lucky

Seven years ago Jason came back to Kalamazoo. He had just finished four years of military service. I was in the throes of ending a miserable relationship. We hung out, as friends, like we did whenever he returned to Kalamazoo on leave. We went to the park. We went to see his mechanic, who gave me flowers. We ate ice cream at the Frosty Boy. We had a drink at a tiny, dingy bar. I remember the day in lovely snapshots: laughing on the swings, the sun through the windshield, the mechanic's dirty coveralls, both of us laughing and fighting with ice cream, the longing to never go home. We had spent four years apart and still, I was impossibly, hopelessly, giddily in love.
This evening we went back to the Frosty Boy, and rather than looking across the table at the person I wanted so desperately to build a life with, I got to look at the person with whom I share a life and all of the wonders and nightmarish bumps it has handed us in these past seven years. We said less tonight, sharing a relief too big for words, the relief of a clean bone scan and no metastatic cancer. The relief of less cancer.
Sometimes, you get lucky.