One Year and Nine Months Later...

Oh my. It's been a long time. A lot of things happened this month, and when a lot of things happen the old blog tends to take a back seat.

The biggest and most exciting news is that my long lost husband is home. For good. Not just a visit. The first set of large black containers showed up on May 12th. There would be two more separate sets of box deliveries before he finally arrived on May 26. It would be pretty fair to say he's been quite the distraction ever since. A good distraction. I went from living alone for one year and nine months to rarely being home alone, and I like it.

One year is doable. No question it's a long time to be apart, and it sucks, and I'd prefer to never have to do it again, but for the most part all things being considered, it's doable. We'd done it before, and we could do it again. I know some people can't imagine spending even a month apart, but I'd known him for all of about four months, when I found out he'd be gone for a year. Separations have been a pretty regular occurrence ever since. So yeah, one year is doable, but one year and nine months crosses the line between doable and wtf is happening to my marriage? It's long enough to live totally separate lives. After ten years of marriage, I got so used to my "single life" normal that I totally forgotten what our married life normal looked like, and couldn't even imagine what it would be like to live in the same house again.

If you put enough time and distance between married people it will erode a relationship if you let it, because the long distance part of it, goes against everything that marriage is supposed to be. Communication inevitably breaks down. We tried, but ultimately we couldn't share our lives the way we used to. How much are you actually sharing when everything happens from afar? Texting gets old after awhile. Lots of words get left unsaid because I either forgot to tell him when we finally spoke, or by the time we did it was old news. The time difference meant we couldn't even share the same day most of the time. We might be doing similar things, but he was always doing them nine hours ahead of me. We had to work twice as hard to maintain a relationship that almost didn't feel like a "real" relationship anymore. I saw him ten times over the course of twenty-one months which is a lot more than I expected to. I'm so grateful for those times, and we really needed those times, but they were visits, which isn't the same as living together. Face time is great, but it can't compare to being face to face with a live huggable person standing in front of you. We got through it, but I cried many tears and couldn't help worrying about the repercussions of being so far apart for so long.

Even after many airport pickups over the years, can you believe I was still nervous when it was finally time to pick him up for good? I don't know why, but I always get a little bit nervous when I see him after a while. I think it's mainly because I've missed him and I'm so excited to see him, but also because being in love is a little bit like magic. It can't be manufactured, and you either feel it or you don't. It's just one of those things. When the vibe is on, it's magical, and when it's not...it's flat. The difference between in love and whatever, is not exactly tangible, but felt. Two people can be as excited as ever to see each other, but the passage of time and long distance are just a few of many obstacles that can upset the very particular ingredients that make the magic of being in love happen.

This was our longest separation to date. I knew I felt the same, and I hoped he did too, but what if it we don't feel the same when we're together?

His first few weeks home felt so full and so busy. I had extra days off work. He unpacked over the course of several days, got rid of stuff, and and found places to relocate things accumulated while he was gone. His drawer organization was a disaster, bless his heart, he tried. I had to fix that, but he found a place for everything, then eventually got to the areas of our home I neglected while he was away. Our little yard was starting to look like a jungle, and the garage overrun with cobwebs and a thick film of grime. We went to The Lot to see Deadpool. Not as good as the first one. We went to see Les Miserables, which was as good as the first time I saw it.  He booked both sets of tickets while he was still in Germany. I think someone was really excited about getting back to his real life. We hung out with friends. I picked up the good steaks from Iowa Meat Farms. He grilled them outside. We drank wine. Then I had shoulder surgery and we went on a house hunting bender. More on that later, but so many things happened in such a short space of time.

It felt a little bit weird for about five days, but after that it was like he'd never left. I woke up one morning, looked over to his side of the bed, and it was so weird and so wonderful yet so natural that he was there. It's not just me on my own ordering the double chicken salad from El Pollo Loco every Friday night. It's what do we want for dinner? What are we doing this weekend?

My husband, with his magic, and all of his stuff is back. Thank goodness, because I don't know if his orange tree would have survived much longer. Also, I'm pretty crazy about him. Life isn't the same without him, and more than anything else, I wanted my marriage back.