Today’s Facebook memory

Five years ago today, my ex-husband made friends with a Canada Goose.  I captured the two of them with my camera.  It was a special moment of awe and joy.  Honestly, I smiled even today as I remembered the moment.

And then when I identified some birds we were looking at as Pine Siskins, he adamantly accused me of making up the name of the birds.  I had been reading about how that winter they were showing up in large numbers in our state, something that doesn’t happen often as they usually don’t winter this far south, so I knew to look for them.  I knew what I was seeing and I tried to explain what I had been reading about them. 

Later that day back at home, after he looked them up himself, he stopped accusing me of being wrong but I never got any sort of acknowledgment or apology from him.

Probably not surprisingly, my Facebook post focused on the first experience.  It is only in hindsight that the single photo (out of 10 photos) of two Pine Siskins triggered the memory of the accusations.

I had never thought about the polarity of those two experiences happening within minutes and feet of each other.  How often did I hang onto the joy I sought out to buffer the ugly moments?  How often was my joy a direct reflection of how I chose to view the world vs things he did to intentionally bring me joy?  

How much did I feed into my own delusions?  In this example none of my joy and buffer came from positive actions on his part towards me.  It was all in my willingness to wear the rose colored glasses.  I suspect this Facebook memory is pretty representative of the way I would hang onto the good I experienced to minimize or even forget the bad.

Although I often wish that characteristic of me hadn’t kept me stuck for so long in a toxic marriage, I do really admire the way I view the world.  So, if I feel a little nostalgia today as I replay the good part of this memory in my mind, I’m okay with that.  

Maybe I even needed a reminder of the good in him (even if it was a goose that was the recipient of his good that day), not because I’m putting the rose colored glasses back on but because maybe when they came off, my focus narrowed too much to just the bad and ugly I had missed or ignored at the expense of the larger picture.