The Doldrums

I told him I was feeling “yellow light” about our relationship. I expressed openly that I felt he was running too far ahead in his mind, too fast. I feared he was picturing me with a ring on my finger in the first month! Now it has been three months and I feel as if our relationship has not progressed at all. He still barely touches me, and I too take his queue and barely feel comfortable touching him. We share about our lives and write lovely prose to one another daily.. but I don’t sense any emotional depth developing. He feels like a really good friend. We see each other just about once a week. Maybe two times in a weekend and we sit across tables at restaurants and talk. He tells me he misses me via text and sometimes I think.. I just don’t miss him.

A month ago I had sent him an early e-mail joking about showing up unannounced at his apartment and how I pictured him hunched over his computer fast at work, with his mother’s recipe for cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. As if he was waiting for me, hoping I’d show up. That night when we’d planned to hang out, I showed up at his apt. and there were cinnamon rolls baking in the oven.

On Valentines Day, I was in Scotland, Edinburgh, to be exact, visiting a friend. This would have been the very first Valentine’s Day that I would actually have a valentine and possibly a date. He made me the sweetest hand typed valentine encased in the envelope of a “Modern Love” by David Bowie 45 record. He gave it to me before I left on my trip. Once the 14^th of February arrived, so did a bouquet of deep red tulips.. IN SCOTLAND!

On my return from this trip across the sea, arriving at Newark airport, looking quite a fright after a very early, very long flight, I dizzily exited the terminal looking for the air Tran only to find him standing there with a sign, with my name on it, waiting to greet me and take me home.

It is now almost a month later and so far from his sweet attempts at showing his affection. I thought we were unmoored, in a good way, detached from the harbor prepared to let the current take us away. Maybe we hit stagnant waters; maybe we drifted into the unseen doldrums. I am seeing him tonight, after not seeing him for a week and next week he is away on business. I am curious to see if my affection is enflamed by his absence or if this slow stream screeches to a halt. Only God knows the path of the currents.