Mind The Gap!

I have enjoyed some great train journeys in my time. (And some not so great.) I love the long ones, especially through countryside which I have never seen before. On the Stirling to Naples, overnight via London and Paris, it was fascinating to see all the different people who came and went at various stations. Charlotte to Greensboro reminded me of “The City of New Orleans,” that famous Arlo Guthrie song about the great trans-American train. The Lisburn to Ballymoney in the mid-70s was of an altogether different standard however, having separate compartments with sliding doors in the carriages and arriving at cold, empty Ballymoney Station with the station-master huddled around a pot-bellied stove and looking like the station-master from the opening credits of “Once Upon A time In The West.”
But the Belfast to Lurgan was memorable for a different reason. It was the familiar, daily routine journey. I had taken this trip many times. One day as usual I waited for the train. Absorbed in my book I wandered over to the edge as it pulled into the station. As I presumed to get on I missed the step and my leg went down into the gap between the carriage and the platform. In a sudden-wide-awake moment I pulled my leg swiftly up and proceeded into the carriage to take my seat. Sitting down, my thigh began to really hurt and a wave of nausea came crashing over me. Nothing broken. Fortunately no vomiting. I eventually recovered. I had experienced the gap but survived.
In our relationship with our spouse or partner it is easy to fail to notice the gap. We can be so preoccupied with the ordinary and necessary responsibilities and chores of life, work patterns and shifts, separate leisure pursuits, children, daily home routines etc that an emotional gap quietly opens up in our relationship without us even noticing. Something is lost. We begin to drift into being partners and parents rather than close friends, confidants and lovers. Our relationship becomes functional.
To begin to regain what was lost takes something very simple. Decide to make time each day for one another. For 10-15 minutes just sit together over a coffee and talk, listen, don’t judge, just attentively be there and give each other the undivided attention which you knew in the early days of your relationship and which you so enjoyed. And you will begin to enjoy the journey again.
Mind the gap.