“Just curious…” my mother ends her question with an addendum. The answer to her question is six weeks…

Six weeks from when he came to the front desk, where I was stationed at work, and said he wanted to disappear into the Green Mountains, and I replied, “Take me with you.”

She wanted to know how long I had known him before entering into the life-altering commitments of homesteading, marriage, and a family. It was a far cry from the declarations I had made beforehand, of never enmeshing myself with a man in any way ever again.

A lesson in what we think we have control over in our lives.

It’s what happened when I decided not to fight the flow. I had been fighting it for so long that I had become stoic in vulnerable situations and never allowed anyone in.

Truth is, I had no idea he intended to thaw the ice around my soul, and the warmer I became, the clearer I began to see what it was that I had been holding onto. It’s always easiest to swim with the current; how hadn’t I known that?

Love is joy, pain, and agony. Love is being vulnerable at the risk of someone seeing all sides of you, the good and the bad. Love is always showing up with pure intentions.

And so, as I asked, he took me with him.