Graargh!

About fifteen minutes before the end of tennis practice today, Sara gave me a call. We bumped into each other on Saturday for the first time in just under four years. She's in Med-school with a crazy schedule, so I just told her to give me a buzz if she wanted to get together for a drink before she leaves for Montana. From our chatting on Saturday, I was under the impression that she had another few weeks in Seattle, and would only have a day or two off between now and her departure.

I called her back once practice was finished, and she informed me that she had tonight off. We agreed on the Greenlake Bar and Grill for drinks after dinner, but before my racquetball with Tyler at 8pm. Sara and I talked pretty much non-stop from 6:30pm to five minutes before 8pm.

She's doing great, and has about 18 months left of Med school, before she becomes a doctor. She runs marathons in her spare time, which she doesn't have much of, and she loves to hike. She's had a couple so-so relationships since we broke up, and is currently in a long-distance relationship with a guy who is moving to Sandpoint, ID--which is where Sara will eventually be doing the surgery part of her residency.

She sounded like she had some reservations about losing the freedom of a long-distance relationship, but she's got her own place lined up through the school, so she'll still have her space. I mentioned that if Stacey and I had moved in together right away, we wouldn't have lasted two weeks! Sara's also got a bit more time off than she originally thought, but she's leaving a week from this Friday. She's on call tomorrow, and has the entire weekend off. She expressed interest in both hiking and seeing my Dad again before she leaves. She loves my Dad, and is loved back. I guess it is his weirdness that she likes, and the fact that he keeps her on the right track. I'm pretty sure he is constantly reminding her not to be "one of those money-grubbing doctors who makes me wait!" It is easy to see why he likes her, as she is pretty much proof that humanity can still do good.

Sara plans on coming back to Seattle after her residency. Her little brother and his wife Kristen live over near Greenlake, and they have a seven-month old daughter who Sara completely adores. I don't think she's going to stay away from that kid for very long, and she talked about wanting to have kids of her own right around age 30. That was always my ideal age for having kids too, but I understand you can't always plan those things the way you might dream them up.

We talked a bit about our old relationship, and how much fun we had together and how we never fought. We didn't even really fight when we broke up, although I do admit to acting very selfish and stupid. We talked once during our relationship about how our previous relationships had ended, and she said pretty much all of hers had ended well. She was still friends with a few of the guys. I didn't see how that was possible, and admitted that all of my ex-girlfriends were not friends, and not on my list of people to call in case of emergency. Another lesson learned--it wasn't them, it was me. Sara is an amazing person, who can remain friends with people who have hurt her, and she is someone that people want to remain friends with when she hurts them. I, on the other hand, had a bad case of indifference when it came to exes. I'm not sure I truly grasped that until talking with Sara tonight.

After a quick hug good-bye, and plans to meet again before she leaves for Montana, I raced over to Tyler's. On our way over to Sand Point, he was telling me about a new game he just bought, and how it takes place in Seattle. In the first act, the Kingdome gets blown to smithereens by the Russians. The game sounds fun, but...

I could not get Sara out of my head.

Why didn't I fight for her again? Why did I just let her go? I guess at the time, it didn't seem like a fight I could win (that God guy is a wily opponent). But instead of talking about it, or seeing if there was any room for compromise, I just walked away and let her go. At the time, our relationship felt like a lot more than just a summer fling, but that is all it really was. Tonight, she said something about skiing over in Idaho and Montana this winter, and I just assumed that we had skied together before, but now I'm not sure we did. I don't think we were still together when the white stuff started to fall.

It felt really good to whack that racquetball against the wall as hard as I could. I ended up losing to Tyler in both games we played tonight, 8-11 and 10-11. Beer before racquetball didn't help, nor did having my head in the clouds...