She had come to California to follow her dream three years ago, and to find year-round good weather to train horses. She had found good weather, and fragments of the dream, but she had unexpectedly found him too. In seven short weeks, they had explored a continent of joys and treasures together. He had opened up a world of love and tenderness and acceptance and passion for her that she had never known, and his attention and care had awakened the strength to choose this move. It was the first thing she had ever done entirely for herself. She had never believed in herself enough before. But he had believed in her with such energy and passion that she had found strength and clarity to choose herself and her life, in fact, her survival, for the first time ever. Ironically, the choice must separate them.
Now she was leaving, and could see no way to keep their relationship moving forward. She had agonized for over a week before she spoke to him, trying to come up with a solution. He could not leave his kids, with three years of high school left between them, and she must not pass this opportunity by. All she could see to do was to carefully pack their tender sweet love in a safe secret place and carry it with her. She must let him go. He must let her go.
As her words began to sink in, he was overwhelmed with grief and rage and deep longing. Now, for the third time, he had loved, and for the third time, his beloved had chosen a path away from him. She seemed utterly resolved to the path she must follow, and she had somehow decided that she could encapsulate the past seven weeks in a memory that would fulfill her need for love forever.
She spoke of this to him now:
“What we have together is perfect. It will always be there in our hearts, wherever we go, whatever we do. Nothing can change that or take it away. I will always love you, and will keep you with me. But I have to seal this off and hide it away to find the strength to go and do what is in my heart.”
He could not bring himself to accept the idea that they must sever their ongoing relationship to preserve their hearts and their love across the miles. They talked for hours that night, and wept into their phones, and argued and questioned and agonized still. Eventually, their hearts were weary and their words were exhausted, and they resolved to take a couple of days apart to let their minds and hearts settle around the implications and possibilities. She had entered the conversation with the resolve that no options were possible—that she must ride Reggie off into the sunset with her remembered love, never to open her heart to new love again. He had bucked hard against that notion and without knowing exactly how, was equally resolved to find a way, yet overwhelmed with a sense of doom and dread, knowing that she too must share his determination if it were to succeed.
He did not sleep that night, and was overwhelmed with waves of grief and anger. He wrote her a long e-mail note expressing his heart and his hope and his frustration. He told her what she meant to him and how he had begun to sense her troubled heart during the previous week. He told her that he could not bring himself to give up on their future. He told her how important hope had always been to him, and how it would not let him settle for a wonderful past, however good it had been.
He sent the note early Monday morning, and called his sister. She had been a trusted and valuable friend to him through all the trials and difficulties and transformations of the past few years, and she would help him clear his mind and heart. She invited him to come to see her in Visalia for a day or two. It was only a couple or three hours drive from Gilroy, and he knew it would help. He made a few phone calls to clear his schedule, threw a few things into a bag, and drove off to seek his path.
As always, driving cleared his head and settled his thoughts. He was a captive to the miles and the destination, and could do nothing but drive and think and feel. Parts of his brain that were dormant at other times seemed to awaken and surge into action whenever he drove. He could find no music in his collection that suited his mood, so he made the drive mostly in silence, trusting the rhyme of the road to settle his heart. It was the stuff that insight was made of. Driving was a treasured secret in the transforming of his life, and he knew that by the time he arrived in Visalia, something would come clear for him, and it did.
For seven years, he had held onto a poorly founded hope that his endurance and persistence could restore his marriage. He had weathered the raging storms, the lonely heartbreak, the hiding and lying to hold onto the pretense of the marriage, for the sake of the kids and for the hope itself. He had hoped without a shred of evidence that his hope could be fulfilled. He had loved and held on in the face of persistent unabated discouragement until finally he had laid the hope down to move on into honesty and wholeness.
For yet another year, he had held on to a passionate hope that his friendship with the moon’s little sister would blossom into romance. It didn’t, and her persistent, consistent determination to stay friends and be present with him had finally settled that hope and let him go.
In both of these cases, the foundation of his hope had been flawed and rooted in a love that was not shared. But now, he found hope springing up from a clear base of love shared. He was sure of her love. He was clear about her desire to have him in her heart, and her resolve to keep him there in spite of their impending separation. If a hope with no solid foundation had given him the strength to endure the hell of isolation and loneliness in his broken marriage for seven years, what could his hope endure now, with love shared and burning bright. Suddenly it was clear to him that he must fight for this love. He had felt that he was helpless to stop its crash against the inevitability of giving his beloved free rein to follow her calling. He had felt helpless to sustain love’s progress because she had seen her move, and her resignation as such an insurmountable and inevitable thing. She had seen the only possibility in treasuring their past and blocking out hope of a future for their love except in memory.
But she had not known him long enough to really know the fierce intensity and dogged determination that fueled hope in his heart. She had not seen the years of hopeless hope he had endured before. She had no way to know in these seven short weeks, how persistent and intense his loyalty and determination and commitment in hope had always been. She had no way to know how much more fuel their love had fed to his hope than his past loves had been able to. But he knew. He was intimately familiar with hope. He knew what force and energy it could propel with such a love at its core. He would not give up. He would fight for a love like this until his dying breath.
Now it became clear to him that this hope was different from the others. Before, he had loved and hoped doggedly for one who had not shared his love. Now, she was fully present in that love, and even though she could see no way to go on, he had reason and passion and clarity to push forward and drive his hope to reality. He would instill that hope in her as well. He would teach her to use her hope to push on and to achieve all of her dreams rather than pruning and trimming them to achieve only the most urgent parts. He would never let her give up this part of her dream any more than he could deny her the dream that was taking her away.
They would find a way to love across the miles. In time, they would find a way to reunite.
This clarity and insight and passion grew and solidified and gained legs to run. By the next morning, he had talked it through with his sister and worked it through in his heart, and there was nothing left to do but go back home and share it with the woman whom he loved. He did not yet know how the details of their ongoing relationship would play out. He did not know how she would respond to his new-found clarity and resolve. But he did know that he would not turn aside from loving her. He would not leave it locked in a box in his heart. He would love her fully and openly and actively to the ends of the earth. He would boil oceans. He would not give up.
And so, he packed his bag into the Honda and headed back home, eager to see what insights this drive would bring, and ready to face the challenges that lay ahead.
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