Today we stayed close to home.  It was Steve's last day of vacation and we just wanted to be alone, together for just a little while longer.  We drove down country roads of Candia and Deerfield just drinking in the sweetness of early summer.  Trees with their leaves full and moist from the rain and drizzle we had had earlier  were shading us from the sky above making our way seem like an enchanted forest where there wasn't another soul around for miles.

The winding roads that we were on passed by old New England farms that looked as they had not been touched by human hand for more than two or three hundred years.  From old colonial, to saltbox, to log cabin, federalist style and early cape, they were all there.  Some had candlelights in every window.  Some had fences of stone standing without wear of years.  There were views of ponds, hay fields and mountains that took my breath away.  To think, all of this had been just beyond our own backyard, waiting to be discovered.

We had placed a CD in the player.  Little had I realized the comforting folk songs of the sixties and early seventies were transporting us to another world that was a secret treasure  no one else would be able to understand or visit as we had.  The closeness between us has  always been there, but for this day we shared the same visions and dreams as our hearts beat as one and we breathed for each other in a love that was beyond anything I have ever known.

My heart ached as I longed to keep this feeling forever, but, reality had to find us again and our lives beyond this came floating back to earth.  How grateful I was for the experience.  It was then that I realized we could have this again and again as we age, for each year brings us closer to a time when we won't have to think about being apart for hours on end.  We will soon be on the threshold of our golden years of retirement.  The preparation that we make now will be the reward we will share together later on.