Independence

After church today, I drove down to Jersey City to check out Rob's new flat. It's a one-bedroom near Journal Square that's about $695 a month. Sadly, a dream come true around these parts. I took the drive with a bit of apprehension - after all, I'm notorious for getting lost anytime I'm in the Jersey City vicinity - but I popped some David Ford into the CD player (nothing like some angst-ridden 90's singer/songwriter to get you through anxiety... they've always got it worse than you), and got my mind off things. I managed to get there with little drama. The neighborhood was quiet, and a long line of quaint townhouses stretched down the street. Christmas lights peeked out of one spacious window; cozy bedrooms exposed themselves from attics above. His apartment is in an old brick building on the first flight up, and the three rooms that make his abode are quaint, charming... they have character. He's got those old-school steam heaters and the walls look cardboard-thick with slathered paint - the kitchen is a pasty sort of yellow/orange and the bedroom is velvet red. We ate pizza and drank tea, letting the loneliness of living alone immerse us. We only spent an hour and a half there, but there was really little else to do. It was the first occasion that time passed slowly when we were together. I was fascinated by this and kept calculating the time from when I parked my car to when I began following his Volkswagon back to the turnpike. 

It'll certainly be an adjustment now that he's got some new digs. 

We sat for a time in the kitchen before he walked around the table to embrace me warmly. 

"I wouldn't have done this if it weren't for you," he said.

Though I knew this somewhere in my mind, the words were still startling. 

"What do you mean?"     

I meant it.

"Well.  You were the one who encouraged me to do this. If you didn't, I never would have."

I think it was his way of saying that my nagging actually did a bit of good. 

I smiled and kissed him again.

Somewhere in the recesses of my veins, it made me nervous to think that I had influenced such a big decision. What if I was wrong? And what would this mean for me anyway? In all my "encouraging" I hadn't yet stopped to think about it.

Maybe 2009 will be a year for many new beginnings.