Tightening the Knot (17 page)

           
“It might be optional.”

           
“Sleep!?”

           
“No, the breakfast.”

╣ Chapter 22 ╠

           
The carpeting in the hotel hallway seemed to be on a mission to make up for the lack of flowers in the room.
 
Greg and Meredith followed this floral path to the meeting rooms.
 
Their first activity was in room E, which they were not at all surprised to find after room D.
 
They entered the room and immediately felt out of place.
 
While every other couple was also holding a purple folder, none of them appeared to occupy the same generation as Greg and Meredith.
 
Had they missed an age requirement for this seminar?

           
Meredith attempted to disappear into the wall behind her while she took in the scene.
 
Greg, meanwhile, accepted the outstretched hand of the man nearest him and Meredith was forced to nod politely when they looked in her direction so it would not appear that Greg was introducing a wall.
 
The two men were only able to exchange a few words before another couple entered the room carrying boxes.
 
These appeared to be the instructors and all eyes turned in their direction.

           
The female instructor was tall and thin and had likely been teased about having bug-eyes at some point in her life.
 
She placed her box on the end of a table and began pulling out bunches of pink yarn.
 
The tables were arranged in a large U with chairs along the outside.
 
She put a bunch of yarn in front of every other chair.
 
The man she was with was short and stocky and wore a suit that might have been trendy when he was a teenager forty or fifty years earlier.
 
He first pulled a clipboard out of his box and then began adding blue yarn to the places that did not have pink.
 
When they finished laying out the yarn, the woman invited the students to have a seat.

           
“Please sit next to your spouse.
 
All women should have pink yarn and the men should have blue.”

           
Following what sounded like simple instructions quickly deteriorated into more trouble than spreading out a picnic blanket on a windy day.
 
There were six couples ready to participate.
 
Five couples sat down so that the remaining chairs were separated by two couples.
 
These two couples moved over a seat to close the gap and brought their yarn with them to keep the right color.
 
Then the standing woman claimed the extra pink yarn to take to the end with her husband at the same time the sitting couples decided it might be easier to have the men and women switch sides and pass the yarn back.
 
This resulted in general confusion, which distressed the instructors in a way that caused them to be helpful in ways that were not helpful.
 

           
Meredith was not involved in the chaos, but gripped her own pink yarn as though it was something quite valuable while she watched.
 
When things settled down, the instructors took their places in front.
 

           
“Okay, men, look at me.”
 
The male instructor held his arms out in front of himself, bent at the elbows.
 
He looked as though he was about to break into a robot dance and Meredith mentally dubbed him Mr.
Roboto
for the rest of the session.
 
“Put your arms up like this and face your wives.”

           
“Now wives,” the woman took over the directions, “you take the blue yarn from in front of your husbands…” There was an awkward pause at the end of this instruction as though she was formulating a better set up plan for her next group.
 
“What you’ll want to do is loop the strings, one at a time, over your husbands’ arms.
 
You’ll want to leave an inch or so between each one.
 
Wait!”
 
Some of the women had started already and this was apparently wrong.
 
“We’re going to do this slowly.
 
For each piece of yarn, I want you to tell your husband something about him that you appreciate.
 
When you’re done, you’ll weave the pink strings in vertically and have your husband do the same for you.
 
I mean, do the same with the appreciation.
 
He’ll tell you one thing he appreciates about you for each pink string.
 
Any questions?
 
Good.
 
Now you can start.”

           
Meredith watched for a moment as the female instructor hurried to get all of the blue loops over her husband and began working in the pink.
 
There were no forced compliments between them.
 
She then turned to Greg, who had pushed his sleeves up and was ready for her.
 
The yarn was fuzzy as Meredith fiddled with a blue piece between her fingers.

           
“Are you stalling because you can’t think of anything nice to say?”
 
Greg had a mischievous grin.
 
He clearly thought this was just as silly as she did, but was going to make her do it anyway.

           
“I didn’t realize this was a race.”
 
She answered calmly and put the first piece of string all the way down to his elbows.
 
“I appreciate your patience.”
 
