Anything For The Dog

About a month ago I came across a very intriguing profile on Match.com, forgot everything I'd learned by being on that site (see below) and sent an 'electronic wink' into the universe thus making the acquaintance of someone who has quite frankly turned and continues to turn my world upside down in an entirely wonderful way.

The wink itself, fortuitous as it wound up being, would never have happened had I taken a moment to reflect upon my experiences with Match com dates. Without rehashing too many details I will simply list a few things I learned along the way:

a) Beware of any man who lists his height as 5' 7", 5'8", or 5'9". This man is 5'5" with very few exceptions (the most notable of which being the man who is even shorter than your own 5'2"). Note that I am not prejudiced against short people, having been one my entire life. What I am against are outright fabrications such as lying about your height. Sooner or later, say -- the moment you meet -- the truth is coming out, so why not just be honest in the first place? I don't go around saying I am 5'4" or have ever been able to see what's on top of my fridge without a stepladder.

b) Never meet for dinner unless you're planning to pick up the check. Or at least insisting on it. Maybe this should be rephrased, something like, 'be careful with the man who insists on paying, orders for both of you, and says more than once that he really enjoys paying the expense of a truly fine meal. It could just be my less than stellar luck but I experienced this a few times and each time, although I read the menu quite thoroughly and did not see myself listed, my dates erroneously assumed that somehow I was to be served up with the coffee.

c) Do not go out with the man who is 'still processing' a past relationship. While this may initially strike you as a sensitive statement clearly demonstrating he is not a 'love them and leave them' guy but honestly cares to insure full closure before moving forward, this is not what it is. What it is is the man who will be nearly in tears before the entree arrives and who will inspire you to offer what little you know -- not knowing either him or his lost love that well and at all -- about how to patch things up, move forward, and ride off together into the proverbial sunset. You will pick up the check because you feel like it's at least a nice gesture. You will return home and be sorry you missed a great Heather Locklear movie on Lifetime while you were out.

d) Do not agree to meet the man whose profile pictures are 'a little out of date' unless you are prepared to meet his grandfather outside the coffee house. I'm OK with dark hair that is gray in reality. Dark hair that has disappeared altogether is another story.

I could go on but those are probably the key points. I don't want to make it appear all bad because nothing is all bad. There were some enjoyable dates. Give or take the one who was married and the one or two who really just wanted to date as many women as possible.

I was maybe a little disillusioned when I sent that wink but not for one minute was I entirely skeptical. I put the same faith into romance that I put into every Michener novel I read: It may bog down a bit in the beginning but there's always a good chance the story may be great in the long run.

I had dinner with this person, whom I will call Roy mainly because I would like the name to be limited to one syllable and preferably to begin with an R. This was a little over one month ago (I can even tell you the exact date, the location, what I ate and what I was wearing right down to accessories but if I do that you might start thinking -- and deservedly so -- that I am one of those hopeless romantics who remembers such things) and as I mentioned, it's been wonderful but also in many ways, completely out of character.

I have missed more than one Monday night book club and finally emailed Sara today, letting her know I would need to alter my schedule and attend only one Monday per month. Which she was perfectly OK with and the only caveat she held me to is that I will have to host that meeting at my place, it will cost me an extra bottle of wine, and for sure there would be no excuse for ever not finishing a book, not even if she picked another Norman Mailer to put me to sleep in the first two chapters.

Wednesday nights are Emmanuel's and now are becoming Tuesday nights because Holly's babysitter schedule changed. These nights are important. Not only do I refresh my own understanding of kindergarten vocabulary words and update my checker playing strategies, I get to spend a few hours with a wonderful friend and have the universe -- or parts of it -- explained to me by her kids. Taken altogether it's not quite as awesome as say, Christmas mornings, but it comes very close.

Wednesday night is now unscheduled. If, that is, you remove laundry, shopping, and other errands.

Thursday is writer's group. I can miss here or there -- but can't imagine ever giving it up.

