Spacman Visit (photo blog)

I've had to turn off the cellular device and get the kids settled for the evening, which entailed skipping the gym (again) to work late and go to the grocery with my 16 year old daughter... a Leo whose demands grow in intensity when stressed.  She's a good kid, don't get me wrong.  I'm just tired and frazzled, myself.  That's why I did what needed done tonight, cut what could be cut, and am doing what *I* need for myself right now... writing.

Last night had that goal, too.  And although I did write, it was not finished in that I have photos to add to it.  Those were on my cell phone, and transferring them to the PC and finishing off that blog was going to take more attention and energy than I had left for it.  But tonight, I have the time, if not the privacy ...as my daughter trudges through my bedroom to the back way of the house for the umpteenth time.  Writing is difficult when there isn't enough focus allowed to dig deep and listen to what wants to bubble up to the surface.  There's a story my daughter has just finished telling me, about her boyfriend's mother starting chemo today.  It kinda helps keep things in proper perspective, doesn't it? Anything could happen at any moment.  What you next hear may change your life forever.  It's that kind of thing that her boyfriend's mother is living right now.  Of course, I want to hear how she's doing, what's going on with her treatment, how she's faring, how her kids (she's a single mom) are faring.  So many aspects to being mother, a single mother.  You're everything to them, and therefore you have less to give to yourself.  I'm feeling that burn a lot lately.  But... that's mostly because I am also feeling the urge to build into the next phase of my life... a life where I choose for me.  One of those choices... is spaceman.  And that brings me to his visit this weekend... a much cheerier subject, I promise. :)

I bring you... *drum roll*
last night's Spaceman Visit blog!!! :P

I have been awaiting my chance to do so... but also giving it time to percolate a bit, to come into a post-merridian-and-spaceman-weekend perspective.  It's gelled enough to finally write.

But where to start???

Spending time with spaceman this weekend was like flowering trees having sensed spring and begun to bud.  A fuller picture of a man's life and personality (at least as equally nervous as your own soul) is standing before you, looking in  your eyes, noticing everything.... as I return the same gaze.  

This trip was "the next step" for us.  And please don't ask us yet what the next, next-step is... we are still feeling our way around to that... while comfortable with not knowing, and watching for synchronicities.  So, his visiting me was our most recent next step.  And what a freaking awesome weekend, too!

The "shed garden".  It was fallow and full of dead plants. But now it's full of seeds.

Did you feel the weather this past weekend???  We were BAREFOOT in my backyard, for a couple hours. We cleared out a fallow garden and planted the first seeds of the spring pre-season (planted cold-hardy varieties).  This guy gardens like a pro and, like me, enjoys it.  

I had on a tank top and shorts at other times while standing out on the back deck.  I wore my flip flops out gallivanting around the area for the day.  It was beautiful weather.  And to think, a month out the forecast already predicted to be warm, but super rainy.  But somehow by the actual weekend, it turned out to be the most decidedly mid-spring feeling day, incredible.

And no clouds, no clouds for two days... and when I remembered that I'd put on my "Things to Do with Bob" list: Look at stars with telescope...  well, I snagged it from the garage and pulled spaceman out back... O.M.G. 

spaceman sighting up.. was it the gas giant or Orion's belt?  No. Sirius.  We also looked at the Seven Sisters, with the Pleiades.  Oh! and Jupiter and it's moons! I'm sure I'm forgetting more.

 Immediately he went into "work the telescope" mode, all the while telling me stories of what's where in the sky and tying planets and stars to alien races... he became this little kid in a grown man's body, totally comfortable and enthralled.  Spaceman really is spaceman, still.  I fell in love with him back then and I am in love with him now.  So, so many years between... never lost, just percolating.  

Headed home again, westward

    I took him around town, way around, hours at a time... pulling over, taking pictures, showing him many of the places I have been out taking photos for months and months now. 

"The Dam Parking Lot" ~Taylorsville Dam

Thinking we missed the grand sunset at the dam, stopping by anyway, getting lost in discussion, and then finding rays striving to shine at the last possible stretch in the dregs of the sunset.  

Along the Great Miami River in Downtown Dayton

One rendezvous took us through a few historical home sections of the greater city, parts I had never seen (and didn't get any pictures of).  The next day we found ourselves in a nearly celebratory town with street musicians and impromptu drummers... every store bustling.  He bought me the deepest blue lapis lazuli to add to my larger stone collection.  (I want a large stone for each chakra.) 

Clifton Mill

Impromptu ideas found us near river rapids beneath a large historical mill house... a covered bridge over a bike path... tiny mailboxes all in a row... the sun streaking across the the grass in giant ever-widening stripes.  

a fence at Clifton Mill

We watched the latest episode of Cosmic Disclosure together, a show we both follow closely.  On our long escapades around town, I sang (Nahko of course).  I sang because I wanted him to remember me like this when he goes back home.... because it's me, and because of all the times I had imagined doing just that, wishing he was there with me in all those leading-up moments.  

