Friday early afternoon:

 

My friend Catherine is in an airplane probably somewhere over Alaska-Russia right now on her way to Tokyo. She left yesterday, Thursday and will arrive here later this Friday afternoon. Travelling east, you lose a day. You only get it back when you go home. There is a difference of 14 hours between Montreal and Tokyo.

I say goodnight to Paul, he says good morning to me and it switches around later in the evening. It’s a strange way to live as a couple, like taking turns sleeping in a bed where touching isn’t possible. Skype keeps us talking and seeing each other and we have a constant game of scrabble on the go on Facebook (yea, didn’t think it would happen, but scrabble finally broke me down). I think of times like wars, or centuries ago when couples were separated for years without means of contact and wonder how they survived. I get upset when the internet is not working or it’s been more than a day without some kind of contact: email, text, facebook, or skype.

Catherine has arrived and is showering off yesterday, trying to jump into today. The best is if she can just keep going until Tokyo bedtime, even though its 6 am for her and she probably hasn’t slept in the plane. It’s amazing, the time zones are sliding into each other and soon, as the days begin to lengthen, sunlight of the same day will start to overlap in our conversations. Paul got up early to drive Catherine to the airport and then went to the bar to watch the Canadian Women’s hockey team win in Socchi and then he went to play hockey at midnight. He was starting to fall asleep on skype at 4:30 pm Tokyo time, 2:30 am Montreal time. I hope he is still sleeping.