The fishmongers of Maine

My mom and I went to buy fish a couple of days ago while on vacation on the Maine coast. Mom was very nervous about this endeavor, because usually my dad is in charge of fish purchases. All afternoon she talked about how hard it would be to buy fish without him. I countered by telling her, "We can do this, Mom. We are two capable women, and we can figure out how to buy a tasty fish."

We went to one store. The fish did not look promising. We took one look and backed out of the store.

We weren't sure where to go next. "You could check your Google," suggested Mom (that's what she calls the iPhone).

"Or you could check YOUR Google," I said.

"I'm not sure how to," she responded. It turns out that we were out of cell phone range, so neither of our Googles worked.

We tried another store -- your run of the mill grocery store, like the downeast Maine version of a Stop 'n Shop. This was definitely NOT the Whole Foods. However, the fish didn't look terrible like at the last place.

"We need to ask some questions about it," Mom said. "That's what Dad does."

We found a woman who worked there. "Has this fish been previously frozen?" asked Mom.

She felt the fish. "It feels like it's maybe just a little frozen," she responded with a heavy Russian accent.

"Is it farmed or wild caught?" Mom asked.

The woman gave her a confused look.

"I have to text Dad to ask what we should do," Mom said. She got out her Google and tried. The text wouldn't go through.

We decided to try one more place. The fish there was very fresh, they told us, and also wildly expensive. It was so expensive we didn't even bother to ask all of our questions. This fish was made of pure gold, obviously. There was no way it didn't match our criteria. We bought it.

Dad took one look at it and pronounced, "This salmon is from a farm. Wild caught salmon is much darker."

Mom groaned.

The fish was delicious, but by that point it didn't matter. We had failed. I suspect it will be many years before Mom undertakes another fish-buying mission.

Austerity Times

To deal with reduced financial circumstances, I've temporarily had to implement austerity measures. I'm hoping it won't be for long, because two weeks in I'm already missing the little perks in life, but in the meantime here are a few things I am not allowed to indulge in:

• Bars. Drinking is allowed only within the confines of a house.
  
• Eating out. But, austerity measures are not about being cheap, so if a friend treats you, you still need to reciprocate.
  
• Parking tickets/towing fees. So hard to resist their allure.
  
• Pottery lessons. Big frowny face.
  
• Yoga? Still trying to figure that one out because I'm not sure I can live without it.
• Clothes. If you have enough clothes that they overflow your ample drawer space AND several boxes in the basement, it's enough. (I may have slipped up a bit this afternoon when I HAPPENED to be on the JCrew website and saw some crazy sales. But I put it on a gift card, so it doesn't count.)
• A Smartphone. I'm up for a new phone from Verizon, and had planned on joining the masses and getting an iPhone. But it'll have to wait. (On a related note, when did it become so rare to only have a Dumbphone??)
  
• Gas. Hence, I am biking everywhere. Which means I am often sweaty, a bit smelly, and very buff.
• Cheese that costs more than $8. Not totally sure I can live without that, either, but we'll see.
• Mani/pedis and waxes. Sorry in advance for all the extra hair.
  

And here are a few things that can help one get through Austerity Times:

• Friends who are also on austerity measures to plan fun, low-cost activities with and help you stick to the plan.
  
• Benefactors who ship you boxes of free clothes. Because there's always a LITTLE bit more space in those drawers. Or in the basement. Or on the floor. (Thanks, D.)
  
• Foraging. Rather than head to the farmer's market and purchase pricey organic berries for my annual late summer jam-making extravaganza, as I have in the past, I visited a few crab apple trees near my parents' house last week and picked away, free of charge. On the way back, my arms laden down with apple bags, I was inspired when I passed some Rugosa roses and noticed their bulging hips, and I picked some of those, too. I also found some elderberries, but at that point I was running short on time and had to stick with my first two finds (but I have high hopes for next year!). Downside to foraging: Lots of worms. Like, really lots. I'm pretty sure neither my apple jam nor my rose hip jelly can be considered vegetarian. Upside: extra protein.

