Son 1 has a girlfriend

This evening I discovered that Son 1 has a girlfriend. Of course I don't know how many others he might have had that I never knew about. I'm sure he'd never tell me. And even now, I learned of her kind of by accident.

A couple weeks ago, I sent Wife a couple of articles I'd seen about some witches who hexed Charlie Kirk shortly before he was shot. (See this link, this one [since the original article seems to have been taken down], and also this one.) She still hasn't said anything substantive about the articles, but yesterday she texted me that Son 1 had acquired a new kitten in addition to the cat I knew they already had. Then she mentioned another name I didn't know. I asked, "Who's ⸻? A third cat?" This evening, Wife replied:

No, she's Son 1's girlfriend. If he hasn't told you about her, maybe I shouldn't have. He didn't tell me either. I came home unexpectedly from a failed sleep study. I also just had a colonoscopy, but won't get the results back for a month. [Wow, nice that you managed to make it All About You again by the end of the paragraph!]

So this wasn't an Official Announcement, unlike when Son 2 called each of us in turn to announce his relationship with Beryl. This means I have no idea whether the young woman in question is a Serious Relationship, or just a casual fling that Wife happened to walk in on. (Didn't I say this would be one of the risks when Son 1 first said he was going to give Wife a place to live?)

On the other hand, I have to confess that I feel a little put out that I learned it like this. I can understand Son 1 telling nobody. But once the operation's security was compromised (so to speak), I could wish that he had wound up the job like a gentleman by notifying those who didn't know yet—namely, me. I assume that Son 2 already knows, because I think the boys talk more to each other than they do to either parent—well, except insofar as Son 1 has to coordinate basic household stuff with Wife because she lives there. But for personal things, I assume he talks to his brother first. Maybe I'm wrong.

If she's going to be a long-term item, I'd like to meet her. I wonder if I can possibly visit sometime while she's there ... maybe during the holidays? After all the obstacles I put up to Wife joining my family for the holidays, Son 1 would be well within his rights to say No. It would be no more than karma.

But maybe I can ask. 

       

Blast from the past: Wife meets Boyfriend 1 (B1, part 1)

Many years ago, when I first started this blog, I figured I would write a post sooner or later about Wife's involvement with Boyfriend 1. Someday.

Well, it's been fifteen years since I started the blog, and I haven't written it yet. How about if I start writing it tonight? I may not finish it all at once, but maybe it will take me less than another fifteen years to finish.

One other thing: the events in this story mostly happened 36 years ago. That's more than half my lifetime. It is inevitable that my memory will be a little foggy around the details. And if you ever hear the story from anyone else, it might sound different. This is what has stuck with me.

So … 36 years ago last summer, Wife and I had been married for two years, and had been in graduate school for two years. We had problems adjusting to married life. Each of us had unstated expectations that conflicted with the other's unstated expectations, and we weren't good at talking about these things. We were also really bad at communicating about sex, and the pressures of graduate school didn't give us a lot of space or freedom in which to get better at it. (One of our neighbors summarized the graduate school experience all too well by joking, "It's Saturday morning—time for sex!")

Marrying your parents? - revisited

A long time ago — gosh, it was more than eight years — I posted on the idea that we "marry our parents," or (more exactly) that we choose to fall in love with people who are like one or the other of our parents. At the time I used this model to understand what were till then my three most obvious romantic relationships. I wrote:

As I listened [to the talk that proposed this theory] I thought about myself and decided that this is a pretty easy case to make for me: Wife and D are both like my father (loud, opinionated, narcissistic, always the center of any gathering, outwardly domineering but with a surprising lack of self-confidence beneath the surface), while Debbie is a lot like my mother (quiet, comfortable in silence and solitude, deeply ethical in an unobtrusive and tolerant way … they even look alike physically).

But at the time I said nothing about Marie. Of course, back in 2013 Marie and I were not in communication. Back then she represented just a confusing and awkward part of my past. So it was easy for me to leave her out of the reckoning. But today that's no longer so easy. Today she's my girlfriend. So how does she fit into this theory? Or does she disprove it?

I've spent a while trying to think through an answer. In many ways she's not a good fit. On the one hand, she's shy, quiet, and chronically (almost neurotically) self-doubting; so she's a poor match for the loud, Falstaffian extroversion of my Father (or, mutatis mutandis, of Wife or D). On the other hand, she seems a lot more complicated and damaged than my Mother or Debbie — not that Mother or Debbie have had life unusually easy, but each of them seems able to respond to its trials with a calm and simple common-sense. And those are never words anyone would think of using to describe Marie.

So does she fit? Or not?

I was puzzled about this for some time, but recently I began to see a way forward towards an answer.

The last few times I've visited Mother, she and I have talked for hours. Days, even. And back in the past we never used to do that — meaning back when Father was alive. Back then he and I might talk for hours, but Mother always sat quietly in the background. And a couple of weeks ago, she explained how it was for her back then. She said, "Back when your dad was alive, I didn't feel like I needed to talk a lot because he took care of all that for me. It was easier to let him do all the talking and not compete. It was obvious that he liked to talk, so I just let him. Because anything that I needed to say, he was pretty sure to cover sooner or later. So it was easier to let him do it."

Then, last week, Marie told me that she lets her friends steamroller her in conversation because "it's easier" that way. And I could not help but to hear the echo.

So maybe that's it. Maybe Marie corresponds to Mother because they are both quiet, and they both find it easier to let someone else take over the conversation. It's still not a perfect match. Mother still has way more self-confidence than Marie. Mother ran the family business back when Father was fecklessly avoiding his responsibilities. Marie tells me that when she is responsible for something at work she can be a real "bitch" [her word] about getting it done right, but I don't see it. Maybe I'd see it if I worked at her store. Also it feels to me like Marie is still carrying more damage from her early life than Mother is. If nothing else, Mother married and had children, while Marie never did either.

But no theory like this is ever perfect. Always they are just ideas to give you insights that might help you understand your life. Maybe that's enough.       

         

Son 2 has a girlfriend

Yesterday Son 2 called me. He often calls on the weekend to say hello, though he's not strict about it. Anyway, this time he really said he had only one piece of news -- namely, that he has a girlfriend. I said this was much better news than his stepping in quicksand. He said, "Now you can decide that I'm normal," and I chuckled that I wouldn't go that far. He told me her name, and corrected my attempts to spell it. And that was about it. Then he said he was going to call Wife and tell her.

