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Of course, when Clara Jane's visiting her grandparents, I miss her, but it's rarely the painful, gonna-wilt-if-I-don't-see-her kind of missing. It's more of a vague, something's-not-right feeling. The former feeling always makes a few surprise appearances, though, always when I least expect it. Like last night. I had spent an hour knitting with Angela, then hit the grocery store.

It was after 8 PM and the store was fairly deserted. Normally, I love this. I don't remember a time when I didn't love going into a grocery store, alone, late in the evening. When I was in college and living with far too many roommates, I often did my grocery shopping in the middle of the night. I liked the solitude it provided. These days, being in a grocery store at a time without other customers, and without a tagalong parked (often whining) in the cart just doesn't happen. So I reveled a little.

About 3/4 of the way through my shopping I thought, "Wow. This is great. But I'm really looking forward to going home, getting into my pajamas, and snuggling on the couch with Clara Jane before she goes to bed."

And then I remembered. She's not there.

There was no reveling during the last 1/4 of the shopping trip. Instead, I thought about missing. I thought about the song I'd been listening to all day, and the longing and sadness in its words. Sweet little words that I won't hesitate to teach Clara Jane sometime soon, if only to make her stop singing Walt Whitman's Neice". Musically, it's jaunty and jangly; sadness disguised.

I've always thought that missing someone is the most powerful emotion. Not the most important; the most powerful. It's not love that makes us do crazy things for another person. More often than not, it's missing someone - or the fear of missing someone - that leads us to do the crazy and brave.

When I wrote about anxiety and panic last week, I wrote about the intense fear of loss that dictated so much of my life. It wasn't the loss that scared me the most; it was the belief that I might miss the lost one so terribly that it might do me in.

Once, I missed someone so much that I left my career, a town I loved, my friends, and my entire life to pack up and move to an unfamiliar city with no job and no money, just because I couldn't live with that feeling of missing someone anymore. The fear, uncertainly and sadness that came with leaving everything I knew was intense, but not nearly as intense as that feeling of missing someone.

In the ten months that B. and I lived in different cities, there were only two weekends when we weren't together. The first was during the first month. The second, Christmas, but we followed it by spending a week together. During that week we took measures to make sure we'd never miss each other again; we bought our house.

I think a lot about those ten months, of falling in love with 120 miles of interstate between us, of counting days every single week until we were together. There's an intensity that comes with that degree of missing someone. This week, it's been seven years since that last weekend we spent apart, but I can still feel that intensity. The feeling of finally arriving at his apartment every other Friday night, after the work week, the drive and traffic. Walking in the door and into the arms of what I'd spent five days missing. It's so intense that I can still remember the smell of his apartment and the smell of his skin. I can feel the relief that would wash across the muscles in my shoulders as soon as I arrived.

The sickening way missing him made me feel was matched only by the comfort of that first moment of reunion.

Every Sunday night, before we'd part, we'd spend an hour or two in bed. Not necessarily doing anything (although that wasn't uncommon) other than spooning together, trying to stockpile a bit of each other to counteract the anticipation of missing. When we moved in together, we swore that we would continue this little Sunday night routine. We'd turn off the TV, drop whatever chores needed to be done, and just stockpile that affection and contact. I think we did that the first week we lived together, and that was it. It just wasn't necessary anymore, not when we were finally able to spread the affection over seven days a week instead of two and a half.

While there was a lot I hated about being apart those ten months, I wouldn't trade it. Missing B. made me see very early in the relationship how important he was, and how living my life without him just wasn't as good as living it with him. We didn't get the chance to take each other for granted. It forced us to really get to know each other in a way that we probably wouldn't have if we'd been in the same city.

But truth be told, sometimes I miss the missing, just a little.