Rebellion 2011

There wasn't much to rebel against this year, since Camping Snobs, my sister and dad's exclusive (read: they did not invite me) cross-country ski trip was kaput, but Rebellion 2011 was a resounding success anyway. Here's my top 10 list of great things about Rebellion:

10. It's so far from school in every way that I couldn't possibly think about work even if I tried.

9. Mom flailing like a cockroach on its back when she falls over. Big letdown this year: she didn't even go down once. I sure hope you don't disappoint next year, Mom.

8. Hot cocoa with a little special something after a long day of skiing.

7. Mushing. This year we got to watch two dog sled teams but didn't get to do any ourselves; I'm considering adding a mushing component to Rebellion 2012.

6. Arriving in camp to a cozy fire burning in our cabin's stove; and, to go with that,

5. Saunas with a woodburning stove and easy access to the out-of-doors where you can grab chunks of icy snow to rub on your aching muscles. And, um, parents who remember to keep their towels wrapped securely around them in the sauna. (Good work on that this year, guys. Much better than last year.)

4. Baby back ribs. And waffles, bacon, split pea soup, and abundant (real) maple syrup.

3. Those nice, easy downhill sections where you glide right along and there's no stream at the bottom that you risk falling into.

2. Coming home to my two sweethearts, Dreamy and Persil. (Yes, Persil is still alive! Dreamy didn't kill him.)

1. Composting toilets! I know it doesn't sound very luxurious, but believe me, after a day (and night) of using outhouses in subzero temperatures, it sure feels it. Of course, it's still a long way to get to the Clivuses in the main building from the cabins, so in the middle of the night either peeing off the porch or just holding it start to seem like better options. I went for the latter, and my bladder may have expanded to twice its former size in the past week.

Looking forward to Rebellion 2012!

The trees in the forest

Dreamy and I went up to Maine for a quick visit this weekend, along with my sister and her recently-promoted boyfriend (now fiance), the Sensitive Bostonian. On the drive home, Dreamy began querying me about different important relationships I've had in my life, both romantic and non. He loves doing this, just as he loves looking at the photographs of me as a child scattered around my parents' house; it's clear that he could listen to me talk for hours -- a very good trait in a boyfriend.

After he was done, Dreamy began responding to my descriptions, and I immediately laughed because he sounded so much like a therapist. "I notice a parallel between your relationship with X and your relationship with Z," he began, and went on to pontificate on the ways in which I have felt helped and hindered by various important people in my life. At the end, he queried, "Was that too therapist-y for you?"

"A little," I replied honestly, and went on to explain. What I was feeling as Dreamy talked was the same frustration I often felt during sessions with my own, now sadly neglected Wise Woman: Any description I could give during a car ride, or an hourlong session in a therapist's office, of a 4, or 8, or 31-year long relationship is bound to be an oversimplification. People are complicated, and relationships are complicated, and I find it next to impossible to describe a relationship without afterward remembering a gazillion examples of interactions that completely undermine what I just finished saying. For instance, what Dreamy gleaned from my tales was that I felt empowered during my relationship with my Italian ex, l'Artista, because he encouraged me to try new things and to be independent, and I felt stifled by La Moustache because he protected me too much. But l'Artista could also be very protective of me, and I can easily think of any number of things that I would never have tried had it not been for La Moustache.

I realize that it's a necessary skill to see past all the details and make decisions based on the forest, and not the trees, but it's one that I have trouble with, especially since I tend to live in the moment and be quite distracted by whatever tree happens to be right in front of me. I notice the same thing with Dreamy: 99% of the time he's wonderful and thoughtful, and he constantly says sweet, cheesy things to me, like "I just got shivers all over my body because I like you so much." However, he can also be a huge space cadet (as I may have mentioned once or twice), and can be quite thoughtless at times -- not because he means to at all, but purely for lack of noticing that he's being thoughtless. For instance, sometimes he forgets that his chin is scratchy and hurts me when he kisses me (I know this sounds innocuous, but seriously, his 5 o'clock shadow is CRAZY SCRATCHY -- as evidenced by the rugburn I got when we first started dating). Or, the other day he had to work late and I offered to bring him dinner after work, but he got hungry and decided to have a snack to tide him over, which turned into a full-fledged dinner -- and then he forgot to inform me that this had happened, until I started to unpack my overflowing tupperware filled with delicious home-cooked food, at which time he finally mentioned that he was stuffed.

