More musings on absence, after my brief one of only two days. ..

I dismissed it at the time and I thought I did so honestly. I skoffed. No, it wouldn't be a big deal leaving The Boyfriend alone for the weekend, being apart, sleeping alone. I was not disingenuously skoffing. So what if we haven't been apart in, lets see, less than a year: July, August, September, October, Novemember, December (Happy New Year!), January, February, March, April and 12 days of May. Since our trip to Italy last summer, after which we moved directly into our first apartment together. In the end, it wasn't a huge monument but, as I sat on the plane, it did make me think.

There is a certain point when you start absorbing each other's habits, when the borders between countries begin to blur but peaceably, in subtle degrees. It's very easy to keep doing things the same way you have always done things--thinking about the world from your comfortable point of view, wielding tride and true opinions--when there is no one there to show you a different route. But at some gently arrived at point, you find yourself reciting your partner's justifications for your actions, the selfsame things they told you when you said, "Why the hell you doing that like that?" I say things like:

• "Because if you always keep it clean, you never have to clean it."
• "But flossing every day really isn't that hard."
  
• "Sure it requires extra programs, but RSS feeds bring the information to you."
• "Man, you really CAN tell the difference between VHS and DVD quality."

Everything is a platitude until you have actually experienced it. Those sappy wedding vows when the bride can barely weep out her words. The movies where the music swells and angels sing as the main character says exactly the right (oversaid) thing to woo the girl, despite his foolish misdeeds. All of these things seem fake until, at some gently arrived at point, you realize that:

• "I do see the future in his eyes."
• "Nothing truly happens until I tell you about it."
  
• "I can see what Jerry Maguire was on about with this completion thing."

Platitudes are empty without the experience to back it up, to prove it. They are empty buckets--easy to kick around and skoff, leave in a corner, stack like blocks to make an imaginary fortress of Rubbermaid hollowness. But once full, it is not so easily moved, forgotten. To carry it requires shifting your own stance and traditional posture. What once echoed back your own voice is heavy, sloshing with significance and ready to clean the floor. I have become aware of my own bucket of love.

I have a friend back in Colorado who is having problems with her own bucket. I think her cute and curvy, painted toes are a bit wet, making the ground treacherous and slippery. Don't worry, sweetheart. I think that once you give yourself a bit of time to dry off, you will know exactly how to handle this overfull burden that is weighing you down, threatening to pull your arm out of it's socket.