Kidnap the Lilr

An unforeseen benefit to my dear one getting married…

Lilr’s husband and I work together. For a brief time, he was directly over me as a supervisor, which made things a little rough, but he transferred to another department, so now we’re just in the same building.

Lilr and her husband are very sweet together, but they have a good-natured ongoing battle of surprising and attempting to vex the other (not seriously, just to come out with the upper hand). So, if I, say, wanted to surprise her…he’s completely up for not only letting me know her full schedule, but also arranging anything else I need.

In this case…this’d be the last Christmas that we’re going to have together for a few years. They’re moving to the Southwest come early summer, and I’m leaving for some traveling come fall. And lilr, despite being lovely, appreciative of art in many forms, appreciative of music, rather on the pure side, appreciative of ballet, loving the classics, being reasonably fond of Christmas…has never, ever seen the Nutcracker!

And, by happy coincidence, the Nutcracker in its entirety is being performed in our town. An evening, in fact, when I get off work an hour before the show starts.

Already having it on her husband’s word that she’s not up to anything that night, and he’s at work (thus having the car) – get off work, call her.

“Hey! Whatcha doin’?”
Paraphrase: Bumming around on the Internet.
“Aha. So, if I were to come by and kidnap you in, oh, ten minutes, would you be ready?”
Paraphrase: Uncertainty, for what?
“Your husband knows about it.”

This is also a wonderfully delightful aspect of her being married. I’m rather out there as a person, and once in a while (not so much anymore) I have been known to pull her out of her comfort zone. I’d okayed this with him the night before, and he knows her quite well – more importantly, she knows that he knows her quite well. I may from time to time (again, it doesn’t really happen anymore) get so excited about something that I just have to haul her along and kind of forget that she doesn’t share all my interests (I’m working on it, okay?). He’s much more laid-back, even-keeled, so while it may very well be something that I’m excited about, she knows that, A) by nature he wouldn’t so wholeheartedly endorse something of a nature against his grain, and B) he knows her, and wouldn’t subject her to something she would hate.

A most enjoyable time was had. We have a new random one-liner between us (while I fully expect that many of our one-liners should involve silly songs we know, I sometimes find it curious how many of those happen to be Christmas carols), we enjoyed the orchestra, we quite enjoyed the dancers. Lilr identified a half-dozen munchkins that she knows from her church (her husband is rather involved with the nursery), we talked about impending motherhood on the way home.

She views motherhood much the way I do marriage – she wants to, but she has things that she wants to take care of first. I will probably share a similar view when I’m married, but sheesh, if my biological clock didn’t wake up with full force in the last few years! More discussion on both of us thinking of the other as being older – lilr is actually a year older than I am (oddly, most of my friends from high school are. People who’d grown up with me thought I was weird.), but she sees me as being more emotionally and spiritually mature, whereas I think of her as the same.

Really, to have the truth of it, the problem is in our definitions – mature to me means having a solid center, even-keeled. To her, it means having a greater experience in this than one who is immature. I suppose the two are linked because the thought is that you’d develop that even-keel after experience, but it hasn’t worked out that way with us.

Watching the ballet, got to thinking a bit. I love dance. I wanted to minor in dance for quite a few years. It’s still something I sort of hold onto. But real dance takes so much commitment, and I already have a big commitment to music. Music is kind of a ‘me’ thing, and having a ‘me’ thing is good – but I want to be doing something to help other people. There’s so much in the world that I could be helping with. Ballet is beautiful, jazz dance is a blast, but neither one is helpful in a flood setting or building schools or shelters in war-torn countries.

So, then it comes back to, what DO I want to take with me when I leave? In more ways than one.

Still figuring out, “I got to be who God created me to be.”