Dreamy always feels terrible when he commits these faux pas, and apologizes profusely. Most of the time, even when he's being a bit clueless, I feel like the positives far outweigh the negatives; after all, if all else fails I know that I have only to tell Dreamy what to do to make me happy and he will spare no effort to do it. Still, there are moments when he behaves cluelessly and completely lose sight of all the great things about him.

And on that note, I'm off to watch the Patriots game and try really, really hard to like football, for Dreamy's sake.

Black or White

I can't remember if my home state, Maine, has the distinction of being the #1 least racially diverse state, or if it comes in a close second after Vermont. But, in either case, there weren't a lot of black kids in my town growing up. As far as I could tell, there was one family: the Grays, who lived down the street from me and were the only family I knew who lived in an apartment building. Richard was in my class, and he had a few siblings, one of whom I believe was my sister's age; occasionally we'd go down there and have playdates, even though we weren't particularly friends, I suppose because of the proximity of our houses (or maybe because my mom wanted me to have the maximum possible exposure to what little diversity there was around). When Richard and I were around eight or nine, the family moved away, and I don't know what happened to them after that.

The Grays were not the only poor family in town. Far from it. There used to be a navy base there; the Navy families were distinctly working-class. There are huge mobile home parks on the outskirts of town, and for a while I'd often go there for playdates with another friend. Still, in my memory, Richard seemed MORE different than the other kids, and he probably felt that way. Even my half-Asian classmate, who always seemed to be the smartest, most athletic, most artistic kid in school, felt different, so I'm sure Richard felt out of place.

Three years ago, I worked in a fancy private school in Brooklyn, and I had two black boys in my class. One was athletic and charming and friends with everyone, but the other had a lot of social issues. He had moved to Brooklyn two years prior during Hurricane Katrina, so already he came from a totally different place. He was the only kid at the school who lived in Queens, so even if he had friends, hanging out outside of school wasn't really an option. He was very smart, but watching him try to play with the other boys in the class was painful. He was incredibly awkward and had no clue how to befriend other kids, and would invariably end up alienating and annoying them through his misguided attempts, like knocking down big block towers they were constructing. The lone black girl also didn't have it easy; she came from a very traditional West Indian family, and had a tendency to wander off into different parts of the school and spend long periods of time in the bathroom. It was clear that she was on her way toward being labeled an oddball kid by her peers. I really felt for these kids, and I secretly thought that their parents were paying big bucks for a school that, in the end, wasn't such a great situation for them.

This year, I'm faced with a similar scenario. I have one black girl and one black boy in my class. I'm still sizing up the social scene, but it's already clear that the black boy is struggling. He had a bathroom accident the other day, and was too embarrassed to tell me. I had to pull the kids one by one to question them as we all struggled to ignore the overpowering smell. It was totally heartbreaking. (Luckily, I don't THINK the kids ever clued in to the fact that it was him. The nurse whisked him subtly away as soon as we figured out the source of the odor.)

It's really not good for anyone to have so little diversity -- the white kids would benefit as much as the black kids from being in a class where everyone has lots of examples of other kids who are different from them, as well as examples of kids who are the same as them (and by "different" and "the same" I mean in LOTS of senses, not just the color of their skin). It's just one of many reasons that the shocking segregation that exists in the vast majority of the schools in our country should end.

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to increase the diversity in my class, but I will try my best to celebrate what little diversity we have and to make all my kids feel like they are important parts of our community. How much of a difference I can really make in these kids' lives remains to be seen.