Then you factor in the Basic Work Schedule as opposed to the Work Schedule Determined by Client Needs (aka the 'forward your mail to the office until the program concludes schedule) and I find myself facing not a dilemma but a situation I haven't encountered in years. Nearly nineteen of them:

Much as I can tend to be somewhat of a creature of habit and upholder of routines, I very much would like to have more time available to spend with Roy. Because I have enjoyed every moment of the time I have spent with him, blocks of time so long in duration and so out of character for me that Lainie has taken to calling me "Ms. Never Home" on the rare occasions we meet in the foyer. The last several weeks of my life have been so uncompletely like me that even Holly asked where in the world I'd put my personal space and then added she hoped it stayed missing for a long time.

I can't really speak to that but I will say it's been, and continues to be, a happy time for me. And as I'm constitutionally endowed with not just a right but a patriotic obligation to pursue happiness, I fully intend to continue doing so.

Not just for me, but for Basil who, much as she loves me, has been a bit down in the dumps when not in the company of the man who shares not only his furniture but his cheeseburger and fries.

I can't blame her, just console her with Beggin' Strips and Chicken Jerky. A lot of Beggin' Strips and a lot of Chicken Jerky. So with that in mind, anyone can clearly see a rearrangement of my schedule and routines is needed. I'd do just about anything to keep my dog from getting fat and she can really only handle so much consolation.

Sleepless On Sunday

I wish I was my dog.

I'm looking at Basil right this minute and she's curled up at the foot of the bed with her head tucked over her Blue Monkey, her Most Loved Stuffed Animal Du Jour, and she's sleeping. Really sleeping hard. Sleeping so hard she didn't even move when I threw the bedspread over the top of her, crawled out of bed and went in search of something to read a few minutes ago. Sleeping so hard she didn't budge when I crawled back in two minutes ago carrying last week's People magazine, a Newsweek from last month, and Maureen McCormick's very sad tell-all book (as if anybody other than myself really cares to hear the story about someone from the Brady Bunch cast of the late nineteen sixties)published last year.

I would like to wake my dog and ask her to clue me in on just how it is that she sleeps so well on a Sunday night. So I poked her with my foot and she responded by snuggling closer to my foot, stretching in her sleep, and letting loose with a long, slow snore that told me as clearly as if she could speak that any inquiries I had needed to wait until the snooze alarm woke us both.

Sleep eludes me.

I normally sleep -- pardon the tired pun -- like a rock. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, where I am, or what I'm thinking or not thinking about. There's something that just happens when my head hits a pillow, and I'm out.

It's really kind of nice.

Everything changes on Sunday.

On Sunday evenings, I think about sleep. I even plan for sleep, quite often configuring my schedule so that by late afternoon I'm home, I have nothing on my schedule, and I'm free to read, watch TV...free really to do anything at all that will keep my mind quiet and allow me to think about sleep. Having already laid out something to wear to work on Monday morning, right down to the earrings, I have nothing on my mind to distract me and you'd think I'd sleep like...

Well, like the Monday through Saturday rock.

Quite often, I do.

The problem being, I do sometime after five p.m and prior to eleven p.m, when I inevitably fall asleep in a chair or on the couch, reading a book or watching TV and sometimes doing both simultaneously. Which means once I wake up it's time to go to bed and I'm as awake as if the alarm had just clanged six a.m. and it's Monday morning.

This evening is no exception.

Nearly midnight on a Sunday night is no time to be dead awake in the Old Dutch Village Condominiums. There's just nothing to listen to. Even with the bedroom window wide open the traffic noise from the boulevard is minimal. Chad upstairs takes Sunday nights off, or seems to, from serial dating, so there's no laughter, dropped wine glasses, or hysterical tears from the third floor or the stairwell to keep my ears awake. I find myself faced with a series of choices:

I can log into Netflix, and watch a TV show or movie;
I can wake Basil up, and take her for a walk;
I can read;
I can pretend I'm tired and hope that eventually, I am.

I choose, as I always do, the latter. Mainly because I've already watched everything on Netflix that can be watched free of charge (as I mentioned, this Sunday night insomnia is not a new thing), Basil is grouchy and therefore no fun on a walk she was awaken to take and never fails to pay me back by pacing back and forth across my stomach at four a.m., when I've finally gotten to sleep, the book I'm reading is boring enough to make me sad that I bought it but not boring enough to put me to sleep, and I've always been a big believer that if you toss and turn long enough eventually this will result in sleep and as an added plus provides a low-impact aerobic workout that just has to be good for you.

