A Happy Life Continues

The previous post may appear a little bizarre appearing alongside the rest, but it does have it's place. Read on and you will see it in the correct context. It is funny looking back now that Claudia always used to worry back then that it would be her regular 'unserviceability' and my frustration at it that would eventually push us apart. Often after I lay, spent, next to her, she would start to cry and tell me that sex was important in any relationship and if it was not there, it would eventually end because of it. She would say "I know that one day you will leave me because of this". I always tried to reassure her that it was not the case and I really believed it wasn't. I had a very deep and powerful love of Claudia and while there was heaps of frustration on my part, I was careful never to make a scene or reduce her to tears over it. Having said that, I also marveled at my own patience at times and took to keeping a diary of our sex life. Nothing other than a tick on a day when we successfully completed intercourse. At the end of 2000 when she went back to visit her family for Christmas and I was shifting names and numbers into my new diary, I tallied these 'scores' up. The pattern was interesting and amusing. There were two days all year when we had sex twice in a day, there were two days in a week that we had never had sex on (Tuesday and Thursday, I think), three times all year we had sex on consecutive days the longest period with no sex was 42 days and there was a period of 37 days too. Three quarters of encounters were on a Saturday - I already teased her about the 'Saturday-after-breakfast'. As in: " So do we have a Saturday-after-breakfast this weekend or do you want to get up early for garage sales/the beach/a camping trip?" On the other side of my face, I did not laugh. It was sad for two people who were so committed to each other that we had to put up with that much so early in our lives together.

We had been up to Harvey Bay together and went out on a boat called 'Princess II'. It was a life-altering experience for Claudia. She had tears of happiness in her eyes from the moment we saw the first whale until we went to bed that night. (No, there wasn't any sex!). From then on, she was passionate about them in a way that transcended the silly, teenage/greenie attraction to whales. We had become frequent visitors to Brisbane's nearby Stradbroke Island and the whales passed by there in the distance on their annual migration up and down the East Coast of Australia. There we had a few spots that became 'our places', where we could sit for hours on end and watch and photograph the dolphins that surfed through the waves against the dramatic setting of cliffs, rocks, she-oaks and Pandanus. If I were to pick specific hours of my life, some of those on Straddie, -sitting with Claudia, watching the jumping dolphins while the sun rose or set against the cliffs- would be hard to beat if I lived to a hundred. Thinking about it now, the feeling of homesickness makes my guts feel like my throat has been cut a week. I could weep.