You will notice that this call told me almost nothing about her. Son 2 texted me a couple of photos, including one of the two of them together. She looks very pleasant; he's smiling. It's not quite what I've called a "goofy grin" but close. But he told me nothing else about her besides what I've told you here, and I didn't ask. My father was always really pushy and intrusive about wanting to know the details of my private life, and I want to spare Son 2 that same inquisition. I replied to his text saying that I'd be happy to hear any stories he wanted to tell me, but on his schedule. And that means that right now I know virtually nothing.

Son 2 did suggest that Wife won't be nearly so lenient. He left a message on her phone, and said that he expects "a barrage of questions." 

The call sounded rehearsed, and the abrupt way he ended it made him sound awkward. I assume that this relationship really isn't new, but that he got to the point of wanting to be able to refer to her by name when talking about her. Or maybe she pushed the issue, the way D once pushed it on me. Either way it didn't really feel like news. The last time or two that he stayed with me, whenever we talked he seemed to start a lot of sentences with "My housemate." ("My housemate did this," "My housemate did that.") Now he can give her a name, which is shorter. And one morning while he was sitting at my kitchen table, he got a phone call that prompted him to stand up and step outside right away; when that call wrapped up, I heard him sign off with "Love you." So as I say, it didn't really feel like news.

Doing the math, I realize that Son 2 is 23, and this is the first time he has said anything about dating anyone. That doesn't mean he hasn't dated, of course. He went to boarding school for high school and he went away to university, so anything is possible. But if he was dating before now, he never bothered to mention it. So it is possible that he started his romantic life kind of late, the same way I did.

Meanwhile his older brother, Son 1, has never said anything about dating at all. He has had the same opportunities as Son 2 for carrying on a romance out of sight of his parents, but I just notice that he has never said anything.

Twenty-three years old? When I was that age, I was already married. Not that my example is necessarily the best one to follow, obviously enough.

Anyway, that's the news.

         

Debbie is coming to town in February

Actually she will be visiting people in several parts of the state. She has quite an itinerary planned, starting with a visit to her mother.

And when she gets to the town where I live? Well she has a lot of friends here too. And there's the Sangha that she'll want to visit ... the Sangha she founded, and that I now visit weekly.

But she also asked me what I'd like to do. And when I sent her a few suggestions she accepted them all, adding, "I would love to spend as much time with you as we can both manage."

I'm pretty sure that offer still excludes fucking. But it is flattering to hear and sends a little frisson down my spine.

Naturally I told Marie that Debbie will be coming to town. I always tell her when Debbie and I are going to meet, though lately it has all been because I traveled to her place. I did, however, not quote the words "as much time ... as we can both manage." If I thought there were a risk of fucking, I would probably feel the need to be more conscientious about an exact quotation. Since there isn't I doubt it matters.

Not actually wrong

I've visited Debbie twice this year, both times on the occasion of a trip to Sticksville for work: once was at the beginning of June, and the other was in mid-October -- just recently. And both times I mused on choices she made during the visit that triggered me to wonder if she still had some kind of romantic feelings underneath the clear outward show of Good Behavior. Back in May she had us read Walt Whitman poems back and forth to each other; in October, she selected "Our Souls at Night" as a movie to watch.

Of course it would be no surprise if she did: how do you get rid of memories like that without replacing them by some other emotion? My feelings for D now are overlaid with frustration and anxiety; my feelings for Wife, with anger and fear and disdain and disgust. But I don't feel any of those things for Debbie, and so (as I have shared freely with you) I still feel a wistfulness towards her. Why shouldn't she feel something similar?

And then about a week ago I got an email that was a little clearer. I had written her about the rest of my trip: after visiting with her for a weekend I had gone on to work in Sticksville for a week, then flew the long way home so I could spend a few vacation days with Schmidt. The visit was very low-key for a lot of reasons, but Marie visited me there (we were all three friends back in college) and we had fun sitting round the table at dinner drinking too much wine and telling funny stories. Anyway, several days later I wrote a short email to Debbie that included the following:

I always enjoy visiting you, and this time was no exception. Always you give me a chance to shift into a different gear, I’m glad to spend time with your daughter and her husband, and our time together (yours and mine) is simply good. And thank you for the movie! I’d never heard of it before we watched it, but the reviews I looked up later said all the same things we did: that it was a remarkable piece of work done in a very understated way.

Her reply, a few days later, ended as follows:

I agree that our time together while you were here was simply good.  I will be honest and say that during your last two visits, I have found my heart opening to you.  I don't mean to complicate things.  Given all the context, including my personal commitment to respecting other people's relationships, it is not something to be acted upon but simply acknowledged and enjoyed for what it is.  I just think it might diminish the little bit of awkwardness that is present in our interactions to name it.

Bingo. I'm glad to know that my sense about this hasn't been actually wrong, all this time.

It took me a couple of days to think what to say back. I didn't want to wait too long -- when someone declares her love for you, a faster reply is always better.  But I also didn't want to say the wrong thing, and I thought that was altogether too likely. In the end maybe I said too much, though I hope not. What I wrote her went like this:

Your last paragraph made me feel very happy and ... what’s the right word? As if I were snugly wrapped in a soft, warm blanket. I know what you mean. There will always be a part of my heart that is open to you, too. At the same time, you are completely right that it doesn’t have to mean anything beyond or outside of itself. We can enjoy it for what it is, exactly as we have been doing. And we don’t have to carry it anywhere that makes a mess of the “context”. I know I felt the same thing on my side, but was concerned that saying something might be unwelcome; so thank you for naming it. 

With love and metta always,

Hosea

        

It never happened

A few days ago, as soon as I drafted by poem on the FMEA method, I sent it to Marie and asked for her feedback to make it better. A few days later she sent me a reply that she hadn't done anything with my poem yet, but that a book she was reading had inspired her to write one of her own.

====================

“The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened.” Robert Macfarlane, Underland.
 
it never happened
that i wed you as a girl
that we ran lightly
among trees hung with yellow fruit
 
it never happened
that i threw myself away
into the dark
 
it never happened
that we never
met again
 
we are here, and all that
never happened

Scarlett

A while ago I mentioned that I had tried to get in touch with an old school friend named Scarlett. Sure. Let me tell you how that worked out.

