What a lovely Labor Day weekend that was. As a new week begins, I find myself reflecting over all that happened these past three days. I must say what’s on my heart.
When you left last January, you assured me you would come back. I remember that moment like it was yesterday — your abrupt departure in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning.
Some of you for a time is better than none of you at all. I’ve come to accept this.
Seven months will go by “just like that,” you coyly suggested. That’s how I remember it, as the room went dark immediately upon your absence. Why must you do this to me?
I tried to wait for you, and by and large, I was successful. The truth is that but for a brief fling of madness in March, there’s been an unmistakable “you-shaped” hole in my life.
I never want to feel this emptiness again, yet something tells me that before long, it will happen again. Looking back, it’s the Saturdays without you that were the hardest.
I needn’t remind you that we spent that entire day together, you and I, from early morning to well past midnight. Other friends came and went, but I never took my eyes off you.
Those were happy times, with homemade soup on the stove, a fire on the hearth, and you, even more radiant than the turning colors outside, the center of my undivided attention.
I realize a bird of your beguiling plumage is meant to be free, and I’ve no right to keep you all to myself. But keep you I shall for the blissful time we’ve been given to spend together. When I’m not gazing lovingly at you, know this: I will be thinking of you.
Oh, the places we’ll go now that you’re back! Athens will be special this fall, rich in history and tradition as it is; Oxford, too. I suspect we’ll make memories together in many other places as well. Come January, you’re sure to bowl me over with some surprises of your own.
Speaking of that cruelest of months when, as if on a predetermined schedule, you flee, I shall try not to grow sullen. I’ll pursue other interests to take my lovesick mind off you. But it won’t be the same, for there is only one you. Nothing even comes close.
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I know I’m not the only man who longs for you. I’m not even the only man on my cul-de-sac who longs for you. But you were crystal clear about this arrangement from the very beginning. I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last. Some of you for a time is better than none of you at all. I’ve come to accept this.
You know something? That’s enough pining by me. It’s all water under the bridge now. What matters most is that you have once again returned, as promised.
Absence has made the heart grow fonder. We are together again, my beloved, and for the next five months I’ll have eyes for nobody — and I mean nobody — except you.
Oh, how I have missed you, college football.
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