The Longest Possible Way

"Thank goodness we only have to do this once or twice a year now," I told him, as we were saying goodbye this evening. "Remember how it used to be?"

It's true, we've got so much better at this. Eighteen days apart? We laugh in the face of eighteen days apart, we warriors who've gone thirty, sixty, ninety days without each other. And we've got email now too, and cell phones, and text messages, and Skype, and IMs; even when we're apart, we're hardly apart.

It doesn't make that sinking feeling any easier though, that moment when the stocky shape of the shuttle rounds the corner and the driver pulls up, gets out, and bangs on the glass door of our lobby building---come on! come on!---as we're embracing one last time behind it.

The cats looked dejected. "Do you miss Papa?" I ask sympathetically---moment of truth: our cats have a Mama and a Papa---and they scowl up at me, confused. No, we're just hungry, their scrunched little faces seem to say. Where's the one who feeds us gone? And who's going to change our litter?

*************************************************************

We had an argument last week about why we weren't spending Christmas together. Right in the middle of Union Square, it was, with flustered shoppers and exuberant tourists milling all around us. I wouldn't be surprised if couples have broken up over the stress of holiday shopping together, the "Would your mother like this? No. This? No. This? No," the useless panic of it all. It's not really important, in the end---honestly, can you remember half of what you bought people last year?---but it gets us all afluster anyway, this sudden yearly surge towards consumerism. You think shopping with your significant other will be all cozy cups of hot chocolate, admiring the Macy's window displays arm in arm, offering confident advice in kitchen supply stores. Instead, you end up screaming at each other outside the mall, while the homeless people hit you up for change.

"I wish we were spending it together now," I tell him before he leaves. "I thought you said it would be depressing," he counters. "I didn't say spending it together would be depressing," I reply. "I said it would be depressing to have a Christmas with just two people. You have to understand: the way I was brought up, Christmas was synonymous with going home. I spent seven years at boarding school away from the people I loved, and Christmas was one of the few times that I got to be with my family. It means something to me to spend it the same way, year after year after year. It means everything."

"I understand," he says. "I do."

"You'd better," I say. "I'm still going to be going home for Christmas when I'm forty-five, you know. I'll still be making my poor parents play Santa, convincing them that we need to leave a carrot out on the sideboard for Rudolph. I'm sorry, but I'm a sucker for tradition."

**************************************************************

Once when we said goodbye---I don't know, circa 1999 or so---he said "Bye then. I love you." And I said "how much do you love me?" He paused for a moment and said "From here to Connecticut. That's how much I love you." I pretended to be aghast; we were in upstate New York at the time. Connecticut wasn't that far. "That's not that far!" I told him, "From here to Connecticut isn't that far!"

He smiled. I looked him over, this incredible prize I'd somehow got lucky enough to be awarded. "Well," he said. "The longest possible way."