I have learned, when Anneke travels, to relax a bit. I only seem to get anxious and hyper the day she returns. While she is gone, I am resigned to the fact that she is there, and I am here and I might as well just chill. Since I have no choice.

But the morning of the day she is to come home, I am high strung and anxious, and a pain to be around I am sure. On the way to the airport I wanted to do something really bad with my hand to a fellow driver who did something really bad to me when I cut him off by mistake. Really, I didn’t see him. Didn’t he know I was on the way to the airport to pick up my baby? Anyhow, I didn’t do the bad thing with my hand and all was well.

So, this is all to say that I have been separated from my partner for almost 3 weeks and next week he will be home. Already I can feel that little motor of excitement rev up inside. I am counting down. How lame. Today is day seven. Fifty-five years old and I am counting down.

Now if you have been following the Friday Blog, you will remember that last week was about our first fight.

I have not been in a relationship worth fighting for in almost nine years. The fact that I finally realized that this one is worth fighting for makes me both excited to see him and run for the hills.

I assume that everyone else in the world just falls into relationship, like it is nothing. Like it is not scary, not in any way tumultuous, and that it doesn’t make them want a guarantee that it won’t hurt. Ever.

Now I know this can’t be, a guarantee. And my friends scoff when I suggest that I want one. They think that I am strong and all that baloney, because I survived and survived well.

But I know the truth. That new relationships ask us to once again to be vulnerable. And the bottom line is that I am chickenhearted.

So, we who have been through the loss of a partner, we get to take new relationship at a pace that works for us. And if that means slower than molasses, well I guess that is what it means.