taido walked in this morning at 6am (we didn’t expect him until 10am…note to all men: always come home earlier than planned…”it’s best to come in on one’s family before the lookout begins.” from emma) from being gone for a week and i swear i think i felt a weensy bit in my heart like it’s going to feel when jesus comes back. the relief, the gush of oh-thank-God-i-made-it-and-now-it’s-finally-over came over me like a wave. i was so happy to see him. we visited for a few minutes. we sat down and i squeezed him…held his hand. and then i handed him the baby and headed out to the river market, thrilled to be going sans enfants.

it’s hard to explain (even to myself) why exactly i hate so much for him to be gone. i have others around me. i am not technically all alone. life goes along in much the same way that it does when he is in town. still, there’s this sinking, this gutt-wrenching feeling that i get in my stomach as he drives away, and it grows deeper with each day that he’s gone. then when he comes back, it is like a flood filling back up again. i can actually feel it in my stomach. incidentally, my stomach signals this way to me about people’s comings and goings in general. i don’t know if everyone is like this or if it’s just part of my bizzarro social awkardness/anxiety, but when there is a knock at the door or a car pulls up in my driveway, or i answer the phone, my stomach goes one way or the other depending on who it is (or maybe on how i am doing or on what day of the month it is…i don’t know). one of the ways i knew that i loved…really loved…taido was that this feeling in my stomach…clenched or relaxed, that’s the best way i know to describe it…was indescribable when he would come around our house or i would see him at church. it took me a while to trust it, but now, after years of being married and having children and fighting and making up, no one can match the relief, the relaxing, the truly just feeling like it is ok to just be me that my stomach does when he walks through the door.

surely, i am too dependent on him, you say… surely, i have turned him into a god of some sort. well, maybe… but ask me about him in a few days and i’m sure i will be able to oblige you with a let me count the ways taido chino drives me crazy rant, numbers one and two being hours logged on the computer and five pairs of size 11 shoes in the floor… but today, he can do no wrong.

enjoy it while it lasts, babe.