In Hebrew: כֵּיף
Phonetically: khef
I remember the moment when I knew.
It was February of 2016, and I was standing on a frozen hilltop in the Smoky Mountains of Gatlinburg, TN, grinning.
I was looking out over the frost-covered valley and rolling white hills where the mountain town was nestled, far below. In every direction, the clean carpet of white snow was spiky with the black trunks of thousands of pine trees, standing up like the hairs on my arm in the freezing cold.
But it wasn’t just snow. There had been a freezing rain the night before, and every branch and needle was candy-coated with a thin and sparkling coat of ice. And now, the two of us alone on that ridge, we had a panoramic view of the shimmering ice-encrusted valley.
It was the last day of our vacation, and we had taken a short hike up a nearby trail to the viewpoint on the ridge. Our footsteps were heavy, wearing our heavy waterproof hiking boots, and the snow-covered ground crunched and crackled with every step, repeatedly crushing the thin crust of ice on top of the snow. As we walked, I looked up at the trees we passed, and saw each of the pinecones encased in jeweled cocoons of ice.
“Isn’t it beautiful?!” I said, smiling, my breath coming out in puffs of warm white vapor, my cheeks rosy in the cold.
I turned to my left, toward my husband, The Engineer.
He was standing next to me, face pointed toward the ground, shoulders slouched, hands deep in the pockets of his thick khaki-colored Carhartt coat.
He turned his face to me.
“Yup, yeah, it’s great,” he said.
He had replied without lifting his head to see the landscape.
His voice was flat and bored. He forced his lips into a flat grimacing smile, and raised his eyebrows.
Then he turned away again.
A tingling icy numbness, that had nothing to do with the winter air, clenched my belly. My cheeks, taut with the smile of my happiness, softened and sank, brow furrowing.
And I felt a cold and terrible certainty spread out from that icicle in my gut, out to my fingers and hardening in my veins.
He will never be happy with me.
And that’s when I knew:
Our marriage was going to end.
That trip to Gatlinburg had been a desperate Hail Mary for our marriage, hastily arranged after our last session with our marriage counselor.
I still remember that counseling session in that small beige room – beige carpet, beige furniture, beige walls, even beige light from the tabletop lamps.
The counselor was a kind Christian man, and was recommended to us by my aunt. The Engineer and I sat in an overstuffed loveseat next to the door. The counselor, in a chair across from us, had his right ankle resting on his left knee, his pen and notepad resting on his bent right knee.
No one in the room knew that that session would be our last.
On that night, the counselor was focusing on creating strategies to help us to have more fun together – so he was trying to help us recall fun memories from earlier in our relationship.
“What fun memories do you have together?” he asked.
Always the more talkative one, I easily ticked off a few that I could think of.
The surprise day trip to Cincinnati that he planned for me to see the special pirate exhibit at the museum.
Him playing his violin for me in the green trees near the abandoned Moonville tunnel.
That one weekend we camped out in West Virginia and got to ride in a Vietnam War-era helicopter over the Appalachian valleys.
Exploring the woods of Summersville, WV in the pouring rain, looking for a Civil War marker for his great-great-grandfather.
Touring the Spanish fort of Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, FL during our 3-week honeymoon.
Then he turned to The Engineer.
“What about you? What are memories you have of having fun with Heather?”
There was a pause while he thought.
10 seconds turned into 20.
Then 30.
45.
A full minute passed.
And with each passing second, you could feel the air thin in the room.
He began to fidget, shifting in his seat, rubbing his hands together.
But still. Silence.
Two minutes.
It got harder and harder for me to breathe, my inhales burning and shallow.
He kept glancing over at me, guilty, anxious.
My skin prickled with the inkling of what I knew was coming.
And finally, with some coaxing from the counselor, he spoke.
“I don’t like saying this, because I know it will hurt her feelings … but I don’t have any memories of having fun with Heather.”
Not even one.
His words hit me like a suckerpunch.
I felt the blood surge under my skin, and blackness blur the edges of my vision.
We had started dating when I was just 18 years old in 2005.
And here we were, sitting in a small beige office in northern Columbus at the beginning of 2016.
” … We’ve been together eleven years,” I whispered. “Eleven years.”
“I know,” he said. He sounded miserable.
The blurry blackness swelled and spread. I couldn’t focus my eyes. I couldn’t think. A little bit of vertigo.
There’s a specific feeling when you lean too far back in a chair and lose your balance.
You know that feeling. The violent lurch in your stomach when you tip past the balancing point. The instinctive and panicked jerk forward to regain your balance. And, if you can’t regain your balance, the acute knowledge that you’re falling to the hard floor and can’t do anything to stop it.
That’s what that moment felt like.
Through the black fog, I remember the counselor quietly saying, “Well, you guys really need to learn how to have fun together. Can you schedule a weekend away, as soon as possible, to try and have some fun together?”
We said something about trying, and left soon after.
We walked out into the winter air and the pothole-covered blacktop parking lot of the 3-story brick office building. Piles of greying snow were piled up on the edges of the lot, scraped away from the parking spots the day before, chunks of unmelted salt crunching under shoes. A few snowflakes swirled around us in the darkness.
