Listen Love

Listen, Love.

I will never get used to this season of our lives--the way I can make you breakfast, coax you out of bed, and heat the water for your tea in the morning...only to find myself on a hillside in a city 700 miles away in the afternoon. It's amazing, but it isn't right.

Everyone knows this is possible and maybe even normal. This is how airplanes work. This is how I work, for now. But it isn't something my heart ever gets used to.

I never love you more than I do the morning that I leave. Your arms are never as comfortable as they are during that last hug. Even coming home doesn't compare because coming home is predictable. We know what to expect once we are whole again. But breaking apart is a new trauma every time we do it. "Bittersweet" hardly seems sufficient or satisfying.

But I guess that's the nature of this season: insufficient and unsatisfying. And yet, not without that sweetness.

I want to show you this hillside in the sun. You can smell the leaves drying on the trees when the wind blows. I can't remember if you have ever been to this city. I doubt you have ever been here on a day like today. Autumn is dry here. Golden and sweet, a gentle goodbye from summer before winter comes. Sometimes we have goodbyes like that. Our goodbye today was just like that and I'm glad. I am so glad for the sweetness in our leaving.

Because I do come home. I will always come home. And someday, I will be glad of the monotony that comes with never leaving without you. Even though I will come home, promise me that we'll never forget to take our goodbyes seriously. I've heard of too many salesmen leaving love at home to not be wary of my coming and going.

Anchor me. While I explore strange, unrelated corners of our country, tell me about the sadness of an empty bed. Remind me how you don't need me to heat the tea or make breakfast, but you like it when I do. Talk to me about our next adventure and what direction the ship of our home is heading while I am away, how there is neither captain or crew, wind or home unless we are together taking turns being strong.

Listen love and anchor me. Having left, I am almost home.

XOXO from Salt Lake City, UT