It passed, as feelings do, leaving behind the ordinary awareness of two people in a kitchen at ten-thirty on a weeknight. But I noted it.
## Where Things Actually Stand
Three months out from the trip. This is not very long.
I am still in the marriage. I am choosing to be in the marriage, which feels different from simply being in it because the alternative hasn’t arrived. I know more clearly now than I did in September what I need from Nathan, and I know that he is, at least in the current period, trying to provide it. I do not know whether he will continue trying when the trying becomes less acute and more ordinary, when the clarity of the trip’s lesson fades into the background noise of daily life.
The counseling is ongoing. Three sessions in, I can say that it’s useful — not transformative, not magical, but useful in the specific way of having a structured space and a competent outside person who asks questions neither of us thought to ask. Dr. Mehta has a way of making visible the machinery of our communication that I find clarifying even when the clarity is uncomfortable.
Elaine has gone to the grief group six times. She told Nathan she’s made something like a friend there — another woman who lost her husband around the same time. They’ve had coffee twice. I don’t know whether this will develop into an actual friendship or whether it will remain a pleasant acquaintance; I’m not in a position to know, and it’s not really my business to know. What I can say is that Elaine has, for the first time in the five years since Gerald died, been investing time in something that isn’t her son’s household. That seems meaningful.