When time and money are the very same thing

The Not Boyfriend's quick-turnaround weekend visit was abbreviated by flight delays and rain and things we have been frustrated by so often in the time we've been together, warrant only a sad-face by text and waiting and adjusting plans and more waiting.

Instead of arriving at 11 p.m. on Friday, he stepped quietly through the darkness outside into the darker hallway of my apartment at 5:30 Saturday morning. We don't normally sleep in together -- he is ever on baker's hours and I am wanting to make the most of the hours we have in each precious day we're in the same city. But we did on Saturday, letting the morning hours slip by lazily, the light stream in through the windows, and the air conditioning kick off and on while we were wrapped up in a comforter and each other. 

Outside, St. Patrick's Day had already been blaring on block after block of Chicago since hours before his plane was supposed to land at O'Hare. It's a holiday treated like New Year's Eve here, and city-dwellers and tourists either love it or avoid it at all costs. We acknowledged it, but it wasn't until well after we'd had brunch and walked through one of my favorite neighborhoods that I realized I wasn't wearing any green at all. I can't remember the last St. Patrick's Day that happened.

But then I haven't been with the Not Boyfriend on St. Patrick's Day before. The most we joined in as groups of people in oversized leprechaun hats and green beads with shamrocks and blatently open containers crowded the streets was to duck into my favorite bar, sit at one corner and order a few cocktails while the breeze and beer smell and random yelling blew in.

This drink , I thought, is the most green I'm getting.

It is made of celery juice and gin and deliciousness that conjures up all kinds of summer times. 

I drank it as we laughed and made fun of the people on the street and each other. As we dipped into a whispered conversation about how I've not been feeling myself lately, how the roughness of the last months is like a hangover. 

The Not Boyfriend, cradled my hand, palm up, in his, so that together we made layers of an open cup. He turned the talk to money. I've shared some financial details and questions and discussions with him, and we've both made clear how independent we are about salaries and savings and taking care of ourselves in this way. He also knows in this search, in this transition, my savings are dwindling and it has caused me a lot of anxiety.

He told me he loves me, he asked me to let him help me in ways I swore I'd never let a mind get intermingled in my life again. He said he knows I am strong and that letting him help is even stronger.

There were tears over these cocktails. And something shifted just a little bit. 

Is it too cliche to say I feel green about money, especially when details are aired on St. Patrick's Day? I do. I feel like I am at the very beginning of being wise about what I earn. I have spent four years trying to recover from some slow and devastating choices made in my marriage about money, and feeling fiercely that I'd never share that responsibility or security or burden or empowerment with someone again. And here I was having drinks with a man who was telling me he expected me to take a handout, whether I wanted to consider it a gift or a loan or help or not. I just had to be able to see it as strength.

It's all so intimate -- talking openly about what's in your wallet, your money market fund, available on your credit card right now. It may be more difficult to share it with a partner, at least for me, then write it to be imprinted online long after my debts have disappeared and my credit score no longer matters. 

I brushed off his offer a few days earlier, saying it made me too uncomfortable, that I didn't even want go further. But here he was, we were, with open hands.

I'm not sure I will take it. I hope I don't need it. But it's there, the promise to care for each other in this way as well as others, to handle each other's most tender places with love, to remind each other that we are both strong and capable and always in need of a little help.

He put cash on the bamboo bar for the cocktails and a tip for the bartender and this time, I didn't squirm at a man buying me a drink. Our time and our money is precious, and now whatever we have of it was out there in front of us. We just have to choose how to use it and how to offer it. And mostly, how to accept it in the hardest and shortest times, not as frustration or fear, but as a gift, as a strength, as something sweet landing in our open palms.