Baby Can I Hold You Tonight

Good old ipod shuffle -- she always knows what to spin -- and yesterday when Tracy started to sing:

Sorry
Is all that you can't say
Years gone by and still
Words don't come easily
Like sorry
Like sorry

Forgive me
Is all that you can't say
Years gone by and still
Words don't come easily
Like forgive me
Forgive me

But you can say baby
Baby can I hold you tonight
Maybe if I'd told you the right words
At the right time
You'd be mine

I started to cry. Why, you ask? When just yesterday I was rocking the No Woman No Cry? Because this is one of the many songs tied up in those feelings I had for so long about wishing that things were different for me and my overseas visitor. So I allowed myself to shed a few tears on the bed while he dug through old photographs, and then I picked myself up off the bed and went about my morning.

At dinner last night, we talked about our hopes and dreams in terms of past and future loves. When he talked about words not coming easily and ways he protects himself, he was able to say "because that's just how I am." The old me, attached to a particular outcome, would've bristled and needed to try to change that about him. Instead I said "This is the great thing about us being friends now. I don't need to try to make you my man, I can just let you be who you are."

Ideally, I wouldn't ever have needed to change people to make them my man, but I really haven't dwelt in the realm of the ideal as far as love and romance are concerned. And I don't think that's uncommon -- a couple of nights ago we were out with a friend of mine and we all decided we've never had both feet in a relationship, and we're all pushing 40.

Here's to a new era, leaving behind the emotional and physical reticence, and wholeheartedly embracing love...