Countdown

I've still been maintaining a lively correspondence with Dreamy from OkCupid. Unfortunately, he is going out of town for a while, so I have to wait THREE WEEKS before meeting the man who Slinky has already taken to referring to as my "future husband" (yesterday she started a conversation about what kind of bridesmaid dress she should wear). I know I said I hadn't been this excited for a date since Le Canadien, but I'm changing that: I haven't been this excited for a date EVER.

Can I make it? Luckily, I have a few distractions, including a young, impressionable, cute-but-I-see-no-future-in-it 27-year old from Match whose name is the same as the English version of La Moustache's (that right there makes him non-boyfriend material). But he seems to adore me and be at my beck and call, which is nice. Then there's my little lovebird, Persil, who I'm picking up tomorrow! I also have a week-long vacation coming up next week in Maine. Lastly, I just ran into good ol' Babe in the Woods while out doing errands, who told me to stop by his new office sometime and we'll hit up the Sam Adams Brewery together.

Unfortunately, a little Facebook stalking after this random encounter revealed that BITW has a girlfriend, too! What is WITH the flirtatious men who tell me all about their lives, show me photos of their vacations, etc. and fail to mention the significant other?? Is this just because men are sleazebags? Is it possible that the topic just never came up, or is that a ridiculously naive idea?

When to give up

I'm going up to Maine again this weekend, and am trying to decide if I should bring Haricot's cage back to Boston with me or leave it there. This seemingly simple decision has taken on symbolic significance, since if he is still alive and wandering the forests of Maine, his cage would be a familiar sight that he might gravitate toward. Recently neighbors of my parents thought they might have heard him, and his cage was moved to their yard on the off chance that he was hanging around their house (turned out to be a false alarm). On the other hand, I don't know if I'll be going back up to Maine before the end of July, when I'm scheduled to adopt a new baby lovebird.

My new baby, who I went to visit last week

I belong to a lovebird forum, where people have been very understanding and helpful with dealing with Haricot's loss. On the forum, they counsel people not to give up on finding lost birds; parrots are so friendly that they are often taken in by new families, and are sometimes returned to their owners years later. No matter what, they have counseled me, you shouldn't give up hope. Not only that, but you need to keep actively looking, posting signs and checking local listings. One woman had three parrots stolen from her home last summer, and eventually was able to recover two of them. She is still looking for the third.

I am not sure that this is a modality that works for me. While I respect other people's willingness to keep hoping and searching for months or even years, for me this would make it difficult to mourn and move on. It seems reminiscent of the cocoon of denial I have been learning about in my Hospice training: acceptance allows one to make the emotional adjustments necessary to wrap up one's life or, for the family, to keep living life.

When I get up to Maine this afternoon, I plan to comb the area again to see if I can find any trace of Haricot. I will keep posting ads on Craigslist, and check to make sure my missing bird posters are still up. But, come Monday, I think I'll be bringing Haricot's cage back to Boston, and start thinking of it as my new baby's cage. Who knows, maybe if I do find Haricot they could one day share the cage and be friends. But in the meantime I am looking forward to bringing my new baby home.

Heathen Sparkle

I don't have a very common name; it's currently several spots below the 200^th most popular girl's name in popularity. Perhaps it's something about Boston, but lately it's been everywhere. I take pottery classes with my friend Heathen, and it makes me realize how unaccustomed I am to sharing my name with someone. Every time anyone so much as whispers her name across the room I react physically, even when I KNOW they're not talking to me. There's a Heathen in one of the kindergarten classes I've spent a lot of time in at school. I went to a tapas bar on a non-date the other night, and ordered the Heathen Sparkle from the cocktail menu (weirdly, the other cocktail on the menu was named after the Brazilian, who also does not have a common name).

And then there is my Facebook friend, Little Heathen. I got a friend request from her two years ago with a note: “Hi! My name is Heathen, and in April I'm getting married and I'm becoming Little Heathen!! So we'll be name twins!” What a strange, interconnected world we live in that allows us to be friends with our name twins.

