Reclaiming The Dusty Places

Alright.

The last of our holiday time has been officially over since Wednesday.

The children were all visited. The granddaughters have been tickled, hugged and kissed, read to, and imagined, danced and laughed uproariously with.

The vacation laundry has been washed, dried, ironed or folded and put away.

Milk, bread, vegetables and fruit have been bought to restock the fridge.

The bathrooms have been thoroughly cleaned, and the floors and carpets have all been vacuumed.

And now.

Now?

Exactly.

What now?

Now we begin to reclaim the dusty places.

The cobwebbed spaces.

The quiet, forgotten corners.

Now we are home, and there is no one but we two to inhabit these walls. We expect none of our kin to be home later. None but us will live, sleep, eat, bathe or rest here.

It has been twenty-eight years since it was just the two of us. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS!

I think we still remember how to be just We Two. We've tried to be deliberate about US, knowing that this time would come; knowing that we didn't want to look across the dinner table at each other one day, only to see a stranger looking back.

We are comfortable with each other. I think we like each other better than we did when we began the journey. We are good together, and we are alright apart; The Dance has become slower, but more graceful. We generally cohabit with an ease that comes of shared history. We will be okay.

We will be okay.

We will revisit forgotten dreams. We will blow the dust off old ideas and brush the cobwebs from half remembered visions. We will take joy in the Skype moments and telephone conversations, and we will enjoy the slower pace, the quieter space. We will rediscover Ourselves; individually and together. We will be glad we started young; glad that we are still not old to begin the continuation. The next chapter.

Turn the page.

Grab the Pledge and a rag.

There are dusty places to reclaim.