And I immediately began to cry. There, while standing in that frigid parking lot.
Eleven YEARS.
Loud wracking uncontrollable sobs. I couldn’t even stop long enough to get in the car.
The Engineer stood next to me, silent, grimacing, brow furrowed, shifting from one foot to the other.
I took two steps to him and leaned my face into the cleft of his shoulder as I sobbed.
He silently reached around and awkwardly patted me on the shoulder with his right hand a few times, waiting for me to finish.
When I was composed enough we got in the car and we silently drove back home.
Less than 2 weeks later, we were driving southbound to Gatlinburg, TN.
We were both tense. We knew what this trip was, but we were trying to be positive.
“There’s supposed to a be a really good Ripley’s Believe or Not Aquarium there,” I said. “That sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, I saw that, too,” he said.
The tension was pulled so tight, like the skin across the head of a drum.
In a sick twist of timing, we happened to be there for Valentine’s weekend. The typical red, white and pink hearts and balloons festooned the streets of the kitschy mountain town.
Not only that, but we also learned that Gatlinburg is a popular place for elopements, and we kept passing cars smeared with white shoe polish, announcing “JUST MARRIED!” with empty coke cans trailing behind their bumper.
We crawled through the Valentine’s Day traffic to our modest hotel and checked in.
And then we tried to have fun. Really, we did.
We slept in, we rested, we ate good food.
We rode the skylift up the mountainside and got a bird’s eye view of the city and the valley.
We watched them handmake pink taffy through the window of a candy shop on main street.
We toured a local moonshine dispensary and went home with 4 mason jars in 4 different flavors.
We went to the aquarium, and paid extra to have a chance to play with and pet the penguins.
We walked around the artisan shops, and bought a few souvenirs like handmade clay mugs and leather journals.
We tried. We did everything right. We checked all the boxes marked “fun”.
But even after the rest. The restaurants. The moonshine. The penguins.
We still ended up on that frozen ridge.
Even under the best of circumstances, all he could do was grimace … and tolerate me.
Let me be clear.
I didn’t leave him the next day. And I did keep trying for a few more months.
I really did.
But the tone changed after that.
We had known about the cancer in our marriage for a while.
And, like an initial cancer diagnosis, I had started with hope and determination and actively fought it.
I read books, researched marriage counselors, learned and practiced conflict techniques and active listening, protected our alone time together on the weekends, and tried to defer to his interests most of the time in hopes that that would make him happy enough.
The last two years of our marriage, I was constantly looking for cures and treatments.
The problem is – I was the only one fighting.
And there was something on that ridge in Gatlinburg that felt like the terminal diagnosis.
Like when a doctor stops recommending treatments – and starts recommending palliative care.
That kind of tone change.
Slowly, I stopped fighting. My grip loosened.
And in March, I did something unprecedented.
I traveled without him.
For years, my grandparents had been inviting us to visit them in their condo in Key West. They even offered to help pay for the flight.
But every year, The Engineer had an excuse. Time, money, energy, work – there was always something.
After Gatlinburg, I asked him again to go with me. And again, he said no.
“OK – well, I still wanna go,” I said.
“OK,” he said.
So I went alone.
And had a blast.
My other grandfather, Dee, had passed away 3 years earlier.
He and my grandmother Margaret lived in Florida, a punishing +20 hour drive from Ohio, which meant visits required more time and planning.
Margaret decided to cremate Dee, and we scheduled a time to come down as a family and put his ashes to rest with her.
And that meant a long family roadtrip with my mother, sister and brother.
The Engineer did not come. And my stepfather, with his work schedule, was also unable to come.
The four of us spent a week with my grandmother, filling her house with bodies and love and laughter.
And, every morning, my mother stuck to her daily routine of neighborhood walks, and invited me to join her. She always picked the same route, down a nearby side street that sits right on the water, and we always admired the huge houses ringed in decorative palms and showy bougainvillea bushes.
The pace was slow enough to let us talk, and I remember one morning at the end of the trip she was homesick for my stepfather.
“He’s my best friend, and I just miss being with him!” she said. “I can’t wait to be home with him again.”
This made me happy. But there was also a discordant jangling in the back of my head.
… Why am I having more fun away from my own husband?
… Why is it a relief to be 3,000 miles away from him?
… Why don’t I miss him, or feel much desire to talk to him?
I pushed the thought away, attributing my relaxed state to being away from work and on vacation, and pointed to another mansion on the Florida street.
“So, what would you like to do this weekend?” I asked The Engineer pleasantly. “Your friend Oliver texted me and said we could come over and drink beers and swim in their pool if we want.”
“Mmm … ” The Engineer hummed and shook his head. “Nah, I don’t really fit in with his circle of friends that show up to his parties.”
“OK – well what about going to game night at Hannah’s? She texted me earlier this week, saying we’re both welcome to come,” I said.
“But those are your friends – I’m not really comfortable there,” he replied. “Besides, I worked a lot this week, and I’m kinda tired.”
