Long distance relationships – even temporary ones like ours – have some serious drawbacks. When you’re separated by 3000 miles, you have to do a lot to keep your feelings alive after weeks of not being together. (Luckily Kristi and I share a love for literature, so we’ve been reading to each other over the phone in the evening. Right now we’re about a third of the way through The Count of Monte Cristo.)

The worst part for me is the airport goodbye. We’ve done this four times now; it gets worse each time. After several wonderful days together, meeting people and enjoying quality time with them and each other, eventually it comes time to put a continent between us again. And so once again we’re back at the airport, waiting patiently for the plane to start boarding, usually enjoying a Starbucks date, knowing that it’ll be weeks before we see each other again. Eventually one of us is on a plane for an eight-hour cross-country flight and the other one gets to return to an increasingly empty home.

As I’m writing this, I’ve just returned from seeing Kristi off at Orlando International. Her Southwest flight should have left fifteen minutes ago; I stayed with her in the security checkout line until it was time to leave her to the nice TSA people. Even so, I stuck around (as usual) until I couldn’t see her anymore. Now I’m back to my home in Winter Park, and the emptiness hasn’t hit yet, but I know it will.

This was the last airport goodbye. The next flight will be mine, in early December, coming to Modesto for good with the cats in tow, and then this half-year experiment in transcontinental romance finally reaches a conclusion. And I’ll tell you, it can’t come fast enough for me.

It was a great weekend for both of us. Kristi met my friends and family, and everyone loved everyone. We had a wonderful night at the beach, staying at the Cocoa Beach Hilton and enjoying champagne and chocolate covered strawberries while we both admired Kristi’s new engagement ring. But I’ll let her talk about that in the next post, once she’s settled at home.

For me, I’m just glad we don’t have to do one of these airport separations again. I don’t know how military couples do this. It’s been hard enough for us over just a few months, but trying to do it over years of an Iraq deployment? It boggles the mind.