So I commence tossing and turning.

It's midnight.

In about three hours, if I hold true to past behavior, I will be asleep. I will gladly wake when the alarm goes off, stumble to the shower and begin the work week, very glad it's Monday.

Because Monday Day means Monday night isn't far behind, and Monday night means I will sleep like the proverbial rock.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I will do the same.

It's just Sundays that throw me and I may never know why.

At least at this point, with a boring book beside me and a tossed and turned pillow under my head, I know I have all night to think about it.

Five Emails

Less than a month ago I said a few words about my oldest sister who in the course of one phone call disowned me completely and swore never to speak to me again. At the time I observed that this was not a new occurrence and I fully anticipated that at some point I would hear from her again.

Because I always do.

She tends to pop up in my life with all the persistence and regularity of those 'Absolutely Last Chance to Renew' notices I get in the mail from various magazines.

My sister popped up this afternoon.

I was taking a moment to check home email from work and there they were: A string of five emails, sent yesterday within a half hour of each other.

Email Number One was pleasant enough but not what you'd expect from someone who had disowned you. She loved me, she wanted to know how I was.

Email Number Two was still pleasant but slightly less so. Perhaps I hadn't responded to Email Number One because I didn't love her quite as much as she loved me.

Email Number Three took the gloves off. Short and pointed, it let me know I was selfish, self-centered, and had been since birth.

Email Number Four reminded me again that I was selfish, thoughtless, and moreover not even a nice person but she would always love me regardless and always had. If I didn't recognize what a good friend she was to me, I was just a total (all caps for emphasis) fool.

Email Number Five invited me to to drop dead and hinted not so subtly that my parents had always loved her best, anyway.

I scrolled through to Email Number One and replied that it was good to hear from her. All was well with me and I hoped she was enjoying a nice east coast spring.

I was never so happy to return to work email. Clients who want me to write menus and stage four hundred people in a room with a max capacity of seventy-five are issues that make sense to me.

Deciphering a Drama Queen is not.

Oddly enough, I've discovered I'm not alone in this familial quandary, as there seems to be at least one person in every family who remains addicted to their own self-created turmoil. Diane makes me feel much better by sharing tales of her own sister's inter-family grudges and laments of mistreatment. Lainie has a brother who is only on speaking terms with the family two weeks pre and post every holiday or event that involves the receipt of gifts or the possibility of a gratuitous meal.

My sister's behavior baffles me but doesn't necessarily bother me and what dawned on me today as I realized I felt no inclination whatsoever to respond to any but Email Number One is that you come to a certain point in life where you've done all you can for people and just because they're family doesn't obligate you to give them much of your energy.

I feel sad for my sister.

But not so sad that it's going to carry over into my life.

It's a wonderful thing to frankly be too busy to bog down in the ridiculous.

As previously observed, there will always be a part of me that believes my sister truly was left on my parent's doorstep in 1962 and accidentally brought inside with that day's dairy delivery, but I know better. We're related. We even look alike to a certain extent (give or take five bra sizes. I like to say my brain is larger and thus compensates for where I was otherwise shorted). I've got some great memories of growing up with her, everything from playing Barbies for hours on end to having her show me how to apply eye make-up in the seventh grade (Dad just as quickly showed me how to un-apply it when I turned up at the dinner table looking like a sad cross between Phyllis Diller and Rocky Raccoon). My big sister was my guardian angel when I started high school. Just as she had always been. She looked out for me and there truly was a time we were the best of friends.

I'm not sure when that changed but choose not to dwell on it. People grow up and people grow apart and this is true whether you have the same parents or not.

I have a feeling I'm officially disowned again but to be honest, I'd like for her to read my response to Email Number One and somehow forget she sent the other four. They weren't very pleasant to receive so I can only imagine how unhappy they were to send.

That, I don't wish on her.

What can I say, she's still my sister.

The End of Something That Wasn't

So Claire and Max, never mind I predicted they'd be great together, aren't together. Today or ever.

There you have it: I'm no expert at calling how these things will work out and I hereby advise Claire to disregard any further predictions that I make.

