Welcome, 2023!

(Though I prefer even-numbered years, I'm willing to suffer through)

We welcomed the New Year with a walk, and then we enjoyed pizza and he packed the car and headed to Florida for a month. Normally, he’d be gone for four or more months, to a condo he bought after he retired. This time, a dental appointment will bring him back for a brief sojourn.

That condo is the culmination of years of planning and dreaming and when the right one came on the market, he jumped — uncharacteristically quickly, as he usually savors his decisions before swallowing them. I was a little surprised at the speed with which he acted, but I get it. I do. He’s retired and though he’s a Hartford native, he hates the cold, so after every holiday season, he joins a flock of snowbirds enjoying the sand and sun. I fly down to visit, but I’m still working and frankly? I don’t think I could live long-term in a one-season world.

How do I feel about his leave-taking? Torn. I would never say, “No, you can’t leave me here in the cold and dark” because that’s not how this marriage works and I actually like winter and snow and struggling to get places and unexpected cancellations due to weather. I love cold nights and warm beds and oatmeal for breakfast, and, well, general weather-related suffering so that I feel as if I’ve earned the glorious springs here in New England, which are overshadowed by the glorious falls. (Tourists? If you love trees that look like they are on fire in October, you’ll love our Mays, when ancient gardens unveil themselves and show off.)

New Englanders earn their spring by slogging through weeks and weeks of what will feel, come March, like eternal winter.

Of course I miss him, but one of my issues with a previous marriage was that there was no space between us, and it felt at times as if we were attached at the hip. This should not be taken as a comment on the man, but it should say a great deal about me.

But now? Ha, ha, ha. The joke’s on me. I am now married to someone who is 21 hours away by car for weeks on end, and no matter how I slice things, I cannot feel that we are attached at the hip. We are, in fact, in different worlds.

I took the above photo with his phone a few days before he left. I sent it to my son, who was visiting his father, to show him how foggy it was here in Connecticut. I also wanted to assure him that these birds had called a meeting and they voted and he was welcome to come home and bring the grandkids back with him. I will send this to my husband in a few weeks, as a reminder. Enjoy the sand. Enjoy the sun. The seagulls and I voted. Come home.