First, a few words about what Scarlett was like back in college. (This means 40 years ago, or so.) She looked nothing like Vivian Leigh. But her attitude was strictly "Take no prisoners." She might have been "only" a freshman when I was already a sophomore; but she had read more literature than I had ever heard of, had heard more music than I knew had ever been written, and had cast-iron opinions about all of it. Also she was a show-off, not only intellectually but in dress and style. She replaced the interior door in her dorm room with a beaded curtain, and sat around in a silk smoking jacket. In all these respects she was maybe a little like Bunthorne.

I was afraid of her scorn, but I also found her brass bitchiness really attractive. When I first met Wife, some years later, the very first thing I thought about her was that she reminded me strongly of Scarlett. (They even had the same hair color and general build, though Scarlett was a little taller.) Anyway, the flamboyance together with the arrogance are why I call her "Scarlett". She also dearly loved the color red.

[Update added July 19, 2020: I've thought about this some more since then, and realized that I was partway in love with Scarlett for exactly these reasons. Also this is part of why I fell in love with Wife so quickly, because she reminded me of Scarlett. That must be part of the reason I wanted to get back in touch with her, too.]

We all graduate. We lose touch with each other. I marry Wife and lose touch with everybody I used to know, because my new life is so bloody crazy. So ... fast-forward a few decades.

From time to time I would check the Internet to see if I could find any trace of people I used to know. It was partly a fantasy, partly a distraction. But twelve years ago I found an article she had posted online, and what I thought was her email address. I sent an email to the address commenting on the article, and got an error message back. Oh well. No other signs.

And every few years I'd look again. There were indications she was still in the same city where I'd found her the first time, still doing the same kind of thing ... but no clue at all towards a physical or electronic address.

And then finally this year it looked like my travel schedule would take me into the same ... large urban area in whose orbit she was living. (If she was still there.) So I did a few more searches, and -- lo and behold! -- she is now working somewhere new, somewhere that posts the email addresses of selected personnel on the web. If it's really the same Scarlett, I can reach her now!

Actually, when I first saw that my travel schedule seemed to be veering in that direction, I also checked our college's alumni directory and got a street address. No guarantee that it was current, but it's something.

So several weeks ago I sent her a card.

When a while went by and I had heard nothing, I sent an email.

When another while went by and I had still heard nothing, I sent a second email ... this time asking her opinion of an article I had seen about some Romantic composer I had never heard of before, a guy named Korngold. I figured it would be right up her alley.

Finally I got a reply, as follows:

Hello Hosea,
I've been out of town for a few weeks, and was very surprised to find not only your card, but also two emails in my work in-box when I returned.  I'd be interested to know how you got my work email address, since it's never been posted in our alumni directory.  Also, I must ask you not to use it again -- my work email is strictly for work.
Yes, I remember you -- we corresponded briefly after college, too.  I recall that in the last letter you sent, you said your life had become very, very busy and that you would not have time to reply to me any longer...but that you would be happy to receive any letters I might send.  You may recall I didn't reply.
...So I have to ask:  why the sudden urgency to get in touch with me now?  It surely can't be because of Korngold!

Best wishes,
Scarlett

Aha.

In other words, "Dear Hosea, You were a flaming asshole thirty-five years ago and therefore I wrote you off forever. Why the fuck are you contacting me now?" I suppose it is a fair question.

I sent her a reply in which I apologized for having been a jerk, and asked her forgiveness. I also told her that if she did not reply, I wouldn't pursue it. She has not replied.

Why did I do it? I hoped maybe I could re-establish some channel of communication, as I have done with Marie and Schmidt. Doubtless part of it is that I was so fascinated by her back when we were students, although my attraction to high-maintenance women has dimmed somewhat after Wife and D. And I was curious to learn if the resemblance to Wife carried through in some of their life experiences. Did Scarlett have the same struggles with mental health? (In retrospect I wouldn't be surprised if she had been a touch bipolar back then.) Did Scarlett have gastric bypass surgery for her weight? Did she ever establish any kind of permanent romantic bond with anyone? (She still goes by her maiden name, but that proves nothing.)

And is she happy with where her life has taken her? I was hoping to learn that.

I guess I won't. Damn shame.

[Update added July 19, 2020: Again, in retrospect I can make this easier. I got in touch with her again partly because I wanted to know if she had turned out the way Wife had, and partly because I had been in love with her way back when. So I could still think about her and sigh just a bit. Her reply, when I finally did reach her, confirmed that she was just as much a narcissist as Wife or D, and that I was better off not falling into her orbit again. Also, from what I could tell by stalking researching her on the Internet, it looked like she had spent the last thirty years in graduate school. Apparently she had given seminars and contributed to a book, but I saw no indication that she ever actually got a Ph.D. out of the whole thing. So in asking whether she was happy, I would have been asking her to reckon with some kind of academic failure. (That might be another reason she wanted to avoid the contact ... fear of having to explain where her life has gone since the Good Old Days when she was a Watson Scholar.) Anyway, that would have been malicious of me. Yes, I rationalized it to myself by suggesting that I could tell her why I think it is fine to be outside the Academy, but that's a little bit like saying "Your life would have been so much happier if you hadn't jumped off that cliff." Again, malicious. It's really just as well she blocked further communication. And I guess I really was being something of an ass. I wish I could see these things before I do them, rather than always only after.]

Icarus

I wondered how long it would take me before I wrote Marie a sonnet. This one took an hour and a half over lunch today. (Well, then a few hours later I came back to make some minor improvements to the scansion and in a couple other spots.)

You have to realize that in a way it's really cheeky of me to send Marie a sonnet. When we were in college she knew far more about poetry than I did and read a lot of it. She also wrote. Time and again she would give me a piece by one of her favorite feminist poets -- or by herself -- and I would flounder around helplessly not understanding it. As a side note, none of these poems ever rhymed, and none was in iambic pentameter. Not that that's a bad thing.

The images came to me because the tug between safety and risk is a big deal for Marie: it is a big part of how she understand her life. She said that when she first heard from me last fall she strongly considered not writing back, because she felt that engaging with me again would be emotionally unsafe. The course of prudence was clearly to keep silent. But then she reflected that she had been taking the safe course of action for several years by now, and all it had bought her was safety ... and stasis. Maybe it was time to risk something, ... just a bit.

Anyway, I thought about that for a while and decided to put it like this:

You know the fate of Icarus too well:

Those wings his father made, that let him go

Too near the sun. Wax melted. And he fell,

Smashing his body on the rocks below.