I didn't accept her right away, but after a few days I thought, why not. I should welcome her into the ranks of Little Heathens; there aren't many of us. (My last name is not common, either.) Sure enough, she got married a month later, and I looked at her wedding photos and noted when she officially changed her name on Facebook to Little Heathen. I looked at her honeymoon pictures, and thought “They look like a nice couple,” and occasionally, “Wow, that's a lot of tonsil hockey she's playing with her husband on Facebook.” At some point, when she was looking through my photos, we realized that we're both from Maine, and commented on how funny that is, two Little Heathens from the same little state.

In August the pregnancy announcement came, through a photo reference to the film Juno. I thought it was a cute way to tell people, even though I also thought that she was young to be getting married and having a kid (she was 22). But who was I to judge; lots of people do it, and I decided to be supportive.

Then things started to get a little off-kilter. First I noticed one day that her name had become hyphenated. She still had my last name, but her maiden name had been added on, too. Hmm, I thought, what does that mean? Upon further investigation, I noticed that there were quite a few photos of Heathen with a bald, unattractive man who was not her husband. Sure enough, when the baby was born, there was the bald man cradling the baby, with the announcement: “My newborn baby and her proud papa!” The birth came close to a year after her marriage.

These days, Heathen no longer has my last name at all. Her profile states that her relationship status is “In an Open Relationship.” Her ex-husband, on the other hand, seems to have moved on: he's engaged to another woman, and guess what – she's expecting!

I have to conclude that, despite being name twins for a time AND coming from the same state, Heathen and I are not that much alike. After all, I'm pushing thirty-one and haven't even been engaged once yet! What a late bloomer. Still, I've developed a certain fondness for her and her crazy life. We've been Facebook friends now for two years, and who knows, perhaps in another thirty years we still will be. It will be quite interesting to see what those years bring.

Earning Our Hot Chocolate

I think by all accounts Rebellion 2010 can be considered a huge success. Mom and I had a great time touring the wilds of northern Maine, visiting with the natives, skiing through the (sometimes) slushy snow, sitting by the fire gulping watery hot chocolate enhanced by splashes of whiskey, and racing into the sweaty sauna after rubbing our skin with icy snow. It was really quite pleasant to be greeted upon arrival in a new camp by a roaring fire in our cozy little cabin, and to be served delicious hot meals every evening and morning. Just how cozy our lodgings were was hammered home to me when I innocently asked a member of Camping Snobs 2010 how their mattresses were, after he mentioned not sleeping well: “We slept on bare slats,” he replied, somewhat crossly. The toughest thing about our sleeping arrangements on Rebellion 2010 was going three days without pillow shams.

Less pleasant were the outhouses, where, when nature called, gigantic piles of frozen feces loomed just a few inches away from our bare bottoms. It was especially unpleasant to visit the outhouse in the middle of the night, so I resolved this problem by dehydrating myself in the latter part of the day. Unfortunately, at our final hut they served cider, my all-time favorite drink, which Mom and I smuggled back to our cabin, heated in mugs atop the woodstove, and enhanced with some Maker's Mark from my Nalgene flask. Needless to say, I regretted it at three o'clock in the morning.

Of course, no trip is perfect, and Mom and I did have some disagreements. One particularly contentious point was the heat of the cabin. With a woodstove, we had three choices: hot, extremely hot, or the same temperature as outside (which actually wasn't so bad – around 20 degrees, thanks to global warming). My preference was for extremely hot; Mom's preference was for the same temperature as outside. On the second night, we tried to resolve this issue by having me sleep next to the stove and Mom on the far side of the cabin. However, she still felt that I added too much wood to the fire, so the next night I put Mom in charge of keeping the fire alight. I woke up several times, and each time it was a bit cooler, but I kept telling myself, “Mom will get up soon and take care of it.” Mom, meanwhile, was lying in bed thinking “Thank God it's finally cooling off in here.” By the time I dragged myself out of bed, the fire was stone cold, and I spent the next hour making a new one (turns out my fire-making skills are subpar at 4 a.m.).

