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Love, Loss, And Limping
Dispatch from the other side of young.
Before dawn on January 7th, before news of the Palisades fire broke, before we heard 14 people we knew lost their homes, my husband flew to Toronto where he’d be working most of 2025. He would also go to South Africa and Morocco; but that fateful day in Los Angeles, he was in the air and I was on the ground, terrified. I sent him photos of the destruction; his hometown, the city I’ve lived for more than half of my life, in flames.
I’m used to my husband working on location for months at a time, I’ve benefited from it materially and I’ve shared the adventures. Thanks (?) to runaway production, most our marriage — and time as parents — we’ve navigated distance, missing each other, and missing out. Fortunately, we’ve been able to stick to our two week rule: never apart more than two weeks, even if that meant him coming home for a quick weekend.
Our children are now adults, and I’ve been able to visit him for long stretches of time, our marriage and lives in that next chapter. We’re late into our 50’s, have more money and more freedom to be together. We lived in Budapest most of 2024, creating memories not involving parenting, recapturing the spontaneity of childfree days. But for me, this chapter is also filled with an angst I was unprepared for.