 

For safety you should live life on the ground:

A house, a yard, some money set aside,

With walls and fences built up all around –

A fine and private place where you can hide.

 

And yet you’ve met me on this precipice.

Our wings are stoutly made and bound with tar.

It’s sudden death if we but step amiss.

To skulk back down is safer, sure, by far.

 

But look, my love, and see the boundless sky.

Come take my hand – and leap! – and let us fly.    

I have a new girlfriend

Yup. Marie.

She still lives 1100 miles away. But maybe I shouldn't have taken her quite at her word when she expressed all the strong reasons she didn't want a new romantic partner.

Not sure when we will get a chance to see each other. She's going to call me Wednesday evening, which will be the first time we have heard each other's voices since the early 1990's. This has all been by e-mail.

You remember back in December when she said she wanted nothing to do with me, but I could write if I wanted to? At the time I characterized that slim permission as "a glimmer of hope." Probably I should have characterized it as winning. The only thing she would allow me to do was write? Skin me alive, boil me in oil, but whatever you do don't throw me in that briar patch .... 

I shouldn't gloat. But it has been a couple of years since Debbie left. Maybe it's time to find out if I have learned how to handle romances a little better and with fewer bad habits.

It's also true that there is something intoxicating about the challenge of seduction. Wish I were a little younger so that I felt more desperate urgency about the sex at the end of it all. But it will be great to see Marie again, to be friends with her again ... and maybe to handle bed a little better than I did before.
  

I think I've been forgiven

Back in this letter to Marie, I said I wouldn't ask her forgiveness for acting like such a shit during the time we knew each other. A while later she wrote back saying fine, then she wouldn't worry about giving it.

But really, I think we're there.

I told you about this e-mail that I got on New Year's Day. I replied. I was planning to keep you up to date on the continuing conversation, but that's going to be a little impractical. The next exchange was a week later, but it has rapidly turned into one or more e-mails back and forth every day or two. Some of these are very long. (She sent me one -- her version of what happened between us and after -- that came to seven pages when copied into MS Word. Her version is very different from mine, and actually I look better in hers. Just a bit.)

Oh, ... and we are signing off our e-mails to each other with "Love".

I don't think it's turning into a romance ... certainly not a conventional one. She lives 1100 miles from here and very emphatically is not looking for a romantic partner. Neither am I, though not as emphatically.

But I think she has gotten past being mad at me.

Some day I'll get around to posting the rest of the back story ....
  

Back-story on Marie, year 1

A few months ago, I wrote to Marie, my college girlfriend. And heard nothing back. Then I e-mailed her. And heard nothing back. Perhaps there's a message here, but I'm going to try one more time.

Why? In a recent e-mail, Schmidt said he had talked to Marie on the phone and she mentioned getting a letter from me. Apparently she said nothing about the e-mail. So perhaps the e-mail went astray or I had the address wrong. And perhaps she just hasn't gotten around to writing a reply.

In any event, if she didn't get the e-mail then she didn't get my promise to let it drop if I never heard back from her. I still want to give her the opportunity to ask me to go away just by failing to reply, but it's no fair my assuming that's what she means if I don't know that she heard me offer it. So this weekend I am going to write another letter, sent to the same address as the first one. That, at least, should get through.

Meanwhile I think it is time to give you a little of the back-story on her. Why am I prepared for the possibility that she might not want to talk to me again? Then if we do re-start our friendship -- given that I'll write about it -- you'll know more about our background. And even if we don't, the background will illuminate where my head was when I met Wife ... which might help explain why I married her.

Early in my sophomore year in college, four of us who had met (one way or another) the year before started to have lunch together regularly. I was one of this party; I probably won't have to give the other three names in the long term, so for now I'll call them A and R and Mac. (Schmidt joined us later in the year.) We were all sophomores, and all guys. Now, A began a relationship with a flamboyant freshman woman named Scarlett: I don't know quite how they met or how it started, but it didn't take long. And one evening Scarlett had a bunch of friends over to her room. Her two roommates were there, and one or two other freshman women from the same dorm. We all sat around and talked. I forget if there was food or wine or music; all I remember is talking. And as the evening got later, I did more and more of the talking, telling long stories about ... God knows what. (It will come as no surprise to you that I was telling long stories.) Over time people drifted away. A was still there because he was going to spend the night with Scarlett and it was her room. R was still there, I think Mac was still there. And there was one other freshman woman, directly across from me. Earlier in the evening she had been sitting, but by now she was lying on one side and listening with rapt attention. And smiling. She wasn't pretty -- her face was angular, her nose and chin jutted out sharply -- but her smile softened the effect, and every storyteller adores the look of an avid listener. At the time I didn't catch her name.

The next morning at breakfast, she was there in the cafeteria getting her food about the same time I was. We greeted each other with polite chit-chat (probably asking "Did you ever get any sleep last night?") and I apologized for having to ask her name again. She said it was Marie.

Soon, our lunch group of four had expanded to six with the addition of Scarlett and Marie. There was always a lot to talk about. In a little while more, Marie and I realized that we were taking the same Physics 100 class. We were in different sections, but by the second semester our schedules had shifted to allow us to share a lab. And we continued to talk a lot. Marie would show up at my dorm room to discuss physics problem sets, and we would talk for hours ... sometimes even about physics. I remember her standing in my doorway in a powder-blue jacket, primed, focused, fully alert, and with a slight smile as I opened the door. In retrospect, if I had put out my arms she would have jumped into them.

Why didn't I? Several reasons. In the first place, all of us thought she had developed a relationship with Mac. Maybe she had, I really don't know. I never asked. But when we were all together she and Mac usually had their hands all over each other. On the other hand she spent a lot of time with me too, and she beamed when we were together. Whatever there was with Mac, it didn't occupy her whole attention.

More fundamentally, I was cripplingly shy and socially naïve. I was frightened of doing anything wrong, with the result that often my interactions with girls were embarrassingly awkward. If I had been less afraid of doing something wrong, I would have done fewer things wrong -- but of course that's what I see now, decades older, looking back. Back then I was desperately young for my age. And yet maybe it wasn't obvious to others just how shy I really was ... because I had a loud voice and I covered my terror of intimacy with voluble expertise about any number of arcane topics. To the rest of the world I was a born scholar, someone who never had to worry about living in the real world because he was never going to leave Academia ... someone who never had to worry about love or sex because all he needed was his books.