Mom has skied her whole life, and she is an excellent skier. She gets much more practice than I do, since it can be hard to find spots to ski in New York City. Much of the time she was ahead of me, especially since I kept getting distracted by animal prints left behind in the snow (gigantic holes left by moose, evenly spaced pawprints from foxes, hoppity prints from bunnies, and teeny-tiny tracks from partridges). Usually when I got ahead it was because we had trudged up a huge hill, and at the summit Mom had turned around, unable to resist the temptation of the incline, and shot down it with an accompanying cry of “Wheeeee!” At the bottom, of course, she had to turn around and trudge back up again.

However, as I discovered, she does have a couple of weak points. During the four days of skiing and over 30 miles we covered, she never once fell on a hill, even when there was a sharp turn at the bottom or a river that she risked falling into. She did fall, inexplicably, on a couple of perfectly flat spots; the first time it happened I came upon her, lying prone on the snow, where she had been for several minutes as she struggled to get up. You see, once she falls, she is like a beetle who gets turned onto its back: she is incapable of getting back up. Her limbs would flail around helplessly, sometimes getting a grip for a few minutes and straining upward, only to fall back again. I took a few photos and even a video of this fascinating phenomenon.



Thank goodness Mom didn't have the camera to take pictures of me falling!

Rebellion 2010

I'm heading off in two days on an epic adventure. If I survive the snow, cold, and four days with my daredevil mother, I'll tell you all about it when I come back.

Half of my family – my sister and father – are also leaving in two days, to go on their second annual cross-country ski trip in Baxter State Park in northern Maine. There, they will ski 14+ miles each day, traveling from one cabin to the next, transporting their supplies on their backs, wearing the same underwear day after day to avoid carrying extra weight. They will eat their lunches each day standing up, because where can you comfortably sit in February in Baxter State Park in three-plus feet of snow? In the evenings, when they arrive at their cabins, they will hasten to light a fire to warm up, then cook unappetizing camping meals like macaroni and cheese with beans and tofu mixed in, accompanied by bread baked in a plastic bag; for dessert they will consume brownies from a mix, burned on the bottom, raw on top. To train for the trip, they strapped on their skis and filled backpacks with rocks. Sounds like fun, right?

The other (better) half of the family, me and my mom, were not invited. We may not be as athletic or wilderness survival-savvy; we may not know how to work a camping stove or, in my case, own any pants that are not made of cotton, but no one can accuse us of being any less foolhardy. And so, we planned our own trip, which we call “Rebellion 2010.” Coincidentally, we will be traveling on the same days as the other trip – they go by the moniker “Camping Snobs 2010” – and we will also be in northern Maine, just a smidge southeast of Baxter (but no, we won't be carpooling with CS2010). We will travel from one Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) hut to the next, skiing between 9 and 11 miles per day.

A photo from CS '09: Dad takes a tumble

And there, the similarities end. Mom and I have not been training with rock-filled backpacks, because we will not be transporting our own gear; the AMC is kindly taking care of that for us. We will change our underwear at LEAST twice during the four days we will be away. We are not choosing which headlamps, skis and long underwear to bring, because we own one (or one pair) of each, unlike the participants of CS2010, who each own enough gear to outfit a small army of skiers. We are not spending our weekend weighing oatmeal and calculating how many calories we will need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because our minions will be cooking these meals for us. And the most important item to pack? Our bikinis, for the end-of-trip sauna. I'm hoping it will be reminiscent of Spa Castle. Who knows, maybe they'll throw in a pedicure, too.

As long as we don't die, I think Rebellion 2010 will be a lot of fun. Much more fun, of course, than Camping Snobs 2010. Unfortunately, neither my mom nor I knows how to work a compass, which we will need to do to find our way from one hut to the next. And, while my mom has been skiing quite a bit lately, the last time I went was two years ago; I went about two miles before I headed for home, with the strong conviction that I had worked enough to deserve a hot chocolate with a little special something mixed in. But I'm sure we'll figure it out, and I am definitely going to be earning enough hot chocolates to get me through the rest of winter, and maybe through 2011 as well.

