Jonah/Krystle: Well, I've got news

Sorry I haven't been posting much.  It's the usual deal:  I've been just being a regular single mom for the past few months, and this is kind of a blog about people finding themselves in new lives, and that hasn't been me in a while.  I've been pretty confident, doing okay as Krystle, to the point where it kind of seems right.  I kind of think I remember more of my life like this than being Jonah, and wonder if I should stop using that name even here.  This is me.

Or, you know, until last weekend.

Gabriel was in town.  He shows up for a long weekend every couple months, and the nature of it sort of changes depending what our lives are like.  Sometimes he comes with a friend, often that friend comes with a girlfriend, sometimes we hit the sights and restaurants, one time it was mostly a Pelicans-Knicks game, sometimes we spend a lot of time in bed, sometimes it's just two pals hanging out.  When anyone asks, I say it's a great friends with benefits relationship, and a lot of my girlfriends say they couldn't do it.  I sometimes wonder about that, because sometimes I think about how uptight I was about sex even as a horny teenage boy and also wonder if having been a guy just lets me just be buddies more easily.

I haven't really been keeping track of which weekends are like what or anything, but this past one was just us.  Well, not just us - Moira is playing tee ball and had a game Saturday morning and they we did a trip to the zoo - but the nights were ours, and the plan was to spend them at his hotel while Moira slept over at a friend's.  And that's how it went; we went to one of the zillion nice restaurants in town and had some time to kill before the jazz show he'd purchased tickets to, so we started walking along the beach.  I had taken my heels off and was enjoying walking barefoot, and had just pulled out my bag to put a wrap on, because I've kind of acclimated to what people here call "chilly" even though I spent most of my life in New England, but as I was saying that, he coughed and I was about to turn around and ask what his excuse was.

And then he got down on one knee.

I don't remember exactly what he said - it wasn't any sort of "never met a girl like me" thing, but that he'd never been drawn to someone so much, even when we weren't nearby, and that I always seemed to know how things should be even when he was drifting or I said that I felt overwhelmed, and he'd been kind of afraid to move forward because I was so independent, but, well, we hadn't seemed to just be friends for months, and it was time to make it official.  Would I marry him?

My legs went weak.  Like, weaker than when I woke up as a grown up woman after going to bed a teenage boy, weaker than when I slept with the creep wearing my old face because it seemed like the only thing I could offer him to become myself again, weaker than when I found out I was pregnant, weaker than after I'd just given birth.  Why?  I mean, why?  My life had changed so much in a moment before, and this wasn't close to the same category, was it?  But then, when had it really changed in a way that made things feel more solid?  Like, all of that was ways in which I was going to have to adapt in a way where I would have to rely on myself more despite not having any idea of what I was doing, and this was being told I was good at my life and made someone else's better and I wasn't prepared to hear that.

All that went through my head in a second, and I said yes.  He took the ring out of the box that, quite frankly, I hadn't paid any attention to, we kissed, and some of the other folks on the beach applauded.  

The rest of the night was kind of a daze - there was music, there was sex - and then the next morning he checked out of the hotel and we went to pick up Moira, together, because his flight wasn't for hours.  On the way, we talked about just what we do at this point, because while Moira really likes Gabe, she's a kid, and would this be too big for her to take in?  Like, what if she said she didn't want Gabe to be her daddy, or even to be around all the time?

That didn't happen, thank God.  I sort of turned the ring around, kind of hiding the diamond so that it didn't become a whole topic of conversation with the other adults until we got back to our place, and then tried to explain to her like she was a big girl that Gabe and I had decided that we should all be one family, and we really hoped that she liked the idea.  She had a lot of questions - was Gabe going to be around all the time now?  Where would he sleep and put his things?  When were we getting married?

We'd talked about some of them - Gabe could work remotely from anywhere, so we would probably look for a house over the next few weeks and he would move in when we found one, although that might take some time.  We'd probably get married next summer, which seemed like a ridiculously long time to her, but I pointed out that we had to make sure we could find a date that worked for Momma K and maybe her daddy Jonah and definitely Grammy and Grampa Glass, and Big Moira and Auntie Karla and maybe even my friend Jordan, and that meant planning a long time in advance.  But what if we changed our minds before then, and I told her that a man doesn't buy this kind of expensive ring unless he was really sure we wouldn't change our minds.

She said it was pretty, especially since Mommy almost never wore jewelry besides earrings.  I said it really was, although to myself, I was kind of thinking it was heavy, this weird and unfamiliar weight on my hand.  Not, like, in a way that meant more than that, I don't think - not like my breasts did when I first turned into a girl! - but I do feel it and my brain is doing its level best to treat it as a reminder that Gabe loves me that much.  Although sometimes I kind of freak out when I bang it into something.

It's really new, and while the reactions have been mostly good.  I almost think that this might be the thing that gets Mom to be okay with all this, even more than Moira, like I'd passed some sort of girl test.  Jordan kind of can't believe it.  When I sent Moira's namesake a photo she called me up immediately to screech into the phone.  Klara and Momma Kamen are really proud of me, which is weird.

Krystle/Mackenzie...  That's complicated.  She barely remembers Gabe from when they were kids, but kind of wishes I had found someone who had never met her at all.  She's never going to forgive me, I know, but we're a little more cordial these days (I think finally being old enough to date without it being too weird and starting to look at colleges has her treating my life less as what she should be rather than what she could have been).  She's not going to say "good job", but she's not automatically going to "why are you fucking my life up so much" anymore.  Gabe seems like a good guy to her.  Probably the best I can hope for from that end.

So all that happens, and I kind of feel like my feet are just now touching the ground again.  And while I don't exactly have a lot of fantasies about a fancy wedding that have been in my head since childhood, Penny tells me that I should prepare for the next year to be insane anyway!

-Jonah/Krystle