God how I hated those books, sometimes. I could see the walls that I had built for myself, even if other people didn't always see that they were just walls and not my real nature. I could see that somewhere out beyond those walls there was a Real World, and that it was richer than anything I had inside: a Real World where people fell in and out of love, fought, broke up, made up, had sex, held each other, yelled, stormed, cried, and laughed. I yearned with all my heart to be free of those walls, and yet at the same time I was terrified to stick even a little finger out of them and I was sure I didn't speak the language. So I was stuck there, walled in by my books, without even a cask of amontillado to cheer my isolation.

At the same time I also loved my studies. I couldn't have done so well at them if I hadn't. And this digression is partly beside the point.

Don't get the idea that the infatuation was all on her part. Quite apart from my yearning to breathe free, I was deeply fond of her. I never used the word "love" to myself, largely because I didn't really know what it meant. How could I tell for sure if this thing I was feeling was love? But I was always glad to see her; my heart always beat a little faster when she was there; she brightened my days, and if I went a few days without seeing her those days were just dreary. I came to her room as often as she came to mine ... oftener, really, because her room was larger than mine and there were more places to sit down. Besides, she had a whole steamer trunk full of different kinds of tea, and she would put on water to boil whenever I came over. She had a large collection of poetry that she was always trying to discuss with me (and which I felt hopelessly incompetent to discuss), books on feminist theory, books in French (we both spoke French), ... it was just a delightful place to be. Much better than studying.

Was I in love? In retrospect, yes of course I was in love. Today it is obvious to me. But back then I didn't know the words to describe how I felt. That's how desperately clueless I was.

At the end of the school year in May, just before final exams, my college throws a big party that lasts all weekend. There is a huge barbecue, beer and drugs flow freely, there is music and dancing everywhere. Marie and I were about to go to the barbecue, but stopped by her room for something first -- that room where I had spent so many hours drinking tea, playing with her cat (which she had against dorm regulations), and talking. We got whatever we were there to get, and then Marie told me she had something to say. She sat down on her bed, stared at the floor far away from where I was standing, then rubbed her eyes with her hand and said haltingly, "It's just that ... I find you very attractive, and ...."

I don't remember what she said after that. I fainted.

Yes, it was a hot day and I was wearing something heavy that didn't breathe well. Yes, I'd probably had a beer already, so my head was a little light. Still, I fainted ... for the third and (so far) last time in my life. I must have said something about feeling hot. I don't remember saying it, but the next thing I knew Marie had helped me down the stairs into the basement where it was cooler, she had stripped off my heavy un-breathing shirt, and she had a wet washcloth on my forehead. After a while I felt better and we went to the barbecue. And we never picked up that conversation.

I wanted to. But I couldn't. Every day after that I told myself I had to go talk to her. And every day I failed to do it. I berated myself for my cowardice, I felt dismal for my failure, and I felt even worse that she had exposed her heart to me and I was just letting it hang out there in the wind. I knew I must be causing her terrible suffering, and I felt grief for it. But I could not make myself go and talk to her about it. When we saw each other we talked about other things, as if it had never happened.

And then the school year was over and we went to our homes. We wrote each other many letters over the summer, all about bright and cheery things. And we never talked about it.

Flirtation

What is it that makes flirtation so intoxicating, ... so irresistible?

I have said recently -- several times -- that I don't want another relationship any time soon.  I think I have good reasons for saying so.  All the logic and evidence I can muster support this decision.

But it seems like I can't stop myself from flirting.

A few weeks ago my home e-mail account was attacked by a virus.  I got notes from several people I know -- some of whom I hadn't heard from in a long time -- telling me they had gotten a suspicious e-mail from me and asking about it.  One of these notes was from a woman I used to work with many years ago.  In fact for several years I worked for her.  She lives in Europe now, so it's not like there's any chance of us idly meeting for coffee.  But at the time we got on very well: we collaborated on several important projects, we joked with each other quite a bit, we relied on each other's work implicitly: "No, I didn't look into that, you'd better ask Elly." "Sure, I took care of that, but for the other thing you'd have to ask Hosea."  Then time passed, she had two children (while still working), she and her husband moved to Europe, her husband started fucking someone else and they divorced, ... and so on.  I hadn't heard from her a lot -- maybe once every couple of years -- until this virus attack.  Anyway, she sent me a note; I replied; a few weeks later she sent me a follow up with a little more news; I replied again.  And part of me is standing to one side watching the progress of the conversation.  For one thing, it is speeding up: where it took a week or more to exchange one iteration at first, I got two different e-mails from her both today.  And I can tell that I'm opening up my letters just a little more each time: talking about my relationship with Wife, alluding to the breakup with Debbie, trying to utter a few comforting words about her own failed relationships since her divorce.  Long-term readers will recognize this pattern.  So why am I doing it?  I could write differently.  I don't have to nudge the conversation -- gently, I hope! -- in this direction.  And in reality I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  So why am I doing this?

Partly I think I enjoy the sense of power and skill that comes from being able to manipulate somebody else in this way.  That came out sounding a little harsher than I meant it, but in one sense what I am feeling is not at all admirable and deserves to be talked about like that.  And of course it's all uncertain: maybe the whole thing goes off the rails with the very next e-mail.  Elly is smart, and so nothing about it is a sure thing.  But I was so shy around girls for so many years ... and then all of a sudden I was married and faithful and therefore off the market ... that I'm only now really getting a sense of what I can and can't do in this arena.  It's a challenge.  It's fun.

And beyond all of that, there is something absolutely intoxicating about flirtation.

At the same time, ... well, I'm writing this from a hotel room in Weather City, far away from my home.  I'm here on business, called in more or less at the last minute to support a project that's spearheaded by a woman in one of our European offices.  (Not Elly!)  I worked with her for about a week last year on a different project, and when her planned collaborator on this one fell through she straightaway asked me if I could fill in.  I said Yes just as fast.  Anyway, here I am now.  We met at the airport, got a car, got lost en route to the hotel but are here now, safely ensconced in different rooms ... why am I bringing it up?  Only because I watched myself (and her) the whole time from when we met at the airport.  I could see myself striving to be my most charming, my most entertaining.  I could see her laughing at all manner of things I said, just as if they were really funny.  I listened to both of us making references to our work together last year, as if to a shared private joke of some kind.  And then I thought ....  I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  Even if I did, she's not available: she's got a boyfriend back in Europe, and two little girls as well.  (Her ex-husband, the father of the two girls, is apparently no longer in the picture.)  It's silly even to imagine anything going anywhere.  Only ... in that case why were we both being so funny, so charming, so bubbly at seeing each other?  Is it just because we worked well together last year?  Really?  Or is it because I'm a boy and she's a girl?

