My very dearest loves, I am just now this very moment, at 11:30 p.m., back online, the guy just dropped off my computer, having cleaned and debugged it. I have missed you so much, I can hardly even tell you. I try to imagine how lovers in other eras coped, handed off a wrought, penned message to voyage across an ocean, stood at a turreted window lit by windswept sky in bleak hope one distant day for a reply. The last couple of days have been very hard on me. I did try to keep busy - so the house is clean, kitchen surfaces wiped & scrubbed clean, much more than usual. And I took very, very long walks. The effects of the blizzard are receding, melting into the gulleys, percolating into the ground (the snow is perhaps only ankle deep now in the yard, down from my knees), running off into the turbulent creeks that merge and rush to the river. A week ago tonight I was at Christmas, a seeming instant ago, though the last two days without the computer - without tangible connection to you - have felt interminable. But you have always been in my thoughts.

When a moment changes everything. Wow. Przyjdę - that is, I'm working on it. I hope so.

What else? Happy New Year, of course.

Signing off for now, my dearest. Touching your hand. Putting my arms around you one last time. The train is leaving the station, as I tell the cats to hurry them inside the door before all the heat lets out.

So do you feel whole again?, D asks me now. Not yet, at the moment I feel a bit battered by waves and washed to shore, but I look forward to things being back to normal tomorrow, sitting down to write you a nice, long letter.

In the meantime, here are yet more kisses for you, with all my love.

XOXO