It’s not that I love my kids more when we’re away – I couldn’t possibly love them more, because I already love them to the greatest capacity of my heart, and possibly beyond it (so much it stretches and aches and threatens to burst, with all the loving) – but it is, perhaps, that I love them better, or that I am better able to just relax and enjoy my love for them, to just sit with it and be in it and, yes, play with it and even – when the sun is high and the mood strikes – wrap it in a life-jacket and take it out on the cool, still waters in an inflatable dinghy emblazoned with garish blue cartoon fish and splash around with it and laugh with it and know that we’re safe, that even if the dinghy capsizes and spills us into the deep, we are safe, because we float, and because we will hold each other, because we will always lead each other back to shore.

Because it is just us, out there. Because out there, we are just us – we, and our love – and I love that. I do.