Is it because there is something absolutely, deliriously, bewitchingly intoxicating about flirtation?

Honestly, that's my bet.  But I had really better watch it, lest the intoxication get the better of me and take me somewhere that's bad for all of us ....
 

"On the madness and charm of crushes"

This was fun: an article about crushes ... why we fall into them, and what they mean.  You can find it here:

http://www.philosophersmail.com/relationships/on-the-madness-and-charm-of-crushes/

As a special extra, the article comes with its very own dose of Romantic Pessimism:  "everyone has something very substantially wrong with them once their characters are fully known, something so wrong as to make an eventual mockery of the unlimited rapture unleashed by the crush."

Have fun!

Marrying your parents?

Yesterday Debbie sent me a talk she had heard online about relationships.  (Actually it was a sermon, but kind of interesting all the same.)  The pastor mentioned several theories about how we choose the people we fall in love with, one of which was that we choose people who are like one of our parents.  The explanation had to do with healing the traumas of childhood, but I wonder if it isn’t simpler to say just that these are the personality types we grew up with, so we understand them and feel at home with them?

As I listened I thought about myself and decided that this is a pretty easy case to make for me: Wife and D are both like my father (loud, opinionated, narcissistic, always the center of any gathering, outwardly domineering but with a surprising lack of self-confidence beneath the surface), while Debbie is a lot like my mother (quiet, comfortable in silence and solitude, deeply ethical in an unobtrusive and tolerant way … they even look alike physically).  So when I called her later and we talked about it, I explained this and asked if it is true for her too.

At first she wasn’t sure.  She easily pegged her second husband as being a lot like her mother: no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, emotionally cold, and severely critical.  Then I asked, “OK, how about me?”  She said, “I’m not really sure. What comes to me first about you is your emotional warmth, and I don’t know where that fits in.”  I reminded her that she had described her first husband as emotionally very warm as well, not to mention a couple of boyfriends.  She continued to sound puzzled about how to fit this data into the theory about marrying your parents – indeed, about whether it fit at all – until I asked, “You haven’t told me much about your dad. What was he like?”  I knew he was an alcoholic while she was growing up, but what else?

And I swear as I am sitting here typing this that the first words out of her mouth were, “My father was emotionally very warm.”

“Go on.”

“Also he was curious, interested in things, … a lot more open-minded and open to the world than my mother ever was.”

“Yes?”

“And he was very passive – almost to the point that he couldn’t answer a question like, ‘Do you want a ham sandwich or a turkey sandwich? Do you want a sandwich or soup?’ He let my mother run everything. I actualy think that’s where his drinking came from later – that he felt trapped in his life, that he was suffering, and that he didn’t think he had any choices. He didn’t think he had any way out.”

Now let me pause here and ask: does everybody else see what I see?

“Debbie, dear heart, you’ve just described me. OK, maybe I’m not that passive any more, because I have worked hard at overcoming it. But when Wife and I were first married one of her running lines was, as she put it, ‘Chocolate or vanilla, Hosea? Pick one!’ And it was very hard for me to do. Plus, about ten years ago when the boys were a lot younger, there was a period of time when I ate and drank far more than I do now. I was probably seventy pounds heavier than I am today and I put away a fair bit of alcohol … all for exactly the same reasons. I was unhappy with my life and didn’t think I had any options because I was responsible to the boys and I had given marriage vows to Wife. So I ate and drank to insulate myself from it all. It’s true that I backed away from the precipice: I didn’t have a heart attack [knock wood] and I never fell into full-fledged alcoholism. Gradually I figured out how to make small positive changes in my life … disentangling myself from the net one strand at a time. And as I did those things, I gradually ate and drank less, and the weight began easing off me. But I totally get why somebody could end up in the place where your father did, because that could easily have been me.”

She was very thoughtful at this.  Apparently she hadn’t seen the comparison before.  Then she asked a few more questions, and we talked for an hour.

I don’t know if I’m sold on this theory as a general rule, just because it seems to apply in two cases (out of billions).  But it was an interesting evening.  If you’ve got a minute with nothing else to do, let me know if you think it works in your case too ….

And so on ...

I won't be able to give a date-by-date account of my time with Debbie the way I did with D, because we live in the same town only a couple miles apart.  There is just too much opportunity to get together for me to write a new post every time we do.  I'll never keep up if I have to post something every day.  But maybe I can jot down a few notes to bring the story up to the present.

The next Thursday I went over after work.  We kissed, we held, we carressed ... and we fucked right properly.  Everything in working order, and orgasms all round.  It was very satisfactory.  Debbie again said afterwards that she hadn't been sure her body was still capable of responding.  But then she told me a story which should have reassured her that there was no problem.  You remember back a month ago (Dear God, was it only a month ago?) when we shared our first kiss?  Apparently in the minute or so that it took us to kiss she went from zero to fully aroused ... fast enough that it startled (and delighted) her.  A little later, when I remarked that she hadn't been at all vocal during sex, she added to this story: ... that she drove immediately from the restaurant's parking lot to her home to masturbate, and that it was ... ummm ... very vocal.  (So maybe she is still feeling a little shy in front of me.)

The next weekend was a replay of the weekend before in the sense that the sex was again inconclusive, although we are getting ever better acquainted with each other's bodies.  Then two nights ago Wife told me she wasn't coming home that night, so I took advantage of her not being available as a witness to spend the whole night at Debbie's.  (And, like the previous Thursday, the sex was very satisfactory, both that night and the next morning.)  I'm not quite sure what to make of how inconsistent my erections have been.  But I think I want to wait a little longer before resigning myself to Old-Guy-dom and asking for Viagra.  Maybe it will sort itself out, like it did with D.  (Of course I was only in my forties then.)

The fucking has been delightful, of course, but there has been more to it as well.  Of course we have talked.  Debbie in particular has told me a lot of stories about things she's done and people she's known, and I have been fairly straightforward about asking: not in an inquisitorial sense, but just to understand (when she mentions something in passing) "What was that about?" and "Who was he (or she)?" and "How did that feel?"

