The ennobling, humbling power of disappointment

Almost every week now for the last four weeks I've gotten a mysterious phone call. Usually the call comes in in the morning, a bit past coffee time. It's always when I'm out of the house or when the cell phone is in the car, whatever. Always a ring through but never a message. I hooked up an answering machine to the landline a couple weeks ago just so I can capture any stray messages that come through, and even that phone just gets the ring and the hang up.

Today I jotted down that number and attempted to do a reverse directory search on it. Found out it was a cell but there was little else. Registered out of Silverdale, some smaller phone concern, not Verizon or Sprint or whatever. Yeah, big mystery, or so I thought.

My main concern, at first, was that someone was trying to get ahold of me from work but had not left a message due to my restricted status. Then I thought it might have been you, not wishing to leave an electronic trail. So I called back and hung up, just like my caller has been doing to me and got nothing in return.

So instead of wondering too much more about it I did a check on calls that I've received in the last month and checked that number against calls that I had made. There it was. An old friend had been calling me and hanging up, and that was that. I knew from the July 3rd call out that it had been the Snake Lady all along. I suppose she was calling to let me know that she was around and yet, at the same time, not willing to take that leap into deep friendship again. I can understand that. And considering all that I have learned over the last few years I can understand exactly what is happening here, and know pretty much what I can and cannot do.

I know that I don't have the time or the inclination to engage myself or my heart again, not so close to leaving. I just can't make that leap, to give myself away in the big way that she wants or needs me to give. So there. I understand what's happening all too clearly because I have already lived this story, because we already walked down that path, but, in this case, I am playing your role. I have made up my mind not to start again, just like you did, but in this case I am not so much going back to something as much as I am moving forward and away from complications.

Boise is a lure right now, dangling in front of me with promises of time with my children. I know, too, that you can relate to that story, because your kids were everything to you when we broke off our relationship years ago. I know, too, that you took a vow of silence, that you can't find a way to communicate for if you do you have to report it back to The Detective. So, what was I thinking that it was you on the phone, leaving dangling, broken received calls? I should have known better, but still. A man can wish.

Wishing I do a lot of, M, but wishing doesn't make for good conversations.

Those phone calls, then, weren't from you. Major disappointment. But then again, by not returning the phone calls that I've been getting I have effectively passed along the very same dose of disappointment that I had been getting. Misery loves company, something like that. Somehow it's all one large and vicious circle of sadness and regret and missed chances. All so much more than a mere number left in my register of missed calls.

Your WHMB