And Then There Are Two

So here we are. Together again. I won’t ask you how the years have treated you. I know. I remember that moment all those years ago, how your breath caught at the sight of what they had just put into your arms, and your whole world contracted in an instant until it was shrink-wrapped around this tiny bundle with a hospital identification band around its ankle. It’s as if you’d never exhaled again, love having kept you at the edge of your seat in a simmering, 16-year panic attack. At the cinema, in restaurants, on airplanes and the sofa at home, we have sat apart since, bookending precious cargo. But now, the middle seat has been vacated, as we discover we’ve become part-timers in a world where once we were everything. And so here we are. The couple-turned-trio-turned-couple. It will take some getting used to, this new/old life, this unaccustomed roomy feeling that seems to have crept up on us without warning. But a 16-year habit dies hard. Even as we’re catching up, finally reunited after a long separation, comparing what we remember of each other with what we now see, you’re looking out of the corner of your mind’s eye, permanently distracted. Breathing a sigh of relief, and a sigh. As indeed, I must be too.