Five Years
and counting...
"What if I told you that one day you will meet a girl who is unlike anyone else you've known. She will know all the right things to say, what makes you laugh, what turns you on, what drives you wild and best of all, you will do for her exactly what she does for you.
'When will I meet her?'
'Well let's put it this way, she doesn't even exist yet.'"
—Lang Leav
Today, on the last day of January, we arrived back in Sheffield to take up residence in the apartment we moved into on the last day of November. Only the first two weeks of those two months were spent here, the next six weeks were spent in hospital (me) and temporary accommodation in west London (two different places for me, and four different places for Rayna and the girls). I wrote all about that in my bulletin In Sickness and in Health which I'm going to say counts as my December newsletter.
It's good to be home, and finally off the daily intravenous anti-biotics. My face hasn't completely healed, but it's getting there. I simply accept this as a different look today, another transition in my personal journey from youth and beauty to old age and...another form of beauty.
Tomorrow Rayna and I celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary. It seems a small slice of time given the depth of our love and commitment, the nurturing of two children, and the various challenges we've encountered, both individually and as a couple. For both of us it has been a time of reinvention, a becoming.
As many of you know, Rayna and I are separated by a wide age gap. Thirty-two years to be precise. That's more years difference than Rayna has been alive. And yet, never before in my long, rambling, alternately triumphal and dysfunctional life have I encountered anyone I feel so wholly connected with. Lang Leav captures the feeling well in the quote above. But it's more than that. Rayna and I collided in our search for faith, our dreams of a better self, neither one seeking a partner we found on the day we met that we were engulfed by something inexplicable that compelled us towards one another. Saying goodbye after that first, awkward, rather unorthodox meeting was just never an option. There was glue.
In hospital I had a chance to introspect, to be still, and silent for much of the time. I came to know just how much I love Rayna, and need her in my life to be fully me. And at the same time I felt no dependency. Only freedom. I saw how we had cultivated a relationship of release, where trust flows like healthy blood through every vein, into every capillary. And I wondered how I came to be so blessed. Is this grace, or just simple effort: a desire to do the footwork, and a willingness to reflect? Surely some combination of both. We both arrived in Sheffield today with a sense of renewal. A new chapter begins.
January News
Not much more to say about January. Every day it was back and forth to the hospital for my treatment. I found time and energy to do three days of teaching. And I planned a few workshops which you'll see listed below. Mostly our time as a family was spent going stir-crazy in our tiny airbnb studio flat, or bursting out to Gunnersbury park. And now we're home.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy "The great grey beast, February"
Tobias
January Writing
Very little writing this month. Just In Sickness and in Health and a few scribbled notes. I hope to be writing more again over the coming months.31st January 2018, 11.59 pm