But I have also started meditating.  This isn't anything Debbie pushed on me; I asked her.  I explained that I had always been kind of interested to know what meditation was about, but had never gotten it together enough to find out.  And so she offered me some things to read on how to start a meditation practice (including the book I mentioned here and a reference to this website here).  Plus we have been attending a group meditation in town on Tuesday evenings.  I can't claim any remarkable results in only a few weeks, but I like taking a few minutes each morning when I'm not thinking about the day ahead, ... just to rest and not be accountable for anything really.  That part is nice.

I have been trying to pick up some Russian terms of endearment to use with Debbie.  She's not Russian herself, but she studied the language for years and worked there for quite a while before coming back to the States and moving into a whole new line of work.  (This was back before I met her the first time.)  So it matters to her.  And so I've been trying to remember and pronounce moya milaya, moya nyezhnaya, ....

And Wife has finally concluded that I'm seeing somebody.  What amuses me no end is that she produces a long list of "proofs" triumphantly to show that I must be dating, ... and every single one of the "proofs" is wrong.  Every single one of them is something where she has her facts wrong, or where she doesn't understand what she is saying, or ... or ... or ....  If it were worth it to me, I could take the whole list apart piece by piece.  But I don't bother, because of course her conclusion is absolutely right.  I am seeing someone!  I don't especially feel like discussing it with her (though I remain unconvinced that there is any reason behind my reticence other than that it is none of her damned business) so I pretty much just tune her out when she starts in on it.

I'll add in highlights when there's something to write.  But this is how things look today.

“What were we thinking?”

Meanwhile -- I mean, at the same time we were finally getting naked together -- Debbie had a throat infection which turned into strep.  Monday she texted me about it.  I called her and we talked for a bit.  She pointed out that she should have known better because she already knew she had a sore throat when we lay down together; and that yes, strep can indeed be transmitted by oral sex.  (Ooops.)  She added that maybe we should have talked about STDs too, just to be cautious, although she was sure that she was clean on her side.  (The things I had told her about Wife made her less sure about me.)  And she added, amused but a bit ruefully, “What were we thinking? We were just like a couple of teenagers.”

Well yes, that we were.  And it was fun, too.  But I liked the phrase, and started mulling it.  And two days later, on Wednesday, I sent her this:

"What were we thinking, falling into bed,

"Like teenagers who have no better sense?

"We know infections oft' like that are spread,

"With age and caution sure our best defense.

"Besides we'd made ourselves a pact to wait

"Till I my ring and baggage should remove

"Into a cleanly separated state –

"So no-one in the world could disapprove!"

So squeaks the voice of prudence, high and thin.

But how can I be prudent, loving you?

My fingers thrill to touch your tender skin,

And feel your kindness radiating through.

That passion’s folly, no-one will deny,

For prudent love’s akin to freezing fire.

Yet even godly Plato praised most high

This lunacy divine that draws us higher.

Against this passion gods defenseless strove.

Love’s spell ensorcells me no less than Jove.

The next time we talked she expressed amazement at getting more poetry, and said she liked this one even better than the last one … but that it is so very personal she couldn’t imagine letting anybody else see it.  I replied that, after all, viewed from one angle the whole point of poetry is to court beautiful women.

And she said just, “It’s working.”

And so to bed

It’s hard to believe it has been only a week and a half since Debbie and I got naked together.  So much has changed, so fast.  There must be something magical about sex.

It was Saturday.  I was over at her place, reading her Dorothy Bryant’s Miss Giardino, a book I really enjoy.  We were sitting on her sofa side by side, taking time out every few paragraphs to kiss. 

After a while the kissing got more heated and more intense.  When we stopped for breath, Debbie said, “Maybe we had better go for a walk” … but neither of us made the slightest move to get up.  I asked her when she would feel comfortable about going farther – about fucking, except I didn’t put it that way to her.  After all, I don’t expect to be legally divorced.  And I have no idea when Wife and I will live under separate roofs.  As a practising lay Buddhist, Debbie is bound by rules prohibiting sexual immorality; but she understands those rules to mean "Do no harm," and it's not like she could possibly be responsible for breaking up Wife and me.  Debbie said that if it’s going to be only a little while till I moved out, she’d rather wait; but if it will be a long while, then no.

At this point I got a text from Son 1 telling me he had just finished taking the SAT.  Debbie suggested I call him.  I didn’t really want to let go of her, so I said he could wait a minute.

She thought some more.

Then finally, slowly, she said, “I think … I think I’d like us to move into the bedroom. But first I’d like you to call Son 1.”

Hallelujah.

I called Son 1.  He hadn’t really expected me to call, but we chit-chatted for a minute before he wanted to go off and do something else anyway.  So Debbie and I moved into her bedroom.

Is it just my experience, or is there always something a little awkward about that moment when the two of you have first decided that you are going to fuck, but you haven’t yet and you face each other alone and fully dressed?  Admittedly my experience isn’t very wide (you can cross-reference here), but it seems that way.  So we stood there for what was probably half a second (but felt like a couple of minutes) figuring out, What now?

Debbie asked, “Shall we undress each other?”  Yes.  Let’s do that.  And let me add that Debbie has a lovely body.

Yes, she’s fifty-eight; and yes, you can see it in her face and hands.  Age wrinkles all of us there.  Even D, you will recall, had deep wrinkles in her face.

But the skin beneath her clothing is smooth and soft and creamy; her breasts are surprisingly firm (much firmer than D’s); her nipples are small, light pink, and seem always at attention; her pubic hair is light golden brown with not a streak of grey.  Could it be this way with all women in their late fifties – I mean, that they look older on the outside but have the bodies of women twenty years younger?  Or have I just been incredibly lucky with D and Debbie?  Either way, I’m not going to analyze it too much.  Nor complain.

But I couldn’t get hard.  Not at all.  Not that day, and not the next when I came back and we spent a few more hours in bed.  Oh, I think I got a little hard at one point but it lasted only a few minutes.  But other than that, … nothing.  I tried not to be embarrassed.  I told Debbie it was probably just shyness … that I had reason to think this was normal when I was with someone new for the first time.  (I wasn’t sure how much to tell her about my time with D, although as the days have passed we have both shared stories about prior lovers so it turned out to be OK.)  Debbie worried that she was doing something wrong, that she was not giving me the cues I needed somehow.  (Apparently this was a big problem with her second husband: that he consistently misread her sexual cues and gave her none of his own.)  But no, it wasn’t that.  My dick just refused to engage.

