Tears...

Do you know we have been home for a year and a half? A year and a half…that is a long time. Yet, the tears still come. This Friday Elina called me at 8:00 am which is 1:00 am Saturday for her. I asked her why she wasn’t sleeping and she responded that she missed me and wanted to talk to me. In her sleepy hushed voice we talked and talked and talked. I love our talks. I guess talking to her today took me back to the Marshall Islands. I never know when it will hit me. I ended up sitting down tonight and reading this blog of those weeks a year and a half ago. As I came toward the conclusion of my time in RMI, the blog got rushed just as it happened in reality… the Visa paperwork came, we received word we were leaving in the morning, we spent our last moments together, we were rushed to the airport, we cried… and within no time at all Elina and I were separated by a vast ocean. And today, a year and a half later, that ocean still doesn’t feel any smaller. As I remember those first moments away from her, they feel like I am reliving them all over again. I miss this wonderful woman. Today when I talked to her I filled her in on Rickson’s 18-month checkup. I told her that he weighed 25 pounds. In her thick Marshallese accent she said “Wow…. I SO happy.” And she is. Oh, how I miss her…. my sweet, sweet Elina…