Having her adored husband around: comforting, engaging, fun. Having him away for a few days: pure euphoria. Cathleen Medwick on the fine art of staying together while staying yourself.

The taxi is just pulling out the driveway. He is on his way to Indonesia, a five-day business trip. Gone! I don't know what to do first. Take a walk outside with just a noisy bunch of tree frogs for company? Throw a highly objectionable CD (that would be Carousel or Show Boat) into the Bose and raise the volume to deafening? Turn out the lights, peel off some clothing, and dance? Or sing! I'm great on the choruses, even the solos, I've been listening to this music since I was 10.

Let me catch my breath for a moment. My husband has left the building. And I'm exultant; it's the way you'd feel if you landed alone on the moon and everything was cool and silvery and you knew you could go home to Earth again—just not quite yet. Because I'm crazy about Jeff, my husband of 32 years. We've had coffee together practically every morning all that time. We've bought dinged and battered antiques that nobody else would look at twice. We've lived congenially, for the most part, in a one-bedroom apartment, a rambling prewar classic six, and two drafty, centuries-old exurban farmhouses with sodden basements (doesn't every house have water seeping through its limestone foundation?). I've handed him a glass of vodka as he's obsessed about his dozens of orchids, his acres of flax, and shrieked at him as he's uprooted the tender shoots of our 50-year-old peony bushes with the rake of his tractor. I've seen his eyes close in rapture as he's played his guitar, watched him gaze with boundless admiration at our sweet, manic quasi-Labrador, and even at me. I've seen him accumulate a world-class collection of ties—enough to outfit a small company—and a pile of laundry so steep it finally collapses into the bathroom doorway, where he nimbly climbs over it, scattering clothing like rose petals in his wake. I've watched him sleep propped up on his elbow, head resting in his hand and blankets merrily twisted around his legs, as the eternal light from the blaring television flicks hectic patterns onto his face. I've listened to him snore so resoundingly that our neighbor's peacocks honk in solidarity. And I've tiptoed out of the bedroom, slippers in hand, to slide beneath the covers of our daughter's bed (she's long been out of the house), where the velvety night envelops me and I can hear the humming of my own reclusive mind.

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