot of joy to be able to be a part of an ensemble when she recorded, and yet it really felt good to be by herself and shine with one or two performances sometimes. Although she did bomb sometimes! Uncertainty and unbelief in her own abilities would hold her back from performing alone sometimes. She didn’t give herself enough time to practice alone and then it was always different to perform alone on a stage knowing hundreds of people were breathing below and above the stage in balconies. At times she quivered thinking about the feel of the performance. Knowing Ryan was there helped, because he seemed to adore her. Maybe it was lust, and she couldn’t tell. But whatever it was that kept them together, it was lasting through thick and thin.
November 1
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