When I was little, somewhere around five years old, I remember going for Sunday drives with my grandparents. I would sit in the back seat of our powder blue station wagon and stare out the window as the country side slid by.
These Sunday drives were what occupied a little bit of our families time in between morning church service and evening service. We would pull onto the busy road, our farmstead was nestled against, and my Grandfather would take the exit onto the highway, and we would drive north. Up the highway and back down the back roads. Or vise versa. The scene of cornfields, farm spreads similar to ours, and small, corner towns, with small country churches, only changing with the season.
I remember looking out the window, the fence in-between the land and the highway, across the new cornfield with little tiny plants starting to poke up, stretching all the way to the blue, spring sky. A rainbow! The colors spelling out Roy G Biv were arched across the sky like a decorative drape. I smiled, excited to see it. I began to raise my arm to point out the window, an exclamation on my lips, and I stopped.
If I didn't tell anyone, if no one else saw the rainbow, than it was only mine. Everyone else's silence assured that neither of my grandparents had spotted it yet, only I had. Therefore it was my secret. My secret rainbow. All mine.
I lowered my arm and pursed my lips closed. I anxiously looked back and forth between my grandparents in the front seat and my rainbow out the side window. When the rainbow began to slide behind the car, I looked on unabashedly, certain, no one would see it now.
We took the exit off the highway and turned onto our rural, tree lined road. The rainbow gone from sight. But, I still had it, locked in my memory. My very own rainbow.
Thirty-five years later, I have lived a string of romances with the wrong guy. The "wrong" part, punctuated to my friends by my unwillingness to share the good stuff. As a woman and seasoned dater, you learn quickly that with the wrong guy, the positives are only an intermittent string of occasions. As these were so few and far between, like rainbows, I never wanted to share them. Keeping them locked inside, to hold onto, forever.
After three years with the right guy, I am still guilty of the same. Someone who was commitment phobic, like me. Who had a difficult time sharing his feelings, like me. Or showing much of any intimate, positive emotion, like me. Therefore, after a couple years in, when we both start opening up, creating those loving, positive moments, I am desperate to hang onto them.
Sure, I throw a tid bit or two to my closest BFF's. But, the bulk of it, I hide away like a squirrel who stashes a winters full of food. I just can't bring myself to lessen the intimacy of it, by sharing it.
On the flip side, when I am angry, or when, as men do, he does something stupid, I share, share, share till the cows come home! Desperate to vent. To hear my friends agree with my frustration! To get it out and shout at someone, just so I don't blow up at him.
And so here we are. Three years in. And my friends aren't fond of my boyfriend. Because, I am not a rainbow sharer.