May 3, 2024

Every Day

The morning arrived quickly, and I could have not been more pleased. My wife and I spoke via FaceTime and we were excited Friday was finally here. I had a busy day ahead, but the thought of hanging out with my best friend kept me energized throughout the day. After I got out of bed, I washed a load of clothes, fed the dogs, cleaned the kitchen, and then sat down to write for an hour. I had a good morning workout, jumped in the shower, and started a day full of meetings.

Yesterday, I had placed a package of chicken wings in a large ziplock bag with teriyaki marinade, so when lunchtime came, I heated the Traeger grill and threw the wings on the barbie. They came out superb and I devoured most of them, being sure to leave a few for the dogs’ dinner.

This afternoon, I had an appointment outside of the house, which took me into town for a couple of hours. This broke up the workday, and before I knew it, I was heading back home with only thirty minutes left. When I was six miles away from my house, I checked my wife’s location and she was five miles from our home. I hit the gas, rushing back, and when I pulled down our dirt road, she was still sitting in her car, waiting for me to get home. What a sight!

We exited our vehicles, smiling so big that it made our faces hurt. I gave her the biggest hug, and we just laughed, happy that the moment found us exactly where we wanted to be. Next week, she would be gone again, but this was our first time to see each other for the weekend. It was the moment in which we had the most time ahead of us before she would return to work in Cary.

I helped my wife unload her things from the car. The place she stayed at had an H-Mart close by. Those who were familiar with this huge Korean market knew a well loved aspect of the store was a bakery inside named Tous Les Jours, which boasted tasty breads and sweets. My wife had brought us several items to snack on with coffee. After unloading her vehicle, my wife went to the back deck and walked into the garden, while I got back to work for the last half hour of my shift.

As soon as work was over, we called in an order to Pino’s Pizza and drove to Wilson to pick it up. The drive there was peaceful, mostly curved roads cutting through the countryside where farm fields made up the landscape. The crop fields were all in different stages. Some fields required tilling, while others had already been tilled in long rows, ready for planting. Others were full of plants still too small to identify.

In the past, I had left stores with ten or twenty plants for the garden, but these enormous fields had thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of plants. The sheer magnitude made me curious about the investment required to farm, the risk they took on, and the amount of money they made in profits. It was an intriguing business, and it dominated the area. We grabbed our food and sped home, setting up dinner on the deck.

My wife brought new beers from Cary, a city which had a larger selection than our small town. There was a seasonal release from Carolina Brewery called Paddle Daze Hazy IPA out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Hazy Hearted IPA from Bells Brewery out of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Also in the lineup were Backspin Hazy IPA from R&D Brewery in Raleigh and The Big Blood Orange IPA from Sugar Creek Brewing Company in Charlotte, both North Carolinian beers. My wife toted the beer in a cooler filled with ice, ready to go, as promised. 

During dinner, we talked, catching up on the week and sharing stories about her schooling and my work. We spoke about the property and how happy we felt to be back together. It was a lovely evening. A little after dinner, when it was time to feed the dogs, I took our four mutts inside the house while my wife stretched out in the hammock where she promptly fell asleep for over an hour.

I knew she was tired and how a strategically placed hammock worked wonders, so I stayed in the house where I fed the dogs, cleaned the kitchen, and folded my wife’s laundry. When I took the dogs outside, she woke up thinking she had only dozed off for a few minutes. Exhaustion, we had learned, was an integral part of intense experiences like medical school and other forms of torture.

My wife went to shower before bed and I sat in my office writing for an hour before taking a shower myself. It was such a perfect evening, and it felt good knowing we had the entire weekend ahead. On Monday morning, my wife would have to leave again, but we just had three more weeks of this to go. This was the last rotation she would have to be gone, and her last two months of school would have her living at home. The end of her schooling was nearing, and we started talks about next steps, which included a possible yearlong fellowship in Charlotte. We knew there was still much work to be done, but these last three months of school would also pass by quickly. 

The sky was black, and the moon was out of sight. The thick clouds covered any signs of stars in the evening sky. I thought about how dark it looked, smiling that it contrasted nicely against the brightness of our future.