The Chaos and The Calm – before the Storm

Marco’s October.  Chopping wood for the winter…cleaning out the central vac…changing the filters for the air exchanger…making notes, notes, notes, notes, notes…don’t forget this…don’t forget that…remember to do this…remember to do that…what if this happens…what if that happens…when you get the oil changed in the spring, remember to ask the mechanic to…the cats need to see the vet in January…I put that light on a timer…if the power goes out the heater in the sunroom shuts off and the plants will freeze…

It’s endless.  And well-meant.  It’s necessary.  That being said, it causes my breath to catch, that panicked feeling in the pit of my stomach to return, my head to spin and the tears to well.  This is all an important part of this exciting and terrifying process of being apart for the next 24 long months.  Phew, I just can’t bring myself to say what it really is, it’s TWO YEARS…somehow, 24 months is more manageable. Silly, yes, but a blog is about being honest, not about what people might think of me so honesty is what you’ll get.

Marco and I are great, and I really mean that.  I feel we’re more connected than we’ve been in a long time, we seem to have our priorities in place and each day it seems we appreciate each other in a way that we haven’t for awhile.  It’s because we know what we’ll miss, we know that’s we’re both making a sacrifice for the good of our family, our relationship, ourselves.  One thing that we both have learned in the past 28 years that we’ve been together is to appreciate where we are and what we have.  We traveled a lot – we met in Halifax, moved to Vancouver, then to the Netherlands, then to Winnipeg, to Saskatoon, finally ending back in Winnipeg.  What we discovered very quickly was that wherever we were, whatever we were doing, there were things that we would miss when our lives took us down another road.  Just recently, we bought a book of Winnipeg walks and decided to re-discover the city we’d lived in for the past 13 years.  What an amazing city we live in and there are so many things we still have yet to discover.  That’s true of everything we’ve done and hopefully everything we will do in the future.  And armed with that knowledge, we will approach the next two years with the same open minds and excitement, not only about Australia, but about our own relationship.  There is so much yet to discover and as sad as I am sometimes, I can barely contain the excitement I have of new things to come.  Every day, my good friends and my family, as well as people I really know only superficially, stop me to tell me that whatever we need while Marco is away, they are there for us.  That fills me with such a sense of well-being.

I know for our kids, Casimir and Marieke, there is also apprehension.  Marieke, because while she’s living at home right now, she knows that when Marco returns in two years, she will likely be living in the Netherlands working on her Master’s degree in Art History.  She knows that life is changing in ways that she may not feel quite ready for.  Casimir is living with his girlfriend Larissa, and they are excited about their future as well, but Casimir’s music career may very well be firmly launched in a way it has not yet been, by the time Marco gets home and I think he feels the sense of loss at the idea of Marco being away as well.  They may not be baby steps Marco will be missing, but both our kids are at very crucial and life-changing times in their lives and Marco won’t be as near to them while these changes take place as we would all like.

I have moments when I feel a bit ashamed for even feeling sad and scared, because I know how lucky I am, what a great and privileged life I lead.  Seriously, I wonder, how can I feel this way when I know that I have so much to be thankful for.  I have a great family, Marco will get to do his science again, we’ll have the chance to travel together, maybe the kids will get to visit Australia.  When I think about these things I envision my Hummingbird dream again and I feel this tremendous peaceful blanket cover me.  At that moment, I know that it’s going to be okay.  Actually, it’s going to be more than okay, it’s going to be amazing.