I played Whitney Houston as I drove my wife to LAX
LAX is the LA airport if you don’t know.
And our two kids were with us. Valentin, our fifteen-year-old son, and Taisiya, who’s eleven (and we have two more kids!)
It’s been an unusual year for us. For the first time in two decades, we’ve been spending a lot of time separately. There was a move to Florida at the end of 2021. A questionable move but also something we had always discussed. It’s not because we like DeSantis or wanted to leave California. My kids play competitive tennis. We’re a tennis family. Florida is the best place for the sport of tennis. Moving states because of kids’ sporting activities. Must sound exotic to some, I imagine.
But then our oldest son is finishing high school here in Southern California. We didn’t want to create a disruption for him.
So I now split my time between California and Florida.
Let me add mention more states, more places… We spent the final week of 2022 in Arizona where my daughter was playing in a tennis tournament. I then headed to California, and my wife back to Florida. Just a few days later she flew to Utah, where there was yet another tennis-related thing in which my two kids were involved. And I flew to Florida for a week to spend time with our youngest son and my mom who is now living with us after leaving Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine.
To cut the story short, this week we reunited in California. We only had two days together.
We enjoyed California. We hiked. We walked. We walked at night, we hiked during the day. Our apartment is very small and there were five of us so it was messy and noisy.
We went out to eat a couple of times.
We slept on mattresses. Late at night, we discussed all the usual challenges we are facing as a family. We then made love… We made love in the morning too…
We watched some tennis — we’re following the Australian Open (we’re a tennis family!).
Late on Saturday night, it was time to drive my wife, Valentin, and Taisiya to the airport. They were taking an overnight flight to Fort Lauderdale.
My iPhone music library has a couple of songs by Whitney Houston and one came up. I don’t even remember which one. It was either “I have nothing” or “the Greatest Love of All”.
It felt perfect. I can’t listen to fast, heavy, or aggressive music in the evening (and I do have that type of music on my playlist). Music in the evening has to be mellow.
I then had Apple music play other Whitney Houston songs.
I was especially looking for that one song — surely one of the greatest love songs of all time.
I will always love you.
My wife doesn’t know I write love letters to her here on Medium.
I am. Expressing love.
I will always love you.
Almost twenty-five years together. Don’t know if it’s the greatest love of all, but it’s love.
This picture is not related to the events in the story but it’s pretty recent. California too.
Oh, honey. This is where we want to hike again. And live. And probably be buried too.
