^{Photo credit: Carol Madigan}

July 19, 2021

Dear Diary,

    Well, Reid truly surprised me this time. In the weeks since he first said “We’re going to Iceland,” I was so expecting him to suddenly look up from the book he was ignoring me with and say, “I said what and we’re going where?” Like the time he told me he’d fly with Branson to Mars as long as his kindle would work, until he realized how long he’d be cooped up with a billionaire who apparently can’t shut up.

   I confess that there were times when I hoped Reid would tell me he really wasn’t being serious about Iceland. I mean, neither of us had any comparable experience with this level of adventure, unless you count us deciding to meet in the first place three years ago. (Talk about stepping off a cliff on the off chance there was a net somewhere below.)

   But I sit here now one month after we completed a two-week camper van adventure of Iceland, and I have to look at the photos I took there to remind myself we actually did make that trip. I say that because for the last month I’ve watched Reid plop right back down in the couch crater I’d (naively) thought I’d left behind for good.

“Do you realize you look like you’re just mindlessly staring off into space?” “Yes,” he said, in a declarative tone that suggested he believed he was nevertheless still engaged in something life affirming.

   (One day I walked into the living room, and I thought Reid was watching TV. He was sitting up (more or less) and staring directly at the TV. Except the TV was off. I said, “Reid, what are you doing?” “Nothing,” he said, with no attempt to cover it up. “Were you lost in thought, maybe?” (That was for my own peace of mind, more than anything else.) “No,” he answered. “Do you realize you look like you’re just mindlessly staring off into space?” “Yes,” he said, in a declarative tone that suggested he believed he was nevertheless still engaged in something life affirming.

   My fear is that that’s the position he’s going to die in. (Seriously, how would any of his vital signs realize they were still required?) And I won’t know it, at first or later that same day. I’m almost of the mind to have him hooked up to a monitor, just so I’m not slipping a mirror under his nose every ten minutes.

   I guess I just don’t understand. I came back from Iceland re-energized with a sense of travel and adventure after more than a year of being in the house with a…dare I even suggest the image?

   I know he had the same experiences I did, because he told me he wasn’t ready to come home either by the end of the trip. So I don’t get how he can come back home and slide right back into his sedentary…or is it sedimentary…life.

   Maybe he is what he says he is: part hermit crab that has to abandon his shell when he outgrows it, but settles right back down deep into the new, bigger one as soon as he finds it.

   Well, I have to go now, dear diary. I need to find a bigger shell for Reid to go looking for. Spain maybe?

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