Vera and I have spent the following months working, carefully and patiently, to rebuild the specific, wordless closeness that had once defined our relationship, understanding that ten years of separate, entirely disconnected experience had genuinely changed both of us in ways that couldn’t simply be erased by the joy of reunion alone.
The process has required, in its own way, an entirely new kind of relationship-building — getting to know each other as the specific people we’d each separately become, rather than simply assuming the automatic, effortless understanding that had once defined our twin bond could instantly resume exactly where it had been interrupted. I’ve found, gradually, that this new process of rediscovery carries its own genuine, considerable joy, distinct from but not lesser than the easy closeness we’d once shared before that highway accident so completely, if temporarily, separated us.
