The Same but Different

Photo via Werner Schnell

We do handover - a few brief minutes in a train station waiting room. And in those minutes I try to impart every piece of important information, all the new words, new routines, potty training, favourite foods and recent accomplishments, every first, every proud or cute and vital moment of our child's last two weeks. And I am always shocked sideways by how cold these moments have become - we who were once so crazy in love we were living together within weeks of meeting, squashed into a single bed, because that was all we had to be together. He looks at me now without recognition or understanding. He calls me old nicknames but they sound wrong coming from a hard cold mouth, the one that once held so many kisses and whispered promises. The same mouth, but different. 

Today we are softer with each other, we have promised to be better at communicating, promised to 'try'. We have coffee, I tell him about my family - some of them are sick, some of them are old - and for a moment his compassion changes his face and I want to reach out to his hand to comfort and be comforted - but I stop myself. Things are different now, but for a second it was the same. 

When we talk we use only half-sentences, we know each other's mind so well we don't need all the words. We talk about our mutual friends and he has had the same thoughts, the same opinions - he gives me the same look and I see it in our same raised eyebrow. The same, but different.

I notice those new grey hairs, he notices a millimetre change in me. We are different, and still the same. 

And now, I lie with a new lover and he with his. I don't know how things got so different. I crave that same-ness, I wonder if I will ever have it again? I feel passion and joy and electric sparks when I meet those lover's eyes and it's the same kind of feelings. But different.