The Invisible Wall
和丈夫墮入愛河那一刻，我們正坐在舊公寓的客廳里，眼前的白色長窗簾垂落在落地窗前。我們邊聊天，邊細(xì)呷著滾燙的黑咖啡。我們可以就一直這么坐著聊天——有時(shí)候可以聊到第二天太陽升起。當(dāng)時(shí)我對他魂?duì)繅衾@，如癡如醉，為自己能夠找到一生的至愛而激動(dòng)不已。結(jié)婚那天是我一生中最快樂的日子。
I first fell in love with husband when we would sit and talk in the living room of
my old apartment in front of the (ceiling-to-floor) windows with the long, white
curtains, drinking cups of scalding, black coffee. We would just sit and
talk-sometimes until sunrise. I was so completely thrilled to have finally found
that one special person and our wedding way was the happiest day of my life.
However, it was not long after our honeymoon when my husband climbed into the
tomb called "the office" and wrapped his mind in a shroud of paperwork and
buried himself in clients, and I said nothing for fear of turning into a nagging
wife. It seemed as if overnight an invisible wall had been erected between us.
When our daughter, Desiree was born she quickly became the center of my
world. I watched her grow from infant to toddler, and I no longer seemed to care
that my husband was getting busier and spending less time at home. Somewhere
between his work schedule and our home and young daughter, we were losing touch
with each other. That invisible wall was now being cemented by the mortar of
indifference.
Desiree went off to preschool and I returned to college to finish my degree,
and I tried to find myself in the courses I took; I complained with all the
other young women on campus about men who are insensitive. Sometimes late at
night I cried and begged the whispering darkness to tell me who I really was,
and my husband lay beside snoring like a hibernating bear unaware of my winter.
Then tragedy struck our lives, when my husband's younger
brother was killed on September 11, 2001, along with thousand of other innocent
people. He made it out okay and spoke to his wife to say he was going back in to
help those that were still trapped. He was identified only by the engraving on
the inside of his wedding band. 
Attending my brother's memorial service was an eye-opening experience for the
both of us. For the first time, we saw our own marriage was almost like my
in-laws. At the tragic death of the youngest son they could not reach out
console one another. It seemed as if somewhere between the oldest son's first
tooth and the youngest son's graduation they had lost each other. Their wedding
day photograph of the young, happy, smiling couple on the mantle of their
fireplace was almost mocking those two minds that no longer touched. They were
living in such an invisible wall between them that the heaviest battering with
the strongest artillery would not penetrate, when love dies it is not in a
moment of angry battle or when fiery bodies lose their heat; it lies broken and
panting and exhausted at the bottom of a wall it cannot penetrate.
Recently one night, my husband told of his fear of dying. Until then he had
been afraid to expose his naked souls. I spoke of trying to find myself in the
writings in my journal. It seemed as if each of us had been hiding our
soul-searching from the other.
We are slowly working toward building a bridge—not a wall, so that when we
reach out to each other, we do not find a barrier we cannot penetrate and recoil
from the coldness of the stone or retreat from the stranger on the other
side.
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