“We told each other I think I know when we should have said Lead me farther through your amazing, astonishing interior.” – from the short story “Netherlands Lives with Water’ by Jim Shepard

—

Traveling is wonderfully clarifying. We spent 7 days in Kauai recently – a long overdue holiday. Basil and I remarked that in the almost-decade of our partnership, it was the first holiday we took for ourselves instead of visiting his family or mine.

Traveling with a 1-year-old, panicking at the tsunami warning, and braving unusually long rainstorms and large ocean swells made it quite an adventure.  Had it just been the two of us no doubt we would have packed each day with activities from dawn til dusk, but though our son Bean proved a good traveler, his need for daily space to dream, swim, and explore forced us to slow down, unplug, and tune into each other.

What did I learn on this trip? That I love Kauai and would move there in a heartbeat if I could. That even with a baby we didn’t need the giant checked-in suitcase & would have been just fine with bathing suits, flip flops and casual clothes balled up into a carry-on. That wearing white pants on a trans-Pacific flight with a toddler is tempting fate.

And…that I miss my husband. Terribly.

I have missed my husband since the minute my son was born. That longing and loss has remained in the back of my mind, to be tended to when I have time.  Which – with a newborn turned toddler – I never have found.

It’s strange because I’ve always been the one telling my younger sisters (who both had children long before me) that their relationship with their husbands is the foundation of their family, and not to get so caught up in childrearing that they forget that and drift apart.

Apparently I’d also emphasized this to a dear friend of mine after I had my son, and a couple of months before she had hers. But months later when we both made a list of priorities, her list had her husband on it, and mine read: Baby, healthful cooking/living, writing…and no Basil.

When I told her that seeing her husband’s name on her list made the gap on mine all the more mortifying, she gently reminded me, “But it was you that told me to focus on my relationship, months ago.”

Funny how we dispense advice that we most need ourselves, isn’t it?

Another six months went by and it wasn’t until we were on a Hawaiian beach that I felt something loosen its grip, and all that pent up longing surged forward.

As I watched Basil in the ocean in front of me, I wondered, Who is that man in the waves? In spite of a decade together, it was like watching a stranger. He dove into big waves with a playful fearlessness. The years slipped off with every dive, and, in the distance, he became that unconventional boy again that I remembered from our first dates.

As Basil came toward me after his swim, grinning, his dark hair now streaked with silver, his hands that of the strong man he had become, he felt unknown, yet quietly wanting to be known. He was the forgotten heartbeat, the pulse you suddenly discover in your own wrist which stops you in your tracks because you realize that it has silently and miraculously been sustaining you all along.

That’s what I mean by travel being clarifying. You discover parts of yourself – and your partner – that you’d forgotten existed.

This time, I’ll try to remember better, and remain connected to all the wonder and amazement of you. Lead me farther, jaan.

—

The title of this piece is taken from Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes“

Advertisement