For her part, I’m not sure that Debbie ever came, either.  She breathed heavily but there was none of the volcanic convulsion that I learned to expect from D’s orgasms.  Debbie told me she was already pleased she could respond as far as she did – that she had feared she wouldn’t respond at all because it had been so long since she had fucked anyone.  (I still don’t know how long “so long” is, but apparently her sex life with her second husband came to an end not long after their daughter was born. And the daughter is now in graduate school.)  And she was full of praise for how skilled she thought I was.  I can’t think of anything I did that exhibited any great skill; just used my tongue and fingers in ways I learned from my time with D.  But Debbie was very happy.  And after a couple of hours, she told me she had memorized a poem for me, and recited it:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

If you measure sex by an orgasm count, the weekend wasn’t much.  But it was our first time lying together, skin to skin, and starting to explore each other’s bodies.  And by that measure it was perfect heaven.

When can you tell people you are dating?

I don't have much time, so I'll keep this very brief.  When you are in the process of divorcing (or separating, in my case), when is it OK to let people know you are also dating?

I'm thinking of Debbie and me.  And I'm thinking that I haven't moved out of the house yet (or Wife hasn't ... the delay is exactly because we haven't figured out yet who's moving).  And my lawyer is working on the papers for separation but hasn't filed them yet.  On the other hand, Wife and I have had no real marriage for ... well, a long time, as you know.  And God knows Wife hasn't been terribly subtle about seeing her own friends.

It's an issue because Debbie and I live in the same town.  There's more of a risk that we might be seen doing things together than there ever was with D.  But also I'm farther along with the whole divorce thing.  My family knows.  The boys know. 

Are there reasons I still need to keep Debbie a secret?  Advice is welcome ....

Dinner with Debbie: depression and … D

A couple of nights ago I had dinner with Debbie.  I was feeling slightly feverish (from an unknown bug) so we agreed we wouldn’t kiss.  Still, it had been two whole days since we had seen each other (aren’t the first stages of love grand?) and so we both wanted to get together again.

She started out by telling me something she had been reading about how illness is perceived in different cultures: specifically, in this case, about a concrete case where mental illness (epilepsy) was understood as a special spiritual gift.  We both agreed that there really does seem to be an aura of specialness, a light in the eyes, emanating from those with mental disorders.  I talked about how magical Wife had seemed when I first met her; Debbie talked about her favorite aunt as she grew up, who was also crazy.  We agreed, too, that there is an intensity about these people that makes them exciting to be around, even while it completely destabilizes the lives of everyone within splashing distance.

I asked her if she had ever been diagnosed with depression, because I wanted to test a hypothesis that I formulated a few years ago.  Over the years I have noticed that with most people, my conversation is very superficial and unsatisfying, as if we somehow spoke different languages or came from different worlds.  This is frustrating because it means that I go through life seeing many good and admirable people with whom I would like to be friends … only I can find absolutely no basis for a friendship with them.  Maybe we can be colleagues who respect each other’s work, but no more.  And then on the other hand there are a few people with whom I understand instantly that I can talk deeply and at length.  All too often these are people who are somehow on the margins of whatever enterprise we are engaged in: people who don’t fit terribly well into the company or school where we both find ourselves.  Or they are people who have something far from admirable about them.  And often I have found later that they are depressed.  Since I suffer from depression too, I had hit on the idea that maybe somehow the depression is what I see in someone when I meet him or her, that tells me right away, “This person is like you and you can talk to each other.”  Maybe this is what I first saw in Wife, that attracted me even though she later proved so unsuitable in so many ways.  Maybe.

Only it turns out Debbie isn’t a chronic depressive.  She was afflicted with it twice: once was clearly situational, and the other time was a side-effect of another illness.  I explained my hypothesis and she suggested that maybe the real key is that the people I can talk to – the people I understand – are people like me who have a very extensive inner life.  (I figure this is a nice way to say, “People who wander around talking to themselves a lot.”)  This will include a lot of depressed people, because depression draws one inward; but it’s not exactly the same.

And then she said something about her own experience and used the phrase, “that was back when I still confused intensity for intimacy.”  I thought of my long-standing issue with “high-maintenance women” and laughed … and then kept laughing … and couldn’t stop.

Gosh, do think that might have been a bit of a give-away?  Debbie clearly did.  She asked, “What does this bring up for you?”

And so I told her.

I made it brief.  No names, precious few details.  I explained that I had broken it off because the intensity got too much for me.  And I explained that I often found myself wondering, “What the hell is it with me and high-maintenance women, anyway?”  (But I did not tell her that I have this blog. See, even I can learn.)

Debbie said, “Gosh, that makes me really hope I’m not a high-maintenance woman.”

I reassured her that it doesn’t look that way, using basically the same observations I made here.  But then I added that this is a story I have been really afraid to tell her; that after my fear that she would laugh at me for having been in love with her all these years, my next biggest fear in the whole relationship so far has been telling her about my affair with D … because I feared she would disapprove.

She looked thoughtful.  “I don’t disapprove. I don’t know what I would have done in your situation, with a marriage like what you’ve described. In general my own inhibitions have been strong enough and absolute enough that any kind of straying has been just unthinkable for me.”  This explains, by the way, why years ago, when she finally figured out that our relationship at work was acquiring romantic undertones, she called in her husband to slam on the brakes. But then she mused, “Well, except for once ….”  Then she told me her story.  It wasn’t quite the same, though, because she had been single at the time (but the guy was married).  Still, I clung desperately to her saying she didn’t disapprove ….

We had been talking for two hours.  It was getting time to go.  But I asked her one last question: “Have you heard of Sara Teasdale?”

“I think so. Wasn’t she a poet? I don’t know any of her work.”

“Yes, she was a poet. But I thought of her apropos of our whole discussion of intensity. Because there was this one poem of hers that I found years ago, in a textbook Wife was teaching out of back when she taught high-school English. It has stuck with me ever since."  And I quoted her “Barter” (which you all know by heart from seeing it on my sidebar for so long).

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness --
Buy it and never count the cost!
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost.
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Very softly she said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

We wrapped up and went our separate ways.  But I have been thinking about the dinner ever since.