Dawna is home.
She's been home since Wednesday night, actually, and apparently that's had a more profound effect on my disposition than I realized.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Yesterday morning, like most mornings, I arrived at work after an equally freeing and frustrating motorcycle ride. Freeing because there's something about eating up asphalt, watching the miles unfold in front of you, and feeling the world rushing past that makes everything else seem a little less important. Frustrating because, well, other fucking drivers.
I've tried to describe what riding does for me more times than I can count. Hell, I even wrote about it yesterday, explaining that the feeling is impossible to describe to somebody who's never heard the call of the motorcycle. And I still believe that. Yet here I am, trying to explain the fucking thing again.
There's something about the wind crashing across your face, the engine responding to the slightest movement of your wrist, and the way your mind becomes completely absorbed in what's happening around you. On a motorcycle, everything happens faster, so you think faster. You're hyperfocused, hyperaware, and completely immersed in the moment. For somebody whose mind is perpetually running in twelve different directions, that's a pretty fucking remarkable thing.
But it's more than concentration. It's the sound, the vibration, the wind, the smell of the world around you, and that faint but persistent feeling of exhilaration. Every sense is engaged. Every part of you is participating.
It's my fucking happy place.
Even when it's twenty-eight goddamned degrees outside.
Because that's the other thing about riding a motorcycle in November in northern New Mexico. The mornings are getting cold. Really fucking cold. And when you're traveling through the valley on your way up the hill, that cold becomes something entirely different when you add the wind.
And I always have wind.
About 120 miles per hour of it, as a matter of fact.
So by the time I reach Pojoaque, even with heated gloves, my fingers are beginning to go numb. The rest of me is doing reasonably well, but my hands are apparently considering filing a formal complaint.
And then there are the other drivers.
Jesus fucking Christ.
There is a special place in hell for people who camp in the left lane.
You know the ones. They're doing sixty-seven in a sixty-five, convinced that they're traveling at a perfectly reasonable speed, and therefore everybody else should be perfectly fucking happy traveling at that speed too. Never mind the line of cars stacking up behind them. Never mind the perfectly good right lane sitting there, waiting to be used.
Nope. They're going sixty-seven, and by God, the rest of the world can just fucking deal with it.
There's something particularly infuriating about somebody deciding that their personal comfort level should determine how quickly everybody else gets to travel. It's as though they've appointed themselves the official pace car for the entire fucking highway.
So I work my way through traffic, eventually get alongside them, crack the pipes, and gesture toward the right lane with my thumb.
Move the fuck over.
Sometimes they do.
Sometimes they don't.
And I'm reasonably certain that at least a few of them respond with a different finger.
Whatever.
Despite all that frustration, the ride still does what it always does. It calms me while simultaneously lighting a fire under my ass. Which sounds contradictory, but if you ride, you probably understand exactly what I mean.
Unfortunately, exhilaration doesn't override physics, and by the time I reach the Starbucks in Pojoaque, my fingers are sufficiently numb that I decide coffee and something sweet might be a worthwhile investment in their continued operation.
So I stop, warm up, get some caffeine into my system, and eventually continue up the hill to work.
Just another morning.
Or so I thought.
When I arrived, I settled into my usual routine. Checked email, answered questions, dealt with a few people who needed things, and generally began the process of pretending to be a responsible adult.
Eventually, a friend I've known for years wandered in.
This is pretty normal. He often stops by while I'm making coffee, and we shoot the shit for a few minutes before the day gets away from us. Nothing particularly profound. Just two people easing into another day at work.
But yesterday, he asked me a question that caught me completely off guard.
"Why are you in such a good mood?"
I looked at him.
He thought about it for a moment, then answered his own question.
"Dawna's back?"
"Yep."
And that was that.
Except it wasn't.
Because I hadn't realized I'd been in a bad mood.
I mean, yes, I missed her. Dearly. The house felt empty without her. The evenings were quieter, the bed was lonelier, and there was this strange sense that my life had been put on pause while I waited for her to come home.
But I didn't think any of that was particularly visible.
I like to think I'm reasonably steady. That I show up, do my job, interact with people, and generally maintain some semblance of emotional consistency regardless of what's happening in my personal life.
Apparently, that's a load of fucking bullshit.
Because my friend noticed.
Not only had he noticed that something was different while Dawna was gone, he'd noticed the moment it changed.
And he knew why.
That realization stayed with me for the rest of the day.
Because he wasn't wrong.
I was in a better mood.
I could feel it.
I can still feel it.
Life feels good again.
And the strange thing is that I hadn't fully realized how much less good it felt while she was away.
I've lived alone for a lot of years. A lot of fucking years. I've been independent, self-sufficient, and perfectly capable of entertaining myself without needing another person around. I have my motorcycles, my writing, my work, and enough interests to keep my mind occupied until the day I finally kick the bucket.
I never thought of myself as somebody who needed another person to feel complete.
And I still don't particularly like that idea.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
Dawna and I haven't even been living together all that long, relatively speaking. Yet in that short time, her presence has become such a natural part of my existence that I barely remember what life felt like before we shared a home.
She's there when I wake up. She's there when I come home. We talk about our days, laugh at stupid shit, make plans, deal with life's inevitable bullshit, and generally go about the business of being together.
Nothing particularly extraordinary.
Except, apparently, it is.
Because when she was gone, all those ordinary little things disappeared.
And I missed them.
I missed her.
Not just the big romantic stuff. Not just the kisses, the hugs, or the occasional moments when I look at her and wonder how the fuck I got so lucky.
I missed the everyday things.
The sound of her voice coming from another room. Knowing she's somewhere in the house. Having somebody to share a ridiculous thought with when it crosses my mind. The comfort of reaching the end of a long day and knowing that whatever bullshit the world threw at me, I get to come home to her.
Somehow, all those little things became my new normal.
My new life.
And when she wasn't there, the world felt a little less right.
That's a strange realization for somebody who has spent so much of her life celebrating independence.
I still love my freedom. I still love getting on my motorcycle and disappearing into the mountains. I still need time alone with my thoughts, and I suspect I'll always be the kind of person who gets a little irritated when somebody tries to tell me what to do.
But loving my independence doesn't mean I love being without her.
And maybe that's the part I've been slow to understand.
There's a difference between being able to live alone and wanting to.
I can live alone.
I've proved that.
For years.
But now?
I don't fucking want to.
And apparently, when Dawna's gone, that fact is written all over my face for anybody paying attention to see.
Which brings me back to my friend and his innocent little question.
"Why are you in such a good mood?"
Because she's home.
Because the house feels right again.
Because the woman I love is back where I can reach over and touch her, hear her laugh, and share all the ridiculous little moments that make up a life together.
And because, somewhere along the way, she became such an important part of my world that even my coworkers can tell when she's missing.
I don't know when that happened.
I don't know how it happened so quickly.
But I know I wouldn't trade it for anything.
So maybe that's what Huey Lewis was talking about when he sang about the power of love.
I always thought it was a pretty catchy fucking song.
Turns out the bastard might have been onto something.
