Chapter 1: Into the Setting Sun

We're rolling across Georgia with six new tires smoothly carrying all 16,000 lbs of us. I am pensively blinking into the setting sun and thinking back on our travels. So many of them together and this one dancing on the edge of parting.

Three hours ago we were standing in the Sweetwater BP, pointing at a blown tire and the largely filled in map of the United States of America. "THAT", I tried patiently to explain to Chris, "is why we've lost two tires in the past 700 miles. These are the same tires that came with the RV and they've seen 36 states, several of them more than once. Wyoming in July alone is enough to make a tire cry Uncle - and we've crossed that state at least three times!"

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March 5th, 2010. For whatever reason, the day started cockeyed and never improved. Nonetheless, I was unsuspecting even until the moment Chris left my office after having announced he'd been offered a position in San Antonio, Texas and he wanted to take it. My life is in Arlington, Virginia. More importantly, my daughter - along with her father and the fabulous Arlington schools she attends - are there. San Antonio couldn't be in my immediate future. I will not leave my daughter.

What I couldn't grasp was that Chris was miserable enough in his work that he would be willing to leave us behind and chase a job he was comfortable with. Even with a significant cut in pay. Not only couldn't I uproot my daughter - he flat out didn't want me to. The rejection cut deeply, slicing across my midsection and bringing tears of hurt and anger that welled up from a seemingly never ending supply. Two days later, when I realized how grateful I was for their numbing effect - even in the middle of the night when the drugged state of them wore off and I woke up to shed more, I mentally promised myself I would write a book and call it "The Numbness of Tears."

Two months prior we'd gifted ourselves with the support of a couples therapist whose role would be to help referee us through the 20 percent of our relationship that regularly tripped us up. If not for her I would have held fast to my demand that he "get out and get out now" - words I continued to utter right up until we left our two hour emergency session. He was still going and somehow I was supposed to not only accept his decision but to believe that he wasn't leaving *me* - he was simply going off to do his own thing for a while. Surely I could find a way to make the long distance thing work.

And still the tears continued to come...