I'm No Good at Goodbye...

I met my husband on an airplane in December of 1992. You heard that right. We were seat mates on a flight from Philly to Indy for Christmas break, both of us traveling home to see family. But the story doesn’t end there. We talked the whole way and I asked the cute guy next to me if he wanted to meet for drinks at some point during the week but he didn’t take me up on the offer. To this day he reminds me that he’s shy (and I’m not) and he didn’t want to get stood up. We didn't exchange numbers (I'm not sure why but I didn't own a cell phone back then. Remember the bag brick? He got me one that January!) I chalked our meeting up to happenstance and remember telling my folks about the guy I met on the plane. But the story doesn’t end there.

A week later I stepped on a plane at the Indianapolis International airport and was looking for my seat when I saw someone waving me down. You know that ‘both arms in the air, I’m here, I’m here’ wave that’s hard to miss? It was that cute boy. Yep. We were on the same flight back to Philly. I know what you’re thinking. What are the odds? I actually looked it up once and at the time, the odds were less than .0001% that you’d meet your spouse on an airplane. You think I would’ve been smart enough to know that given I met my husband on an airplane twice, airplanes would become part of our story, right? Nope. Not this girl.

I never thought about airplanes much beyond our story but now people coming and going has become the backdrop of my life and I feel a little guilty saying that I hate airports but I do. I guess what I really mean is that I hate return trips.

I want everyone to come and stay because I’m sick of telling all the people I love goodbye in a cold, sterile environment with strangers staring at me while I cry and drag out my ‘until next time’ speech. #StupidAirports #MissMyPeeps

Back Home Again...

The kiddo is flying back to Indiana today from a quick visit and the pang in my heart is overwhelming. This kid makes everything better when he’s in the room and I miss him fiercely. I’d planned for a sixty-four mile distance between us and ended up with five hundred and thirty six. I don’t love math but even I know that’s quite a difference.

If I were an hour away instead of ten, I know there’d be the occasional dinner in the middle of the week, drop-ins to the house for whatever once in a while, weekend visits to see the puppies now and then, and meet-ups halfway in between for coffee on the tough days.

Instead we have airline reservations, drawn out goodbyes where I try not to cry and he smiles and waits patiently for me to steal just one more hug, triple checks that he hasn’t forgotten anything since he won't be back for months at a time, wishes that we’d added another day to his stay, and drives to the airport that go way too quickly although traffic is often stopped.

I’m always surprised that while thirty-one years separate us, when we share the stories of our days in the life with one another, his perspective regarding whatever is going on--with himself or his friends, with me, his dad, our families, the world… All I can say is that he never ceases to amaze me and he teaches me something every time we’re together.

This kid is the absolute best part of us. The smartest, funniest, truest version of us and I adore him.

I’ll survive these next few months watching him grow and flourish, cheering from the sidelines because that’s the job. And I’ll continue to try to live my best life when we can’t be together, because that’s also part of the job. But I make no promise about counting down the days until we can be together again. #HomeIsWhereTheMomIs #buehlerlife