I had to make a quick visit back in Czech, just two days waiting around hospitals for appointments and evening with my parents.

Simple pleasures of picking fruit in a garden with mum talking anything and everything, men and their dirty dog ways mostly, making a red current and rhubarb pie and drowning the rest of our fruit harvest in prosecco glasses.

                       ***

My mum is still the most beautiful mum in the world. She's soft and smells like vanilla and safety.

Her and my father could not be possibly more different, yet through the turmoils and crappiness of life they remained side by side for 33 years.

They are at peace now. As my mum says - the good things don't come falling from the sky, you need to wait for them to grow.

Makes me think our generation got somehow very selfish and lazy. People rather abandon relationships than put the hard work in, cause if it's not selfsustainable it was not meant to be.

But nothing in life works just because it is meant to be. Happiness is not something that either happens to you or not. You make it happen.

And it's great if there's two of you working on the same project. But it still very much is about day to day labour and struggle with tiny but priceless rewards along the way.

reconnections

It's really bizarre the way time speeds up when you grow older. All of a sudden, there are people you haven't seen for five years and feels like it's been only five minutes.

I managed to arrange one such reconnection on my first night back home. I have met Tony five years ago, before moving to England. I was in a committed relationship back than and so was he, but the sparks and energy between the two of us was like something from Nicolas Spark's movie and the nagging little fantasy of what would become of us in a different lifetime, under different circumstances never quite left me.

My partner of almost eight years left me a few months ago and I thought - ok, maybe this is the time to meet Tony again and confront that inner tension.

He was still the same. Insanely good looking, funny and straightforward. Still haven't finished his medical studies, still sporting an otherworldly perfect quiff and lips. And a new ten years younger boyfriend...

We bought a champagne on the petrol station and drank it from my mum's best crystal glasses, parked not far from my parent's house, drowned in the darkness, listening to frogs cries in the nearby pond and talking all that could have been and would have been if we were ever allowed to take our unexplainable magnetism forward.

Maybe there is just no chance for us in this lifetime, or this universe, maybe in a parallel world we already have a house, two dogs and five year old twins. Or we attempted a relationship which never worked due to his deep rooted lust for all things adventurous, promiscuity included.

Maybe all those sparks that I thought could set the world on fire was just a very intense mutual sexual attraction, that restarted immediately regardless the five years gap.

What I know for sure is that we were meant to have that little special time with the bubbles in the darkness of his car.

You see I met a boy back in London, but thought to be too fragile or damaged or just not ready after the breakup to feel anything but subtle delight of someone's company and kindness and courting.

It was essential for me to realise there was nothing wrong with me, no body parts shattered and numbed by the disappointment of the failed relationship. Cause I became very much alive with Tony. It is simply that I have no chemistry towards that guy in London and there's no point in fighting it or feel guilty about it.

Because after all...With all the temptations of a single gay promiscuous life, all that scary and dangerous effortlessness of finding a good looking friend with benefits in your neighbourhood in less than ten minutes, one can so swiftly slip into a circle of addiction to this easy lifestyle of work and play with no strings, ready to be experienced any time suitable.

And even though navigating a single life landscape, learning how to date yourself and love yourself as a single individual and not a part of a couple which I always found to be my most comfortable and content self, can be frightening at times, I know now that eventually it is the kind of happiness I had right in front of my eyes the whole life, that I strive for.

The balance and love, strength and trust that my mum found with my dad.