I like this feeling

Don't know why I am sharing, but I feel like sharing. I could get messages from my sons and nieces saying "TMI"* but here goes.

I am sharing because it is an unusual feeling at 55 (and one month) to feel so overcome with love (that feeling that you are so happy you could burst). Yesterday while driving over Constantia Nek on a most perfect morning in Cape Town, listening to music and just generally deep in thought, I had to pull the car over to the side of the road and send Michael a message.

"I love you so much, I could pop!"

Michael has had a rough couple of months with having to make certain important work related decisions. These decisions have led to negotiations and some conflict which has been stressful for everybody involved. No-one enjoys conflict but especially not Michael.  So with this recently behind him there is a new lightness about him. We had a stunning dinner the previous night and then a very early walk together in the morning, when the light was just right, the mountain clear and crisp, the neighbourhood slowly waking up and starting to make a noise.

The realisation that I had come to after reading this a few days ago was also still fresh in my mind.

Wouldn't it be great, I had thought, and then I realised that besides sitting by the window reading books when it rains (which I could do, if I had time to do it and I could make time, if I really wanted to), my life is pretty boundless and infinite.

So driving up Constantia Nek on a perfect day I realised where this popping feeling was coming from.  Michael is letting me live my dream, he never complains and just loves me, completely.

And while I am all mushy and romantic (please excuse me), my all time favourite quote from a favourite book, which seems so apt today:-

“He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Not four or five times in life - Everyday!

Another realisation that has come to me at 55 (and one month).  When I was a romantic 19 year old, reading Gatsby for the first time, I read and re-read that paragraph, hoping that someone would smile at me "much more than understandingly".

I am blessed.  

Excuse me while I pop.

*Too Much Information (for Mom)