The first date had been good, as I mentioned. They met for drinks, laughed a lot, and although his texts and calls were a little off-putting (they came by the dozen) Claire, being a fair-minded person, gave him another chance.

"If you feel he's moving too fast," I told her, "tell him so. If you like him. Just be honest."

So they met for drinks, and it was OK. Until he reached across the table, she said, to comment on her bracelet and somehow took hold of her wrist and then her hand in a way that was, she said, "just creepy" after a few minutes.

She retrieved her wrist and the conversation resumed and everything went well enough that she accepted his offer to see his house and meet his dog.

Being a dog-lover myself, I can see why she went.

Seemed safe enough.

Until once inside his house he was, she said, more or less immediately 'in her face' and apparently attempting to also put his face down her throat.

So she brought forth the honesty again and told him that was a little much and somehow managed to settle herself into a recliner while he brought the dog in and sat on the couch.

Which would have been OK because the dog was cute and the conversation resumed and I guess at about the time she thought the evening may be OK after all it more or less hopped the express bus to hell.

Having let him know again that she was uncomfortable moving at high speeds and having received his assurance that he understood completely and would absolutely not rush her in any way, she was disappointed when moments later he'd left the couch, settled himself on the floor next to her chair and was fondling her leg with the same dedication he'd recently shown her bracelet.

"It dawned on me," she said, "that this could end badly."

Claire is not a dumb woman and I personally applaud her next move, which was to look at her watch, appear surprised at the time it revealed and get out the door and to her car with as minimal a goodbye as possible.

Which isn't to say that Max didn't exhort her many times over to call when she got home and let him know when they could see each other again, and it isn't to say she didn't have four texts from him in the ten minutes it took her to drive home.

"Yuck," I said when the story ended. It pretty much summed it up better than any word I knew or could manufacture.

So Claire and Max are done.

I reminded her there were good men out there (unless I've managed to find the last one, that is. I hope not, for her sake).

But Claire is 'over it' as she put it and I understand that very well, having experienced the same thing myself and having decided one Friday evening to delete all emails I had from Match and hang it up for a while.

I have no idea why, that same weekend, I spent five minutes on my own search (my criteria was simple and basically translated as, 'male actually over 5'6", single, within 25 miles of my zip code') and I may never understand why the universe answered my request with someone so wonderful. Even unflappable Holly is shocked. "He's really real," she said again today, as if someone with his personality and demeanor couldn't actually exist but must be a figment of both of our imaginations.

I thought about encouraging Claire to try again but decided against it. My 'good advice' had her giving Max a second chance in the first place.

I think even I know when it's time to keep my mouth shut.

So I just reminded her we were overdue for one of our late Sunday breakfasts at the cafe and changed the subject to our upcoming Lake Powell trip and what we needed to bring.

Debating the relative merits of OFF! vs. Skin So Soft is easy.

Deciphering men and women is something completely different.

(Don't Wait To Be Asked), Just Tell

If you spend any time at all on match.com and have any girlfriends at all who do the same, eventually the inevitable happens and you find yourself exchanging email swith someone who has also exchanged emails with a girlfriend of yours. When this happens you have an immediate irrefutable obligation to share any pertinent information you have about this person, up to and including voicing a clear and succinct, "Friends do not let friends go out with this guy."

Lainie was very clear about this when I let her know last winter about some emails I had received and a date planned for a Tuesday evening.

"There's no way you're going out with him. The man's got more hands than an octopus and less brain cells than a hamster."

Not quite believing an octopus had actual hands and entirely sure she'd never audited a hamster's brain cells, I had to push the issue. "He seems very nice. I should give him a chance."

"You should give him a whack upside the head," she said, "and if you go out with him I've got one for you. Trust me."

"But I still think - "

This warranted a dramatic rolling of the eyes which is what Lainie does when she's just about at the end of her patience. I'd seen the look many times on weeks where she had her two pre-teen boys at home. "OK, fine. I wasn't going to tell you this but here you go. He's married. He's just not real up front about that."

"Well why didn't you just say so?"

"I didn't want to discourage you. You know, have you start questioning your judgment or anything."

As if that would happen. Unless, of course, she suggested that it might.

