There is a distinct feeling of weekend mornings, especially those in spring.

They are cool and wet, sometimes rainy, mostly smelling of sunscreen, and if you've ever spent a year or two living with a man who is now halfway across the country from you, then they can be lonely.

Spring comes back to me every year, carrying memories tied to scents and songs that remind me of some life I used to have. The most recent life that has been visiting me lately is the one last year where I hardly made enough money to pay my rent each month and daydreamed about a job with a desk and no beverage cooler to organize; one that wouldn't chip my nail polish every time I reached into the sink to get an espresso cup.

Two years ago (which is amazing to say, because that Christmas does not feel two years ago yet), I got a beautiful watch for Christmas, and I put it in its little box on my dresser and waited for the day that I could wear it to a job where I was neither a barista nor a graduate student, and could wear a watch that was not waterproof or a pretty shirt without fear of spilling something onto myself.

It's almost been a year since I moved back home, I thought yesterday as I drove away from the office that allows me to dress up and wear my watch without fear, the one that challenges me in a new way every day. A year ago, Rob and I were packing up the apartment we shared together in Charlottesville. We were going out for brunch and taking walks around our neighborhood together.

When I think about the distance to Minnesota, or even just to DC, I am amazed and sometimes appalled that at one time, I had Rob in the same city, living at the same address, eating dinner at the same table, falling asleep and waking up in the same bed as me, every day. I don't know if we realized, at the time, just how good it was. We definitely didn't realize, at the time, just how far away from each other we'd end up a year later.

Things then might have been simple and easy and full of love, but they weren't nearly as promising as the things we have now because of our sacrifices. Now things are complicated and hard, but still full of love, which is the thing that I am quickly realizing matters the most.

There is always something about this specific place in time, now, that is so difficult to grab onto with anything but impatience.

Here's to patience.

Today's cause of nostalgia is spring-like weather. If you've been reading for a while, you know it really is an almost-daily trigger that leaves me visited by an enormous nostalgia (one of my favorite phrases and pretty much the mantra of my life so far--see?).

When it rains and is warm and stays light out until well after 6:00 PM, I feel hopeful. I always say that I feel like myself at the beginning of autumn, but I guess that's not entirely true. It's the combination of the two. Fall promises that brighter times are coming, and then spring delivers.

It's the beginning of both of these seasons--fall and spring--where I truly feel like the person that I want to be. The productive person who reads and goes running every day, who doesn't feel anxiety, who laughs constantly and spends time with friends and tries to love everyone and eats brunch and drinks Bloody Marys outside on patios on a regular basis.

So when it rains and is warm and stays light out until well after 6:00 PM, I start to think about last year in Charlottesville, with walks around UVA and pistachio milk lattes on the patio of my favorite coffee shop and Sunday mornings at home with Rob.

I think about Farmville, and our undergrad adventures with roommates and friends who made everything fun. I think about Clarissa and Dirty Shirleys with Caroline at one of two of the only bars in town, and the 45-minute drive that Raquel and I used to make just to get dinner from Chipotle.

And next spring, I'll look back at this spring and think about taking my dog downtown for the St. Patrick's Day parade and stopping to let every kid we passed pet him, walking around until he was so tired and happy he could barely keep his eyes open on the drive home. I'll look back at the spring on the lake where so much of my life felt like it was in transition, and I'll feel the same way I do each year, but different.

Winter.

I drove from Charlotte, North Carolina to Roanoke, Virginia on Wednesday night, and as the winter rain came down onto the road and onto my windshield, fogging up the glass and making me shiver in my coat and turn up the heat, I thought about the summer of 2012.

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Rob had just finished his coursework at UVA and I was almost done with my master's thesis from Hollins, and we packed up our apartment in Charlottesville and went to the lake for the weekend. Then, with nothing really to do, we went down to Charlotte for a few days to visit his parents before making the trek back up, past Roanoke, this time to DC. It was the end of May and it was hot and muggy and the summer rain came down onto the road and onto my windshield, fogging up the glass.

Summer.

Rob went to China that summer and I moved back into my parents' house, hell-bent on finishing my thesis. I remember that airport goodbye so well--Rob's bags, the skirt I was wearing, the flip flops on my feet and the feeling of uncertainty that crept through me as we kissed goodbye. This is it, I thought, the end of our planning so far. I didn't have a job yet and I wasn't even done with my graduate program, but when he came back from China, he'd be done and he'd be with me at the lake until he left and after that point, we'd be apart.

I can't remember the moment I first really knew that Rob and I were always going to be together--it's just something that sort of settled in naturally, creating a pocket of belonging and joy in my life that I never questioned.

So he went to China and I got a job in Roanoke and he came back and then he left for Northern Virginia, and it wasn't ever an issue. After years of being near and living together, being apart and living away was just the new thing that we did so that we didn't have to say goodbye.

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As I drove north from Charlotte this week and the rain came down, the Cloudy Day Nostalgia that hit me felt different than I had expected it to. It was new. As though that road ahead of me was winding with possibility after possibility and one good thing after another.