A Preponderance of Three's

Well, I've been home from Denver for three days and it feels more like three weeks. I'm having some serious Mikie withdrawals. His next scheduled visit to Dallas is not until mid-September when he's coming for my birthday - more than a month from now! I was looking at the calendar trying to figure out when I could go back to Denver but it's not looking good any time soon. Our schedules are just too crazy right now.

Adding to my anxiety is my cell phone, which is having major battery issues these days. I've had the phone for less than three years (I got it right after Mike's first visit) and I'm on the second battery. I know I shouldn't complain or be surprised considering how many hours Mike and I spend on the phone, but it's frustrating nonetheless. I also have three chargers, none of which seem to be functioning properly right now. I realize that three years is ancient for a cell phone so I guess it's time for a visit to the Sprint store.

Thanksgiving

Before long it was Thanksgiving Day, our first holiday together as well as our first holiday apart. I had gotten a new cell phone the night before. It was charged and ready and I was anxious to try it out. I came home from church to find a beautiful email from Mike expressing his thanks that God had brought us together. I replied in kind and followed up with a phone call on my new phone. It was harder than I expected not to spend the day with Mike. He was hosting dinner at his house and preparing all the food as well. I was so impressed that he was cooking the entire Thanksgiving dinner while I, on the other hand, was dining out with my sister and her family. Although I used to prepare a huge annual feast for 12+ people, those days had ended with my divorce. Mike and I agreed that we would spend the next Thanksgiving together if at all possible.

Later that night I transferred phone numbers into my new phone. When I got to Mike's name, I had to smile. I added a heart icon, the ringtone Missing You and put him in speed dial #2. He would have been #1 but it was reserved for voice mail. I suffered the slightest pangs of guilt when I put his home number into speed dial #3 thus bumping my children to the 4 and 5 positions. Being Catholic, guilt is a familiar emotion but even after 48 years, it still gives me pause and forces me to examine the cause. This may seem kind of strange (then again, I've often been told I am, indeed, strange) but the simple act of putting Mike in the first 2 spots in my speed dial told me that I was truly ready to move on with my life. It did not imply that my children were losing their place as my number one priority. It just meant that the time had come to begin letting go of motherhood and to start planting the seeds for my own growth. I know, I know, once a mother always a mother. But the child-rearing phase was in its final stages. As soon as Darcie left for college, my options would be wide open. The thought was both exhilarating and frightening.

Racking Up the Minutes

Each day we exchanged emails and each night we talked, always with me calling Mike after 9:00 PM. With each communication I was bursting with love, and the concerns of meeting his children faded into the background. It became apparent that waiting for free cell time was not going to work long-term. As it happened, our cell phone contracts were ending at about the same time so we decided to get on a plan that would allow us to talk anytime for free.

Mike lives in the foothills just east of the Rockies so not every service worked at his house. We decided to see if he could get Sprint service there since that's what I already had. As a bonus, his daughter's boyfriend had Sprint and they would be able to talk for free as well. It took a couple of days but the decision was made. I bought a new cell phone and renewed my contract and Mike signed on as a new customer. If Sprint ever quits allowing people within the Sprint network to talk for free, we just might be to blame. Now Mike could call me during his morning and afternoon drive time. And that's exactly what he did. We talked in the morning, we talked in the afternoon, and we talked at night. We talked for hours on the weekends. We even watched football games together over the phone. It wasn't long before we were talking over 3000 minutes a month. We never seemed to tire of talking to each other and we never ran out of things to talk about. Thanks to this wonderful technological age, we were able to breach the distance and get to know each other in great detail.