I went home, sent off a fictionalized, 'sorry, but I've met someone and would really like to see where it goes...' to Mr. Married Man and avoided logging onto that site for the next three weeks. Bad enough I couldn't intuit those who were actually 6' as listed and turned out to be 5'6" and the borderline manic depressives whose profiles referenced them as 'upbeat' and 'positive' and then cried during dinner, from those actually upbeat and positive. Apparently now I couldn't even discern the married from the single.

Still, I appreciated the advance warning.

Having met someone incredible, I am no longer on the dating site but still respect the unwritten rule of information sharing otherwise known as 'Don't Wait To Ask, Just Tell'. So when Claire came by my office last Friday and mentioned she had a date lined up that evening with an athletic coach at the nearby university, I immediately said, "You're going out with Max?"

"How do you know?" But she did know, and gave me a look that said, 'spill it'.

"He's very cute," I offered. "I think you two would be cute together."

She waved that off. "And--?"

"Well, I only went out with him once," I said. "We met for breakfast on a Saturday." I shrugged, trying to pull anything remarkable from the morning and retrieving nothing. "I don't think I was his type, Claire. I mean, he never emailed again, his texts stopped and honestly, it didn't hurt my feelings. I think the only thing we really had in common was our dogs."

"The pug." She produced her cell phone and there he was.

"The pug who goes to Little Dogs Day Care."

"What else?"

I really couldn't think of anything. "Claire, you'll like him."

"He texts -- a lot. And emails a lot. And he calls a lot."

OK, that rang a bell. I remembered that part and it was fine, albeit past a certain point felt more like surveillance than an actual expression of interest.

"Go and have fun," I finally said. "Like I said, I think you'll like him."

Friday came and went and when I saw her Saturday she seemed upbeat enough. They'd met for a drink, laughed -- a lot -- and he'd wanted to see her that night too, but she had plans to go to a barbecue.

Today's update was a bit bleaker. He'd called, she said, nine times while she was at the barbecue. Texted fifteen times. They were meeting for drinks tonight and she didn't know what to tell him.

"Get an unlimited plan with your cell phone or give me some room?" I offered, and then added, "if you like him, let him know you're feeling a little..."

"Stalked?"

"Overwhelmed," I corrected. "You do like him, right?"

"Well, I could like him. I really could."

I digested that because I'd been there myself. Claire may not yet have reached the point I came to that a second date was a great idea, but not if I hadn't really been struck by someone. Maybe I'd become cynical, overly picky or skeptical (Lainie said all three) but life was too short and I did have a lot of books at home I hadn't read yet. Claire wasn't there yet but she was a smart woman and she'd figure it out. If you never settle for anything less than that connection you'd like to find, it'smuch more apt to find its way to you.

Hence my current situation of being not on that site and therefore of little help in dispensing my thoughts on various profiles to my friends who are.

I don't miss it.

But I don't regret having been on there in the first place. As I said, I've met someone. I haven't written anything, really, about him and in all honesty perhaps there's a part of me that doesn't want to jinx the happiness the universe has besowed by putting him into words. Even Holly gets only limited details and she's about the most persistent person I know and expert at interrogation. I can't even have Diet Coke for fear of her reaction, let me put it that way.

We will see how this evening works out for Claire. I hope she and Max can come to an understanding. And if not, I'm sure eventually she'll be found by what she's looking for.

Call me a romantic, but I think the universe kind of rolls that way.

Pardon My (Non) Panic Attack: Thoughts on the (Don't Call It Swine) Flu

Our governor called a press conference this afternoon to announce that the (Don't Call It Swine) Flu had officially arrived in our state. It's official because he's pretty sure the unconfirmed cases we have (five middle school kids with non-life threatening symptoms who are, as we speak, resting comfortably at home and happily snockered on Nyquil) will most likely probably be sort of confirmed by Monday.

That's three days from now.

The actual information (actual information being that which can be clearly understood) was minimal. Emergency response teams were mobilizing. We were ready to respond efficiently and effectively.

I had no idea what this meant but envisioned teams of doctors and nurses dashing about the city dispensing liter shots of Nyquil because what else could be more effective and efficient? A liter shot of Nyquil and by the time you regained consciousness you would have been recovered from the (Don't Call It Swine) flu for a week or more.

