I've never counted, but we call the weather here "perfect" a lot. It's an easy thing to say, because the weather never deviates much from what a midwesterner would call perfect. The beach is cool and temperate, the mountains look like a beautiful painting, the trees bloom flowers of pink and purple, and the sun is always bright and shining.

And somehow, negating all that, the most beautiful thing in my life just got on a plane and flew away from me.

I took Michelle to the airport, expecting her to cry. She'd already teared up last night at the thought of leaving. I told her all morning that I was going to make her late on purpose. I almost did it accidentally [she got there 45 minutes before the flight]. To her credit, she never even got misty until right before I couldn't walk with her anymore. We got to the checkpoint where I couldn't go, and the tears started to collect in the corners of her eyes.

I never even got misty when she was hugging me. Maybe it was just that I hadn't let her go yet. Even if it wasn't going to last very long. Then I had to watch her get on an escalator and be taken away from me.

She looked beautiful this morning.

An escalator is perhaps the worst way to watch someone leave you. Instead of staring at the floor and occassionally looking at their back, you have to match eyes, and watch them get smaller and smaller, on the world's slowest moving mechanical device.

The moment lasted a long time. Too long, because I had to keep sniffing deep to keep from looking like an idiot and crying in public. She finally waved and turned at the top and I wandered out of the airport, upset and half-blind. With no idea where I left my car. After 15 minutes of wandering I finally found it.

I can't think of a way to wrap this up, except to say that California isn't the same without her.