He brought along his fishing lures in their see-through tacklebox, each hand-tied, tiny rows of various colored, progressively larger flies.  He ties them himself and knows exactly when it's best to use each one.  One day, he's going to teach me to fly fish in the streams of Virginia.

A little park near Clifton

He met my kids.
They got along.

Very cool.

And... spaceman and I understand and know much more about each other than we ever have before.  We are watching how our growing relationship affects one another's growth-seeking-being, and are in awe of it.

It's good.  It's not perfect, nothing ever is.  Accepting someone thoroughly means you will find bits of one another that trigger.  But allowing the other to be as they are... and working through the ones that trigger... that is real caring.  It's a real relationship built on respect and that sweet summer-feeling love.

at Clifton Mill

And yowzers, boy did I ever prepare for this visit!  And then... I got sick 2 days before he was due to arrive.  But I did all the things I know can kick a cold's butt to the curb, and did.  It was mostly gone by the time he got here and finished healing up after the next day.  

My cold, the weather, it all just cleared up in time, like the universe was conspiring just for us.

Almost Time!

It’s almost time.  In four days’ time, spaceman will be knocking on my front door.  We have been conversing over the phone quite a bit lately.  Every time we talk I’m initially nervous, but it just takes off.  Last night we spoke for 3 hours.  That’s how it is with us.  We talk and talk and talk, and, well you know… we talk a LOT. 

It’s got to be incredibly sappy for me to say this, but I love this man with all my heart and soul.  He’s incredibly dreamy to me, and I cannot wait to have him on my doorstep Friday. 

A friend tagged me on an article on Facebook, and I just have to share here, because sharing on FB… well, people don’t care to hear how incredibly in love you are.  Why are people uncomfortable with declarations of affection???  (a topic for a different day)

The Goddess Spoke of Love
by Ara

“My daughter, love someone that longs to be open with you to you in all the ways you deserve to be opened wide, not just purely physically.” The Goddess said. “Someone who opens your mind, body, soul and heart right into the depths of your being and opens theirs to flow right back with yours.

http://thegoddesscircle.net/the-goddess-spoke-of-love/

That’s exactly what we have and so much more.  The words that flow out of his mouth and into my ears delight me.  How can this be, this man who reflects so much of me?  How did we get so lucky to have met and met again?  Just look at all the potential we had in the beginning, which was somehow untimely and yet, looking back, planted the most wonderful seed in both our lives. 

Growing up, my parents had a tulip tree in our back yard.  It was just another tree, one that leaned dangerously in towards the house.  When I looked at it, I wondered when a storm might blow it down and crash through the roof.  But it never did.  Year after year that tree just existed there in its everyday lush green show.  Years went by and my siblings and I grew older.  Then one spring, tulip flowers began to appear in the canopy, just a few the first year, then ever more each season.  When they first came, my mom was elated!  She pointed them out and told us how long she had been waiting for those flowers.  It turns out it takes 10 years for a tulip tree to bloom, 10 whole years from seed to maturity.  That’s how spaceman and I have been. 

In December of 2004, we met on an online dating site.  Like it is now, it was in the beginning… we could not get enough of one another.  We connected on so many levels and both slipped into that precious state we call love.  It was long distance then, as it is now.  Our first visit in person was just incredible, a melding I cannot describe with words.  The whole weekend was like that.  And home again he went, back to Virginia to his Appalachian home.  And although the next visit we had with one another saw our demise as a couple, it was never due to lack of love, never.  I still have the charcoal drawing he made me that day, such love in that parting gift, such tenderness, acceptance and vision.  We parted then, but we never lost touch.  In many ways, we continued cherishing one another through the years, through emails filled with the most loving of friendships. We held each other in the highest esteem, allowing whoever and whatever came into and out of each of our lives to be without need to shape it.  Neither one of us had any idea that there was yet a future for us in exactly the way we had once dreamed.  We thought that particular ship had sailed.  Our love caramelized into the sweetest of friendships, held dear year after year, and that was enough.

And yet here we are again!  In four days he will be on my doorstep for the second time, and I cannot wait to feel his embrace.  I cannot wait to look him in the eyes and tell him all over again, I love you, I love you, I love you. 

I joked with him once, I said, “I don’t know how we are ever going to pick an anniversary date.  We’ve never had any particular day that was ‘the’ day ‘we’ started.”  But if I had to pick one, this go-round, I would say Halloween.  Halloween weekend was when things turned definitively into a chosen choice, for the both of us, each our own way.  So, if I use that date, we are 3 ½ months into the mush, the gush, the love goo.  Which means… we are still in the “honeymoon period”… good timing, very good timing. :D  Friday is only 4 days away!