Arriving home after lunch on Sunday, and then going right back to work on Monday, is a challenge. I go to Safe Homes/Rape Crisis Coalition on Mondays and Tuesdays after work, so I didn't arrive home until late on both days. By Wednesday, it was crash and burn. I got home, fell over in bed, and woke long enough to eat and go to bed. If I have ever hated waking for work at 3:30 in the morning, it's this week!
Monday was especially difficult because my head space was still in Arkansas. It was an extraordinary, transformative week. The joy and ease of staying with my son and his wife was amazing. While I had emotional flashback in preparing to see the parents, yet the visits went well and had their own beauty.
Perhaps the most difficult part of the week was missing my wife. But even that missing had an unexpected joy. I've known for many years the solidity of our relationship. I've long since yielded the fear and doubt and limits of relationships through the sheer constancy of Cameron's love. Indeed, Cameron has demonstrated unfailing love for me, bring profound healing to my life. We've not often been apart, and never for so many days. Arriving home was sweet. I had missed her terribly: )
So it's a quiet weekend. Home made pizza tonight, chicken wings and roasted potatoes last night. Now we lounge on the bed, watching the food channel. At one point we counted 17 cats on the bed. Nevertheless, it's a quiet, beautiful night and I am blessed.
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It goes both ways, you know...that constancy of love thing. That utter security of knowing that this person, this one incredible person loves you unreservedly, whole-heartedly, unconditionally. (Which does not mean that she lets me get away with being less then what I can or should be - loving someone unconditionally implies the moral courage to administer ass kicking when its deserved or needed.) It was the longest 10 days of our 8 years together. There is no doubt that the house was empty...quiet...much of the blazing energy and light sucked out of it by your absence. (of course, true...how alone can you be with mumble-something-umpteen overly affectionate cats and a glued to your shadow co-dependent dog? Alone wasn't exactly the right word...) But even though I missed you like I would miss the air I breathe, or the sound of my own heart beat, there was a comfort. A contentment. A purpose. I wasn't alone curled up in agony...I was holding down the fort, taking care of stuff - you know the ordinary everyday stuff - laundry, mopping the floors, petting cats, playing with the dog...mopping the floor again (don't ask) and knowing beyond any possible doubt that you would be home. That home didn't - doesn't cease to be if one of us is away from it. That home is not this battered little trailer, dear and lived in as it is; home is where our hearts and our love twine down into deep silent roots, sustaining us, giving us strength to nurture one another, to wait for one another, to listen to one another. The bed I slept in wasn't empty because you were gone...it would have been empty if I wasn't in it as well. For while I was there, the vast power of our love remained. It is not halved because one of us is somewhere else, it merely means that we hold together that loving and cherishing across miles and time, and the roots remain whole. Oh, yes we missed one another. But we never lost each other. We never lost that sense of home and connection, because that remains constant no matter what. Missing each other was a bittersweet feeling - lonely, and far too long and too many miles between us, but deep and powerfully good in the sense that we have each other to miss, we have the love and relationship of a life time and all the miles and distance in the world cannot take that away from each other. It was an honor and a pleasure to miss you, to be your other half, and "hold down the fort" for what we have and hold and believe in. And if it was hard to get to sleep in that overly wide bed...if it was frustrating to deal with dropping phone towers, and mismatched schedules (I swear the state of Mississippi uses tin cans and string on a fence post in lieu of phone towers!!!), well...thats OK. That can be managed. And joy and laughter came back when you walked in the door - heck, when I met you in the driveway to hold you in my arms. And all of this, the missing each other, the reunions, the partings, the laughter, the mopped floors and the miles of black top road rolling under the tires, and the precious embraces and kisses, and the dark safe silence of hearing your breath in my ear like my own at night, curled up next to you...all this is a part of what being in a relationship means. Give and take and letting go and welcoming back, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish...Welcome home, Dreamweaver!
ReplyDeleteI missed you like life itself! And I truly hope we don't do that too often - 10 days is a long time!
But you were never truly gone, where it matters...deep inside my heart!
Have a good rest this weekend and snuggle up under your Blanket o' Cats!
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