The second day

I miss my wife.

This morning, it was pouring rain at the bus stop, dripping through the leaky shelter. Sea rain -- a spray of cold, tiny droplets. I pulled my collar up and watched the rain fall, thinking of her. I've found that the loneliness is most intense the second day after we part. On the first day, the memory is still so fresh it's almost as if we're together, and after the second day, it rounds out, dulling slowly as time passes. But the second day, I miss her ferociously, and the solitude is almost unbearable.

Today is the second day. She's planning to drive down the coast, but the road to the sea is covered with snow. Here, it is only raining; the rain quietly pelts the bus as it trundles its way up into the city. I am 600 miles to the south, on the Pacific coast, where it hasn't snowed in a hundred years. It's about a half mile to work from the bus stop at Potrero and 16th, and the rain has slowed to a drizzle by the time I start walking.

At noon, she calls to tell me she's bought snow chains for her car. It's the second day, and she's filled with the same terrible sense of loss. She'll drive through the night, slowly crawling her way down the hundreds of miles of coast. She says to expect her at about 4 AM. I will. I send all my luck her way.

Things will get better for us. One day, maybe just a couple years from now, my wife and I will live together. We won't be poor anymore or have to spend months apart. Someday not too long from now we'll both be finished with school, and we'll be working together, living together, in a beautiful place somewhere on the west coast. Just got to think about that, and keep focusing on it and working toward it, and I can make it real.