Probably the worst part of the last month and a half to two months was that for various reasons my husband had to be at new house while I was in Colorado.

It's not that I'm insecure in our relationship, or that I thought anything would break from being apart, but there was a terrifying, "broken" feeling, like I'd just been sliced in half.

I'd like to say that's just habit, because we've been married 36 years, but I've never done particularly well when Dan is gone for even a few days. And honestly, from the way he looked when I got here, nothing was particularly all right at this end too. In fact, the last time I was gone more than two weeks, he not only completely rearranged the house, but the minute I came through the door, I was told to "never do that to me again." At the time we were married 1 year. (I went back for degree-finalizing reasons, for a month and a half.)

The title of this post is from a quote about marriage, and somewhere I have a mostly written novel about a woman who marries an elf Lord which I used the title for, which is stupid, since of course it's fantasy. Anyway, I might have to revisit that sometime next year.

Because marriage is a mystery and very strange. You go from being two to being one. This doesn't mean you develop a mind meld, of course. Dan and I are very similar in conclusions, very different in methods, and it sometimes -- in the rare times we really disagree -- sparks fly like you wouldn't believe it.

It is more that your sense of self goes from being one to being two. An entity of two.

This means you acquire a whole lot of new interests, and do things you might never have had any interest in, otherwise, and also that you learn and grow in ways otherwise unknown.

The fun part is this happens again with kids, but more so. At least for me, having the kids was almost a symbiotic relationship. For the first three years of their lives I LITERALLY could "Feel" what they were doing and where they were. This diminished year by year, but never fully went away.

We went from being a couple to being four. New interests were discovered, like older son's weird fascination with elephants was communicable. Also, younger son's very odd music tastes seem to be viral. And we took interest in things we'd otherwise never care about.

Now the process is reversing as the now adult sons cut lose. We're going from being four to being two. We're learning who we were, reaching back to before we had them, and what has changed.

And that's fine, as long as we are together.

I know in the way of life and mortality someday one of us will have to learn to be one. Maybe. I'm still hoping for that "instantly at the same time."

In any case, I intuit that will be far harder than letting the boys fly.

And I don't know why or what magic this is. But there is magic there. And a mystery.