So until we had official confirmation of what our governor suspected and had already announced as definite, as responsible citizens and patriotic Americans we should all take a moment to wash our hands thoroughly and break out in a mad panic.

We're talking about a flu here.

With chills, fever, nausea, vomiting, headache and basically all the same symptoms you experience after drinking anything at all containing tequila.

Should we even remotely feel unwell we must immediately sequester ourselves in our homes and cease all interaction with other human beings. Stocking up on food and getting straight with our Creator wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

I'm thinking this will be great news to all of those people still holding onto supplies purchased in the Y2K panic and wondering if they'd ever actually get any use out of them.

One of my colleagues has a bad cold. Nobody's said anything out right but you can just feel it in the office -- several people want her to go home. And barring that, for heaven's sake don't let her touch anything. Or sneeze. And honestly, a surgical mask may be just the accessory she needs to pull together that outfit.

True to media form, whatever facts that were presented (they were later discovered by a very high powered microscope) were distorted because unless you distorted them it was very hard to work the term, "life threatening" into twenty minutes of air time and still allow room for commercial breaks.

Life threatening.

I merged onto the freeway this morning and was immediately cut off by a moron disguised as a navy blue Lexus, was forced into the left lane (preferable, I thought, to rear ending the Lexus) and caused the car in the lane behind me (about
3" behind me, at the time) to hit both their brakes and their horn simultaneously and I'm sure with much more force than is advocated per manufacturer's warranty.

The entire experience scared the heck out of me and caused an adrenaline rush so strong I was able to forego my morning coffee, being right at that moment very, very much awake.

Our governor should hold press converences advising people in our state that 30mph is not the correct speed for merging here or anywhere else. Period.

That would be helpful.

Of the three hundred or so convention attendees I'm dealing with for the next six days, the ten or so who have arrived have all expressed concern. One even wanted to know if our retail shops carried hand sanitizer. I sent it up as part of the welcome amenity.

We're talking about a flu.

It's mind boggling. As a nation, I'd like to think we're fairly intelligent people (give or take the whole voting Bush in for a second term thing), so it's incredible to me to see us so easily caught up in media hype and so ready to abandon logic, unwilling to stop ourselves for even one minute and think logically. We're too ready to respond to the lead-ins for the evening news: "(Don't Call It Swine) Flu: Panic at Eleven."

No thanks.

My plan is much simpler. I'm going to turn this one to my advantage and finally get some use out of the six bottles of hand sanitizer I picked up at Rite Aid's recent dollar days at three for a dollar (I don't use a lot of hand sanitizer but can't resist a bargain. I'd buy iguanas at three for a dollar and reptiles in general just creep me out).

I'm going to make sure that until this panic subsides (about the time the media decides our next crisis and officialy announces that nobody, not even Colonel Sander's beneficiaries, knows what is now or ever has been the key ingredient in Chicken Nuggets but whatever it is /was can probably definitely for sure and maybe be life-threatening) no matter where I go, I've got hand sanitizer at the ready.

I figure five bucks a dollop would be just about right. Outrageous, yes -- but you do what you have to do.

Especially considering my income potential dwindles with every conventioneer who declines to get onto an airplane because they're afraid of the (Don't Call It Swine) Flu.

Unknown Caller

Sometimes the phone call you've waited years for can happen when you least expect it. I was sitting on Claire's couch last night, catching up with her and Sue and watching Basil collect more attention than she'd received in weeks when my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number and the voice on the other end of the line didn't ring a bell, either.

"So what are you doing?"

"I'm at Claire's," I said, thinking it was very strange that I would say that to a voice I didn't recognize but I was caught off guard and honesty seemed the best response.

"How have you been?"

Definitely not registering.

"I'm sorry," I finally managed, "but I'm not sure who this is."

Silence, then:

"You're kidding me."

"No, I'm sorry -- I'm not."

Longer silence, then:

"Madeleine, it's Brent. Didn't my number come up on your phone?"

Brent Babcock.

And I'd forgotten his voice already, a mere nineteen years after we'd met and nearly five since I moved out of our home.

"I don't have your number in my phone," I said, still very surprised at the call. I'd moved to the staircase and seated myself about halfway up to the second floor, leaving Claire and Sue in the kitchen trying to convince Basil that a plain Saltine was really just a flat dog bone that didn't taste like chicken.

