Is that all there is?

Its late here and I just got in.

I'm bushed. It took too long.

The streets were quiet as I walked home and so is my house.

As the room emptied tonight, that familiar loneliness of a jobbing mediator stole under the door on the back of a thin winter draught.

But it was an oddly gentle conversation today and a satisfying (for them? for me?) mediation.

Actually, they were AWOL for a lot of it, going back to other times and other relationships, trying to accommodate the past.

All of them had moved in all sorts of ways by the end.

As I slowly wiped down the whiteboard Eric Galton's Texas drawl popped into my head "...so the next time your mediation ends, everyone leaves at 1.00am and that lonely feeling creeps under your skin.... if you listen very, very hard, we are cheering about that play you made in the extra innings that made resolution possible..."