Ghosts of Relationships Past

Last week I traveled home, along with everybody else in this country, to spend Thanksgiving Weekend with my family. I was a little on the skinny side when I arrived, due to a post-breakup decrease in appetite, but found that, when I weighed myself every morning on the bathroom scale, I weighed a pound more each day than I had the previous day. By the end of the weekend, I was more or less back to my normal weight. Green Bean traveled with me and was happy to get lots of attention and to have free reign of the house, and was also appreciative that he's been forgiven for preferring La Moustache to me in the past. There were a couple of semi-close calls, but I managed to keep him safe from my parents' obese cat, Kiki, thanks largely to Kiki's unmaneuverability and slow reflexes.

While I was home, I had a brief visit with my oldest friend, Ms. B, who moved back home from New York a year and a half ago, built a house, had a baby, and transformed herself with astonishing rapidity into an adult. When we had a moment to ourselves, she told me something surprising: “If I were you, I would call up L'Artista. It's probably not the right thing to do, but I would if I were in your shoes.”

Up to that point, I had not allowed this thought to cross my mind. L'Artista was my first serious boyfriend. I met him when I was 18 and had just arrived in Florence, Italy for a semester of painting lessons, where he was my 28-year-old painting teacher. He was charming, handsome, hopelessly in love with me (as I was with him), the most amazing cook I've ever met, and a disaster when it came to committed relationships. Still, he was scrupulously honest about this last aspect of his personality, which puts him several notches above La Moustache in my book. He took me for rides on his Vespa, painted numerous paintings of me, and cooked fabulous meals for me and my friends. We embarked on a meandering, romantic relationship while I went to college, then moved to New York and began my life. It should have ended there, when I grew up a bit and began to want a real partner, but L'Artista got carried away by his own romanticism and began musing about moving to New York and starting a life together. I chose not to heed his earlier warnings, and we talked about this possibility for over a year, without making any discernible headway. My patience finally began to wear thin, and the situation culminated one day on a bus in England; during a discussion about our future together, L'Artista got up, ran to the bathroom, and was sick to his stomach. This was too much for me, and I ended it. As soon as I did so, he told me he was ready to move to New York and get serious about me. HA.

Since then, L'Artista has maintained his romanticism, and continues to call me “amore” in sporadic e-mails that I rarely reply to, and muses about what it would be like if we were to see each other again. The thought is terrifying and, I have to admit, enticing. I e-mailed him in September to wish him a happy 40th (!) birthday, and told him about some of the difficulties of my life lately (though no mention was made of La Moustache, since I had a feeling he would get ideas if he knew I am single). He e-mailed me back several times, and finally wrote a note saying that my silence was beginning to worry him; he asked me to let him know if everything was okay. Angry and embittered against all men, I wrote back a cryptic e-mail saying that I was fine, I just didn't need selfish people in my life at that moment, or maybe ever. I composed the e-mail rapidly, without thinking, and wrote it in French because it seemed like too much trouble to find the words in Italian (even though I often chat online with old friends in Italy with no language problems). I quickly hit “send” before I had a chance to reconsider.

The response was fast; a hurt L'Artista shot off four e-mails asking what he had done wrong, and if it is a crime for him to tell me that I am important to him. I suspect that he's forgotten all about his role in encouraging me to hope for more from our relationship. I didn't reply to any of these missives.

There is a fine balance when it comes to memories of past relationships. Too good a memory makes it impossible to move on, and too poor a memory leads one to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If given the chance, I feel sure that L'Artista would do it all over again with me, right down to vomiting in the bus restroom; absent that opportunity, I imagine he is making similar mistakes with other people (I flatter myself that I am still his first choice). Four years after the last time I saw L'Artista, I like to think that I am a wiser, better person because of that relationship. And despite his 40 years, I have a feeling I'm a lot wiser than L'Artista. For that, I am thankful.

Drawing of me at age 19 by L'Artista