"You don't have my number in your phone." Now it seemed his turn to be surprised.

"Brent, I haven't talked to you since December. It's almost May."

"So you don't have my number in case you needed to get a hold of me?"

This was too strange of a call and I didn't see the purpose. "I don't know of anything I'd need to get a hold of you FOR." This may not have come out as nicely as I'd wanted it to.

I wasn't upset with him for reneging on his end of a trade we'd made last fall wherein I spent nearly an entire day writing his annual review in exchange for his hanging a shower curtain for me that he'd never quite found the time to hang. I was just, after that, finally and completely convinced there was no reason for us to have any contact at all.

"Well regardless," I said with a much lighter tone, "What can I do for you?"

Because I knew there had to be something. With Brent, it was that way. If the phone rang it was with a request, whether to write a review, recite a recipe, or advise on a spelling issue. Brent was an engineer and while he could assemble an MRI or CatScan in his sleep he couldn't differentiate between 'where' and 'were' and had never been able to. I had assumed his new girlfriend was reasonably articulate and knew her way around a kitchen because I hadn't heard from him in a long time.

"I'm updating some records," he said. "And I need to know when we got married."

My first thought was to remind him that particular information could be found on page one of our divorce decree but I thought better of it and said something probably worse -- again, because it was honest and also because it just came out. "If you hadn't ripped up the marriage certificate you'd know that."

Not that it wouldn't eventually probably have been ripped up anyway, it was just unfortunate that it had been shredded in an angry moment when the marriage was still intact and it was our 12th anniversary.

"OK, I deserve that," he said.

"November ninth, 1991," I replied. "Two o'clock in the afternoon. It was a Saturday. Lake Lowell Presbyterian Church, Pastor Lloyd Byall. Your tux tie was royal blue and you threw down a shot of Jack in the back of the church before you walked in."

Silence again, then: "You remember all that?"

For some reason that made me laugh. "Yes I remember," I said, "but I'm still looking for a green baseball cap I put down somewhere three days ago. Is that all you needed?"


And that's when it struck me. I really had no desire to take the conversation anywhere, not even to extend the basic courtesies of inquiring how he'd been, how everything was going for him. I didn't feel anger, irritation -- or anything -- and it was a wonderful way to feel. It was to be in the place everyone from my girlfriends to my parents had promised I would someday be and I hadn't believed them at the time, so recently away from the marriage. I'd hoped for it but didn't realize, until this odd phone call, that I WAS there, and had been for a much longer time than I thought.

Brent Babcock wasn't a factor in my life.

"There's one more thing," he said. "Like I said, I'm updating some records, and I found some old files."

"I can't imagine anything I'd need, Brent. Unless you came across any of my old family pictures. But, thank you -- "

"Madeleine, I have your birth certificate."

Now the silence was on my end. Because having finally been convinced that I might want a passport, I'd planned this week to write vital statistics and get another copy of my birth certificate so I could get one.

"You're kidding me. I thought you said you threw that file out."

"Well I have it," he said, "and I can get it to you if you'd like."

"That would be great. Thank you. Your timing is uncanny -- but thank you."

"Why is my timing weird?"

"Well, I've finally decided I need a passport..." and we spent maybe ten minutes then catching up on why I would need one. And also on how my dog was, how my job was, the latest escapades of Hal his roomate, my former dog Sophie, and his Ukranian girlfriend. "It is what it is," he said about that, which was funny because the last time I used the phrase it was when presenting some very unorganized client information to staff.

"I really need to go, Brent. But -- nice talking to you."

"You sound very happy."

"I am." Truer words never spoken.

"Well, I'm glad."

"You can take partial credit. If I'd never met you I'd never have wound up here and this place has brought a lot of happiness into my life. So, I guess -- belated thank you."

"I'm still very afraid of train trips," he said, and that got a laugh out of both of us.

Claire and Sue were still figuring out the universe when I returned to the living room.

"That," I announced, "was awesome. That was Brent, and I didn't recognize him. Not his voice and not his phone number. And I think that's fabulous."

"Well girlfriend," Claire observed, chucking a throw pillow at me, "you deserve that."

I couldn't have agreed more.