We drove to Duluth today, separately, the way we’ve been living our lives.
That sounds cryptic and moody, but we were meeting with a divorce mediator, so, yeah, why not?
Except it wasn’t.
It wasn’t terrible or dreadful. It was new and a bit strange, but positive and not adversarial at all. It was a confirmation that I’d done my work gathering information and imagining scenarios like Christmas and summer vacation and back to school shopping.
Of course it went well, and of course it went so differently than I’d hoped, but I showed up, not trying to be too much or too little; not forcing conversation but not sealing the vault of my heart and mind so as to Do It Right.
And he showed up in ways I hadn’t expected and ways that were exactly as I’d expected, and none of it had to mean anything about me, about hope, about joy or plans for the future. He could show up and I could be my own complete universe, and we could, for an hour and fifteen minutes at least, figure out the orbits through which we pass, without collision.
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