When David and I began our long-distance romance in March of 1996, neither of imagined that our future would knit us and our lives ever more closely together.  Like vines that learn to grow around each other, we have brought each other new people, pleasures, passions, and processes for dealing with conflict, and we have  grown closer as the years have passed. Perhaps the most astonishing thing that we have brought to each other, or a gift that has been bestowed upon us, is an increasingly accurate psychic awareness of how and where each other may be at any moment in time.

Waiting for guests, 2002

Waiting for guests, 2002

Yesterday David awoke from an afternoon nap before my car turned into our condo development. Luke the bichon used to do that – show awareness when one of our cars had entered some nearby vicinity, long before the hum of the garage door opening could be heard or sensed.  Perhaps the time of our courtship prepared us to dream the same dreams, come up with the same words simultaneously, anticipate each other’s desire to get a frozen yogurt cone or watch a sunset.  David now knows when I an yearning to go to the ocean before I say a word about it; I know when he is troubled and trying not to tell me.  If I go into that psychic space, I can usually come up with an image that clues me in to what is on his mind.  This morning, it was a his inability to straighten out a mistake on an electronic transfer;  yesterday, he had tried yet again to no avail to reach our electrician to replace a broken smoke detector.

Little things, mundane things.  But I also have learned that he senses when I need quiet time well before I am ready to announce my plan for actually meeting that need and I can tell when the medical procedure he is facing is making him anxious even though he would be the last to admit it. The silent communication is part of the glue that keeps the wonder in our connection so dazzling and gratifying.

Whether those twenty-four transatlantic crossings in the first two years of our long-distance romance just trained us to tune in to nuances in each other’s emotions and behaviors more carefully or the two decades together since then have forged a deeper psychic pipeline, the communication is there, even when we are far apart geographically, even when we are together and silent.  Love is real.

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