Bill comes home today!

Sometimes, it seems as though I've spent my life in perpetual teen-hood, sitting by the phone, waiting for my boyfriend to call. Not an admirable way to spend a life, but there it is--I do wait for that call that says he's coming home.

We've had an interesting life, an unusual one. Most couples see each other daily, but briefly. We go long stretches without communication, and long months of constant togetherness. There were times (before email & cell phones) when we didn't hear from each other for as much as 17 weeks (when the U.S.S.R. broke up in the 1990s), when the only way to get word out was a letter hand-carried by someone headed back to the states, to be mailed upon arriving at an American airport. Now, at least, we talk or email almost daily.

People who have "normal" lives find this odd, and I have to say it was tough on all of us when the kids were little and Bill was gone. At times I felt that I was living two different lives, one where I was a devoted wife, and the other where I was a single parent. Over the years I raged about it, swore that it couldn't continue, that somehow it had to change. Then one day, I just embraced it, even started to enjoy it. Who else got to have all the benefits of marriage AND a life of one's own, simultaneously or sequentially? The very nature of our separations made it possible to reinvent our relationship on a constant rotating basis. We rarely got bored or restless with each other because we had to start over learning about each other, every time he came home.

In a way, we devised a "new-normal" for the parameters of our relationship with each other. This coming-and-going lifestyle became the norm and became familiar for us. It was still always sad when he left to go to work, and always happy when he returned, but it worked for us in some strange way. Maybe I'm more prepared for changes than I suspected, because of it.

So, home again for Bill, at least for a few more days before he has to go again. This makes me happy.