If I Only Had One Hour to Live

Dear Howie,  You asked me how I'd like to spend the last hour before leaving for work and the answer would have been the same if I had only one hour left on this earth.  I cannot imagine anything more wonderful than being connected to you in such a loving and intimate embrace.

 

 

Howie said:  I love you so much.

And I don't think I can find a way to say or have you understand what you have added and done to my life.  Sometimes I still get a little nervous, feeling like I have been lifted by a space ship into a different world.  But mostly, I am enjoying the excitement of this new world and slowly and steadily, as it becomes more familiar, I expect that ratio to continue to shift.

 

I tried to write more on this but it did not come out right and I need to leave for your Mom's.  Mostly, I just want you to know that you did not have to worry that you might have made me uncomfortable last night when you said "I love you so much."   In fact, it brought back to me the wonderful feeling I had when, in a similar moment of passion months ago, I said the same to you.

 

Dear Howie,  Thank you for your kindness this morning.  I really needed to hear that.  I don’t spend a lot of time crying about the past.  That’s wasted energy.  My tears last night were largely due to fear of repeating the past.  In my life, everything is always about me.  It has always been that way and as much as I try to be aware of that tendency and change it, I am ever aware that my choices directly affect those that I love.

 

Some cases are easy to live with.  I am okay with my parents working for me because I pay them better than anyone else ever did and they are getting to do what they want.  I am okay with the Easy Street staff and volunteers following my vision because they were drawn to it by its alignment with their own needs.  Same goes for the supporters because everyone needs something to believe in and I know that their support won’t be squandered.

 

Others are harder.  The movie, Riding Around in Cars with Boys, could have been written by Jamie.  That was her father.  That was her life.  Having never paid attention to her as a child, I did not see at the time, what that life must have felt like until watching it last night.  I have always taken comfort in the fact that she has done so well, but to hear the young man say that he wasn’t “normal” because he couldn’t choose to live his own life if it meant not being there for his mother, struck a chord.

 

Jamie wanted to go to college.  She wanted to join the marines.  She wanted to trot around the world as a free lance photographer.  I have always said that I would support her, and I would have, but I cannot help but believe that she has chosen to forego her own dreams because she cannot bring herself to “abandon” me, in the way that I have emotionally abandoned her all these years.

 

The only way I can see to rectify this is to make Easy Street so strong and self sufficient that she can feel free to walk away from it if that is what she chooses, with no feeling of a negative impact on me.  I think her love for the animals and her ability to use her creative talents in the way she does are things that she won’t be able to find elsewhere, but I would like for her to feel free to find that out for herself, rather than working from a sense of obligation.   These things will eventually happen.

 

Knowing how to stay present with you is the hardest.  You are the most wonderful part of my life and I don’t want to blow it by falling into a too-well-established pattern of self centeredness.  You are so supportive of me and my dreams, my needs, my desires…  Even the way you make love with me is so giving and so selfless.  I know that it is not because I am so deserving, but because that is just the way you are.  I see you giving so much of yourself to everyone around you.

 

I don’t want to wake up one day and find that I was so caught up in what I wanted to accomplish that