I’ve seen better days, dripping down your face.  We don’t have to talk, let’s dance. 

– Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

We’re fourteen years in – seven years without kids and seven years with – so it feels like we’re tipping the scale now toward the rest of our lives.  This was a year of cracking-open; a long, gray winter followed by the blooming hope of spring.

In April we sat, eyes sparkling, over an Italian meal, unpacking our dreams like a sigh, so much air held in after too many years playing the steady to other people’s lives.  It was like standing beside an open window in spring, the fresh air wafting over us like Life itself.  Looking ahead, we clasped our hands together and jumped.

Only, it wasn’t quite like that, not really.

It was more like a lot of work to get a house ready to sell while four small kids ran in circles around us.  Then, after the sale, it was waiting and wondering, a rollercoaster of hope and despair as we were chauffeured from house to house in the back seat of our realtor’s car.  

And now it’s still this: Waiting.

But there’s another word that stands out from this past year, which is this one: Together.

Waiting. Together.

See how the one softens, even just a little, when placed beside the other?

Yes, that’s how it’s been.

We’ve been like that couple in the Christmas tale – the one where she sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch and he sells his watch to buy her a comb for her hair.  You were willing to give up the land that made you smile so that I could feel at home and, when that fell through, I was willing to give up the writing and retreat space I so desperately need, just for the joy of seeing you astride one of those tractors you’re always looking at on Craigslist.

But God kept us from foolish sacrifices and here we are still, Waiting Together.

Here we stand, facing forward, hand in hand, looking for that open window, ready to jump again.

In the meantime, though, we don’t have to talk, let’s dance.