The Sweetest Ache

Six days.

Even with doubt coloring a few hours, even with fear and uncertainty making an undercurrent here, there, coloring a few moments before subsiding, it was six incredible days of...what? What did we do, really, that was so remarkable?

Ah.

We met.

We loved.

We gave and received, freely, of ourselves.

That is remarkable. Each moment was an honest moment, without secrets, without lies, without shame.

Even the quiet minutes when I was writing while he spoke on the phone, when he tapped away at the computer while I read or stretched or simply watched him until he turned, saw me, and smiled, even these simple things were rich and deep.

Leaving may have been the most difficult thing I've done in a long while. I missed my son, of course...what mother wouldn't?..and wanted to come home to him, but I missed, too, Someone, even before leaving him behind to journey home.

Someone whose touch quieted the voice in my head, so angry, so derogatory, so bitter. Someone whose laugh lifted...lifts...my heart and sets it soaring. Someone with beautiful, tender, smiling, intense eyes and gentle, loving hands that caress so sweetly they make me shiver.

I have often told my son that there is an invisible line from his heart to mine, one that will never break, one that connects us no matter where we are or what we are doing. I tell him that I am always loving him.

I feel much the same about Someone. Driving away yesterday morning, leaving him behind, was painful. I ached. I felt a soreness in my heart where he is so newly rooted as the connection between us began to stretch.

Mile after mile, I felt it pulling me back, back to where I'd been, even as I was drawn forward, home to my son.

I wondered...if I kept driving, would this new connection accommodate? Or would it, so new and fragile, so tenuous, snap?

It's there, yet. It thrums. I feel him, Someone, there, rooting deeper, establishing himself, creating his space. My home isn't quite home, any more...it's missing something...Someone...

It is the sweetest ache, this absence, this presence, this want, this need...this Love...