Happy to Be Where I Am

Change happens constantly and unperceptively. I and everyone around me are constantly changing. I am changed by almost every contact I have in life. I learn more about myself with every day that goes by. I am not the same person today that I was yesterday. Just today alone I had breakfast with Ralph, a walk with 2 friends, ran errands that included purchasing toys for my daycare. I am not who I was when I got up this morning because of those conversations, decisions made and the voice in my head that is constantly questioning, observing and evaluating. I know this. But I am still surprised when I see it in someone else. Over the past few months something or someone has changed Ralph in new and wonderful ways. Perhaps it was so gradual that I didn't perceive it until it slapped me in the face. Looking back, I am so glad that he and I have stayed in relationship so that I was blessed to see and appreciate this seemingly new him. We have dinner/lunch/breakfast together once a week and the conversation is good. Yes, it is a conversation. We listen to one another and share our hopes and dreams for the future. We speak openly of our love of family, our children and grandchildren, and the work that we are about. When this all began I believed that he was responding to my vulnerability entering into a new business. But perhaps I was completely wrong about that and it was actually that he was revealing his own vulnerability to me and praying that I would protect it. The two of us have been through a lot together and separately. It hasn't been an easy journey but today we are lucky enough to call each other friends. Our relationship has been changed by so many things along the way. Marriage, separation, divorce, followed by years and years of finding our place in one another's lives. He was the one that believed in me more than anyone else when I left the classroom. He was the one that promised me no matter what happened, my mortgage and bills would be paid. He knows me better than anyone else in the world. It is good that through the years we have changed day by day and have come to be in this place in time; two people who understand and respect the other in ways that no one else can.