you can't go home again

i still find myself, from time to time, with (non-hostile) feelings for my ex. i don't talk about them much--they weird me out as much as i'm sure they would others--but there's frequently a pause in our in-person conversations these days where remaining together in conversation would be the most natural subsequence, though we've conditioned ourselves through much painful history never to countenance it, let alone allow it. nope, all business, all the time, and not one minute more than necessary. even so, it really gives a guy the serious willies to be driving over to the homestead with #2's baggage in the morning, knowing that the ex will not yet have left for work, (even though all the kids will have gone), and, more than that, knows that you're coming.

it's also fascinating to see the road not taken right there in front of you. (i wonder if she's as confident in her choices looking at me as i am looking at her?) the life that's shared through children is a powerful thing, and i'm thinking, in a few hours' hindsight, that it's that, more than anything else, that takes ones breath away.

what arrived in breath's place this morning for me was a very clear emotion of dearly cherishing my own life, now that i've recovered some not small part of it, and also what has grown in into that place over the past few years. the sense of missing what you actually have is an extremely curious feeling, coincident as it may be in the face of what you (purposefully) have not.

i think that's one of those secrets of life, right there.

can't wait to share it with whom it matters.