She winked and picked up a second piece.
 
“I also appreciate how good you are at getting your sleeves out of the way.”

           
“I think that might be cheating.”

           
“Cheating?”

           
“That’s not a real thing.”
 
Greg was being playful, but was also wincing slightly at having to hold his sore arms up at this angle.
 
Meredith took pity and moved things along a bit faster.
 
For the other eight strings she gave serious, though not too mushy, praise.
 
She really was grateful that he regularly cooked dinners for her and that he never gave her a hard time about spending time with Jenna.
 
She loved his sense of humor and also his sense of responsibility.
 
When it came down to it, she ran out of yarn before she ran out of compliments.
 
But the yarn kept slipping down his arms.
 
She was having trouble getting it organized to weave in the pink strings.
 
The pieces were not exactly the same length and she reordered them again and again to make them stay in position.

           
“Here.
 
Lay your arms down on the table.”
 
She grabbed his hands to turn him slightly and placed his arms down.
 
This kept the blue strings in place, but made adding the pink a difficult reach.
 
Meredith stood up behind him and slid one arm under Greg’s to start the first string.

           
“I appreciate that you let me put my arms down.”

           
“Now who’s cheating?”

           
“I also appreciate how determined you are.
 
I’d have chucked those blue strings a while ago.”

           
Meredith laughed.
 
“No you
wouldn’t’ve
.”
 
She picked up another string and began to work it through.
 
It did not escape her notice that she had to lean against his back a little to reach.
 
It seemed to her that it had been a long time since they had been this close.
 
And she loved that he still felt familiar.

           
“I appreciate that you’re better at weaving than I am.
 
I hope you’re going to be able to do what she’s doing now.”
 
He nodded in the direction of the instructors.
 
The woman was looping the ends to hold everything together.

           
“Yeah.
 
It’s just like a potholder.”

           
“Huh?”

           
“You
know,
those bags of sock pieces you wove together as a kid to make potholders.”

           
“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

           
“I know you’re a guy, but surely you’ve seen it done.
 
Didn’t Mary make any potholders?”

           
“Let me get this straight.
 
I’ve never seen anyone make potholders out of socks and you think that’s weird?”

           
“Yes.
 
But you better be careful because I’m on the next string so you’re supposed to be saying something nice.”

           
“Okay.
 
You look very cute when you think
I’m
the one who’s weird.”

           
“Thank you.”
 
Meredith smiled and continued working.
 
She was leaning in a little more than she had to now and they were almost check to check.
 
Meredith blushed slightly, partly from the closeness and partly because half the room was now copying their technique.
 
She wasn’t getting too comfortable in front of an audience.
 
Greg seemed aware of her nearness though and got a little more serious with his next few compliments.
 
Until the final string when he got a lot more serious.

           
“I love knowing you’ll be an excellent mother.”

           
She gulped a little at the forbidden topic and looped together their new creation in silence.
 
It really didn’t look anything like a potholder.

╣ Chapter 23 ╠

           
Meredith had enjoyed that first activity, though she was embarrassed to admit it even to herself.
 
And this didn’t mean she was any more optimistic about “Molding Emotions” than when she had first read the title.
 
Still, she walked into meeting room C hoping to at least find some participants that were not as old as her parents.
 
Instead, she found her parents.

           
“Mom?
 
Dad?
 
Uh… hi.”

           
“Hello, Meredith.
 
Greg.”

           
“What are you kids doing here with all us old fogies?”

           
A few answers popped into Meredith’s head, but she only smiled while Greg said something much more diplomatic than anything she had come up with.
 
She probably should have appreciated his people skills in the previous session.
 
The four of them made small talk while Meredith appraised the room.
 
It was arranged like the other meeting room except there was no yarn on the tables.
 
There was a large box of Play-
Doh
, blue and pink of course.
 
A woman near the front was wearing a heavy apron that may have been more suited to shielding her from x-rays than something normally used by preschoolers.
 
Meredith surmised that this was the female half of a lead couple, but no man was similarly armored so the other half was still conjecture.
 
The woman clapped her hands excitedly.