This afternoon, Maria is taking me to the airport, we are going to be apart for a few days. It isn’t the first time we’ve been separated, I’ve taken many trips by myself and so has she, but there is always a sting and ache about our parting. On the eve of this trip, I see more clearly than ever how much we both have changed since we came together in that bleak and cold winter of 2008, both of us broken, alone and terrified.

I remember when we first parted, my middle-of-the-night phone calls to me as I lay crying or vomiting on bathroom floors in distance cities, she always told me to breathe, breathe, breathe. I remember calling her on those trips and she would be falling apart, drinking wine, feeling so achingly alone. I don’t like leaving Maria, but this trip brings so clearly to the fore what has changed since then. When I used to leave, Maria was never quite sure what to do with herself, she avoided friendships, she didn’t go out, she would read her books late into the night until she fell asleep. She had just started up her art, but had no one to sell it to.

At lunch we were laughing about her life now. I pointed out to her that she has what the philosophers and Buddhists call a life “in balance.” She has a lot of work to do – her art business is busy and growing, she has a backlist of things to make for people. She has many friends – she is booked up already through half the weekend – dinners, walks, lunches, excursions. She has a farm to run by herself, dogs to walk, a three-legged cat to care for, donkeys to brush and feed, manure to shovel out of the barn. And she has love, something we both wanted to badly.

And she is safe and feels safe – we all feel safe with Frieda on the job, the Secret Service couldn’t do better. Maria has been alone for much of her life, as I have, neither of us has any trouble with it.

We both acknowledged while I was packing that we will surely miss one another, but we are no longer terrified of being apart, no longer living in panic and loneliness. She agreed that the wonderful thing about this trip is that she can see so clearly how her own life has evolved, it is rich in work, friends, animals, meaningful tasks. Saturday, she goes to the dump by herself.

I think of love as a never-ending series of partings and coming together. There are always separations, partings, cold spaces and misunderstandings. Where love lives, there is always a coming together, both a renewal and affirmation, the partings are never too long or too deep, the cold spaces short-lived.

I confessed to Maria that I called some our friends and told them I was going away and asked them to keep an eye on her – I knew this would tick her off but I wanted to be  honest, we are always honest with each other. The people I called all laughed at me. Don’t worry about Maria, they said, she can sure take care of herself. I know that, I see that every day, but whenever I travel, I hear those echoes of loneliness and despair.

There is a bittersweetness, I know, about my love for Maria. I am older than she is, and the odds are good that we will part long before either of us is ready. I know that, even if she does not yet know that. Partings have special meanings for me, so does our time together. There is no greater champion of love than a lonely and loveless life.

I went out and bought a present or two and hid them in the house, she will find them as she goes about her business and perhaps think of me and know that I am thinking of her.

It is good in any relationship to leave once in awhile, I look forward to sleeping late, reading a lot, seeing a new place,  teaching my memoir class. There is something sweet about aloneness for me, it is my natural gear, my default position. I will text and call Maria and lot and when I get lonely, I will think back on those echoes and smile at her long and hard and painful pursuit of a life worth living, I perhaps am the only person who knows what she paid for it, she does not speak of it. Maria has earned every second of her balanced life,  and I am so happy to be coming home to something I miss and appreciate so much. The only thing worse than missing someone is not having anyone to miss.

And the best thing about this trip is this: when I call her up, she will most likely be out with her friends, rushing to fill orders, or out brushing donkeys. Maybe I’ll text her.