Inhale. Exhale.
By now, I was used to this tennis match of a conversation – and the patience it required.
“OK, well, what if you and I have lunch together on Saturday, and then you have a quiet evening at home while I go over to Hannah’s by myself?”
“You’ve gone out, like, every weekend this month,” he said. His tone was sulky.
Inhale. Exhale.
“Ok, well, what about your engineering coworkers? We had a lot of fun with them last month, when they invited us to COSI and to drink beers. Maybe we can meet them for a beer at that bar you liked?”
He shook his head.
“Nah, I don’t really have that much in common with them.”
Inhale. Exhale.
“OK … so what you do you want to do?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
Inhale. Exhale.
I spent a lot of time with The Engineer.
And a lot of energy planning my schedule around his comfort and preferences.
One of those preferences was that I would be alone with him most of the time.
So the choice I made to travel without him to the Key West for a week was an important one.
I wasn’t fully aware of it – but I knew it subconsciously.
Because I still remember that flight so clearly.
I was alone on that southbound plane, and I had a window seat. The sun had set, and we were passing over the city of Atlanta. Stretched out far below was an elegant golden spiderweb of urban lights on the dark ground. I pressed my nose to the glass, grinning.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through my Music app, knowing exactly what I was looking for:
Balmorhea’s instrumental album All is Wild, All is Silent
Specifically the first song, Settler
I looked back out of the dark window, as the song began: a single soft piano note, repeated, repeated louder, then louder, then LOUDER.
Other piano notes join the first, an acoustic guitar gently folds into the mix – the notes are light and bright, building and building.
A violin comes in. Then a drum. All mixing in an orchestral crescendo of lightness and brightness and …
… and hope.
I love this song.
And I played it – because that song was exactly what I was feeling in that moment.
On that airplane, alone, I just felt this … hope and elation rise up.
Like a new door was opening up.
In March, I flew alone to Key West.
I snorkeled in a coral reef, ate fish that I had caught myself, and enjoyed a gourmet multi-course meal on a private island.
Then, in May, I went on a long weekend trip to Chicago with a girlfriend of mine.
We petted sting rays, ate a deep dish pizza, admired the famous “Nighthawks” painting, took a million photos, and started to plan another trip together immediately.
In July, my sister invited the Engineer and I to go on a roadtrip with her and her boyfriend the following month.
First to Charleston to visit our enlisted brother. Then to Florida to see our grandmother.
I said yes.
But again, The Engineer said no.
I knew we were circling the drain.
I knew that our diagnosis was terminal.
So, at the beginning of August, I talked to my mother. I told her I was planning to separate from The Engineer after returning from Florida, and asked if I could move in with her during that period. She said yes.
So, on August 11th, the three of us piled into my mother’s white minivan and headed south without him.
I remember crying a lot in the back of that van.
Tears of relief to be apart from him, and feel free, more like myself.
Tears of anger and despair, knowing that eventually this trip would end – and I’d have to go back to Ohio, to him.
Our first stop was Charleston, SC. We saw our newly-enlisted brother, and my sister and I got our first tattoos together on the 14th.
Then we drove to Florida.
On a whim, we decided to do a high ropes course in nearby Sarasota.
And that’s where, on August 18th, 2016, I met Ido.
It was February of 2016 when I’d realized, on that frozen mountaintop in the Smokies, that my marriage was going to end.
5 and a half years later, I found myself on a much higher mountaintop. With a very different man.
On Tuesday, September 14th, 2021, after a 15 hour uphill struggle – and 7 long days on the trail before that – Ido and I could finally see the sign for the summit at the highest point of Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro.
Giddy, exhausted, dizzy, we trudged our way up the dry cold mountain peak, black stones under our feet, a blue glacier and field of icicles to our left, a sea of clouds over the edge on our right.
And, finally, we made it to that tall wooden sign, reading in large yellow letters those beautiful words:
“CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE NOW AT AFRICA’S HIGHEST POINT”
I walked past the sign toward the edge of the ridge, and marveled at the sight below.
Far below, the stark brown floor of the high valley stretched out in every direction, until it was buried by tall blue-white glaciers or a thin layer of white snow.
And beyond it all, nothing but a sea of white clouds surrounding the mountain’s peak, obscuring all below.
Ido walked up next to me, still panting with the exertion of the past 15 hours.
“Isn’t it amazing?!” I asked, my voice hushed, my breath coming out in puffs of warm white vapor, my cheeks rosy in the cold.
He took a moment to just stand there with me, shoulder to shoulder, to look, to take it all in.
Then he nodded and grinned, turning to me to say, “It most certainly is,” he said, grinning. “It most certainly is.”
We stood there a few more moments, marveling together. Then we turned to each other and held other tight, wrapped up in each other and in the moment, laughing.
He pulled his face back to look at me, his eyes crinkled, his smile so wide that it reduced his eyes to slits. Then he put his hands behind my head to pull me in for a solid kiss on the lips. And lightly pressed his forehead against mine.
“Come on,” he said, taking me by the gloved hand. “Let’s go get our picture taken by the sign.”
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