The universe has a way of kicking you in the gut and reminding you of just how humble your heart is. It always happens when you least expect it, usually right around when you think you're impervious to all things ex-related. Right when you think you're strong enough to break out the CDs that used to remind you of him, for example, or watch sappy movies without packing an entire box of tissues. And it's always the things you never see coming down the pike.
Today someone at work left a package of Madagascar Vanilla tea on the counter in the ktichen. Innocuous, yes? NO. In a completely reflexive, sentimental move stemming from years of attuned to another person, I reached for the phone to call Glenn and tell him I'd found his favorite tea. It was a moment not unlike the one a few months ago, when I was standing in Trader Joe's and looked down to find that I just put six bottles of the seltzer he liked into the cart without even noticing. Knee-jerk doesn't begin to describe it.
Glenn was on a neverending quest for the perfect Madagascar vanilla tea. When we lived in Boston, he worked at a bike shop in Cambridge that was across the street from a tea cafe that served a particular vanilla tea blend. He would not shut up about that tea. I ended up buying him a pound of it for Valentine's Day the year we left for California, and ever since we left the east coast he's been searching for a comparable blend.
I actually reached for the phone before I realized what I was doing and stopped myself. Then I felt pathetic for having the urge to call him in the first place. How do people get into your system like this? How can you love someone you don't even like anymore? Do they ever stop being a part of your life?
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