Hi! It’s me! Lily!!!

Well, it was a day, I suppose.

Jack and I did go out.  Then we talked.  A lot.  There are some times when we go out that we can’t really keep our hands off each other, but tonight wasn’t one of those nights.  We just talked.

We talked about the present, and more importantly, the future.  It’s kind of cliche to say we talked about our “hopes and dreams”, and we only kind of did.  It’s more that we talked about our hopes and dreams together.  Like, what did we want to get out of our relationship other than just finding some comfort in each other?

It turns out that… we really don’t know.  We know that we do love each other and do want each other and all that fun stuff, but at the end of the day, neither of us could say exactly what we wanted out of all of this.

And maybe that’s okay.  Maybe it’s normal.  Maybe a couple sometimes throws themselves into the deep end of a relationship and then swims out.  I guess that takes about seven years, and as often ends in divorce as not.

I do love the time we spend time together – especially that time when we do some of the things that, well, adults do.  You know, clothes on the floor and all that.  (we don’t do everything but almost).  And it’s nice when we go on dates and spend time together.  And I love spending time with Grace (she’s getting big now!) and his family (and Lily the dog too).  I love all of it.  But what do we want?

Neither of us could answer.

And, well…  Maybe that’s a question we should answer before I say yes.

He seems to understand all this.  It’s not like he’s upset at me or anything.  He’s disappointed, but he seems to think – or at least understand – that he’s being a bit selfish.  There’s nothing wrong with selfish, but the stakes are really high on this one.

Okay… in other news.

Crystal wrote me a piano piece.

I didn’t really think she had that in her.  I really didn’t.  She’s pretty good at songwriting when it comes to the rocky kinds of music.  But she really, well…  went on a whole other level.  And it’s good, too.  Not Mozart good, but I certainly wouldn’t mind performing it.  She’s got this innate understanding of harmony that I wish I had.  I mean, I’m a good piano player and I understand what I’m playing, but she just seems to know how chords fit together and how to voice the piece that’s on a whole other level.  And she doesn’t even really know the repertoire – she’s doing it pretty much based on sound, and the few lessons she took.  I did have to give her feedback on a few chords that are pretty much impossible to play (you can make chords that require some real hand contortions), but she fixed those pretty easily.

She’s an amazing girl.  She really is.  I wish she could see that, the way the rest of us do.  She’s amazing.  All that stuff she went through, and it turns out, well, she has all this talent and feeling inside of her, and it’s just been itching to get out.

Her parents are… well, they’re supporting her, but they seem sad.  It’s like they’re beating themselves up for not noticing.  Maybe they should, but, well… they’re not really bad parents.  At least they’re well intentioned.

I ear Allison is taking up saxophone too.  Yay Allison!!  I haven’t seen her much lately, I guess her family’s having some medical issues or something.  But it seems to be getting better.  They’ve had their share of problems over the past few years, unfortunately.

Anyway…  other than church today, which was mostly uneventful, not much going on.  Maybe some storms tomorrow.

Love you all!!! ❤️