#13: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 13

We spoke by phone just as soon as possible, less than twenty four hours after the jet’s dangling rubber tyres slapped the tarmac at Dulles airport. Once again, it was a huge relief to hear Erin’s voice. We reaffirmed that although living in different countries, we would be committed to each other. That somehow, sometime we would be together.

It was so good to be on the same page.

The telephone quickly became our life-blood. Inevitably email also came into play as a quick way to reach out, to send a reminder to the other that we were thinking of or missing them – and an easy way to keep the flow of communication from falling prey to inconsistency. Within the next four weeks we had each written a letter to the other. One remained the grand total, though – a sign of the technological times. But my letter, as did Erin’s, was brimming with emotion, hope and remembrances of our brief yet seemingly eternal time together in Canberra.

We got into a lovely habit of telephoning each other at all hours. My chunky telephone – I now realise to be out-dated – would ring in the smallest of hours and before I seemed even fully conscious, I’d stick an excited arm out of bed and answer it. I couldn’t wait to get to work to see an email from Erin. Then, I couldn’t wait to be home to receive another phone call from her. When I wasn’t receiving calls or emails from Erin, I was calling or emailing her myself. It all happened around the clock, and time to us was irrelevant.

#12: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 12

Over the course of a month, Erin and I met up regularly before we reached that dreaded day. The day Erin’s study came to an end and she had to return home to the US. We shared a bitter-sweet last dinner together at Belluci’s in Manuka. At the table, after what we both agreed to be the best fried calamari we’d ever singularly eaten, I presented Erin with a black and white card depicting an elegant, romantic couple on the front. I covered almost every square inch of the inside of that card with my thoughts and emotions. Part of what I wrote expressed my sorrow for her having to leave: “…it doesn’t feel right because our flower was just starting to bloom…”

But I ended my blue-inked smothering with a borrowed quote: “The fulfilment in life lies in the beauty of the future”, because I wanted to leave Erin with a positive feeling, and for her to realise I didn’t believe that her leaving spelt the end for us.

After sips of wine and with moistened eyes, Erin then reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a mini-wad of handwritten notes on faint-ruled note paper in tatty condition. She handed me the little wad. I unfolded it and read it silently, filling up with emotions. Her words were different to mine. But the two of us had said exactly the same thing to one another. Although neither of us actually used the word or phrase itself, this was love, and we now couldn’t bear the coming separation and distance that would soon engulf us.

By the time Erin was on the plane and in the air the next day, I was in bed. Fully awake. Couldn’t sleep. Erin’s scent lingered on the spare pillow and on my bed sheets. I didn’t wash the bed linen until a week and a half later for fear of washing her away from my life completely. I pictured her high up in the sky sitting in her metal vessel. The further away the jumbo jet stole her, the emptier I became but simultaneously our experience together gained more definition and prominence.

How could we ever make this work? You can’t let this go.