Snow in the Spring

I've finally started feeling settled in my new place.

Why did I move?

I don't quite remember. I just now have acknowledged that most of my important material items have arrived in this new apartment. It's one of the best neighborhoods I can find, and I am grateful for it.

What else am I grateful for?

That I have tango, and it had brought me two friends to stay with me this weekend.

Then, I wonder, where are my New Haven friends? They couldn't come this weekend. They have helped me move, but they can't be here. I wonder if they will come. I miss them. And sometimes I feel I need them. Sometimes I feel I am lost at sea again. Like when I saw that French woman in the milonga on Friday night. I was surprised how I still had a great time, but I couldn't help feeling lost in knowing that we couldn't even look at each other in the eye. But the sails really flew out into the sea when I had the fortune to find her and her man in the same diner I had invited my tango friends to. There are thousands of diners in New York City, and I picked the one diner where we got to sit in the same booth that they had previously sat in. I was feeling lost. I needed my friends. I needed a new set of sails, to navigate me back on course.

I am grateful for my little nephew. He adores me, but unlike other people in my life who adore me, he is not complicated, not the kinds of complication that brings about heart-breaking drama. Being with him and other little people today when I visited my grandmother for Mother's Day, I felt slightly back "on course."

I shouldn't complain. A friend of mine had broken her engagement but still is trying to figure out how to live with her ex-fiancé under the same roof. And a friend of hers is a single mother who can't really blossom in her creativity because she had to take care of her son who is the center of her world.

I am grateful to have my Dad. He never complains. He wants to spend more time with me, but never shows neediness. He is content with whatever amount of time I can offer him. Today I could sense that he would have preferred to go all the way home with me in the car and take the long train ride back. But he didn't say anything. No pressure. I was feeling too lost to really make an effort to do the right thing, to spend as much time with him as possible. I was still affected by the diner incident from yesterday. But my Dad reminds me over and over again that real love is unconditional. My nephew's love is also, at least for now, unconditional. I didn't even give him a birthday present this year. I was too much in the clouds with this French woman. It's my fault. I shouldn't have and should be letting my ghosts exaggerate the situation.

Being with my Dad reminded me of that night, I think it was the night of Boxing Day (that's 26th of December, for you non-Brits). That was the night the French girl was finally coming back. I had waited forever for her. It felt forever. I was finally breathing a sigh of relief when I learned she boarded the plane, though even at that point the plane wasn't going to where it was going to go. I decided to drive from New York to Hartford to get her. I purposefully drove to New York partly to see my grandmother but also partly to pick her up from New York. Wouldn't it be grate if she could meet my parents again. She even said she wanted one of my Mother's soups.

But the weather was not cooperating. It was the blizzard of December that rerouted her plane to DC and then to Hartford. It was also the blizzard that stood between me (along with my car) and Bradley Airport of Hartford. Still, I was determined to defeat Nature and go get her. It had been too long. I had spent more than five months waiting for her. We had gotten in (yet another) argument just a few days earlier because she refused to spend the entire New Year's Eve with me and reminded me that the real reason wasn't that she was busy but that we weren't "together." Despite all that, I was determined to defeat Nature and be the first to see her, to give her a hug, to be in her presence.

Why do I do this? I don't know. I seem to do it a lot....

What I remember now is not so much my determined will to intercept her, to help her get back home after all the obstacles. She wasn't going to have a way to get from the airport to New Haven. And so cavalier as I was, I wanted to be that knight in that blue horse of mine.

The streets were full of snow and full of cars stuck in the snow, owned by people who thought they also could defeat Nature. So I went anyway. Thinking I could be an exception. I could get out of the damn streets and onto the highway. And my Dad came with me. He didn't ask why. He did say it might be hard, but he didn't stop me from doing one of the dumbest things in my life: to kill myself in order to get to a woman who didn't even want me. There he was, a man who had recently turned 70, pushing the car behind me while I tried to get out of one snow bank after another. I remember seeing him, a small man, in a big coat twice his size, no hat, no gloves, pushing that metallic blue horse of this knight armored with all his ghosts and faults. (I couldn't the one pushing because he didn't know how to drive a stick-shift.)

He had met this French girl a few times. He's getting a bit old to keep clear memory, and one time when he saw her at his bookstore he mistook her for another girl, another girl who got me into adventures while not daring or wanting to pledge any romantic connection with me (what's wrong with my life??). I felt sorry for him. I knew that though he never said anything, he would really like to see me with someone loving before he leaves me permanently. And I wish I could say to him that I would take care of myself, that being single isn't such a bad thing, my opinions and philosophies of being single being often superior to having someone (certainly having someone who doesn't love you). But the only thing I can say to him, if I have the chance, is none of this complication. But rather, that for his sake, for him, I would meet someone who loves me, because it is because of him that I realize how important it is to have someone who loves you without condition, without pressure, without walls and tricks. I learned that from him. My art friend saw it, as mentioned in the last entry. She saw that generosity, love, selflessness in my Dad that she had been accustomed to finding in me. That's what I mean that for my Dad's sake, as a tribute to what I have learned from him, I want someone who loves me, someone selfless and generous. I have spent too many years wanting just any (pretty) woman without respect to how good a human being they really are. I want a woman who is at least as good a human being as my Dad.

So I remember that night of snow on this spring day. I remember more about my dad than my foolish romantic adventure for a girl.

Oh, incidentally, I finally have internet and a computer. I hope to be able to start writing on a daily basis again.