Reason to Live, Reason to Love

I was so excited to have relatives visit; they rarely do. My parents are too old to travel, my aunts and uncles all passed, and I never knew my cousins, most of them much older. I have two sisters too classy to come here, one with Danish Modern furniture, the other an Easterner now. To be fair, Sister Danish Modern and her husband visited once, 14 years ago, and I taught her to shoot an airgun, there's a photo (on paper; this was before smartphones); but she must have been appalled by the bathroom, as anyone would have been up until its renovation in 2011. I visit them but they don't come here.

So my third sister, her husband, and my niece from Wisconsin visit once a year and I weep with happiness when they arrive and weep when they leave, believing they are the only people my age left who both know where I came from and care to stay in touch. And they like it here. It was Easter weekend. We dyed eggs and they brought me an Easter basket with a peanut-butter egg in it, and a plush rabbit. Weep again. Weep over Velveteen Rabbit and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, also starring a rabbit. We went to marvel over and fondle baby chicks at the farm store, and to see an 18th-century homestead, and hunted fossils, and explored the woods. They thought 50-degree weather was amazing.

Some Easter weekends fall too early for the redbuds to be out. Wild redbud trees in spring are a major reason to love Missouri (they don't grow in Wisconsin). I am so thrilled to share them with non-Missourians. They were nominated as the USA's national tree; they lost to the oak. They were nominated as Missouri's state tree. They lost to the Flowering Dogwood. Redbuds, I think, are glory incarnate. They bring me closer to God, the other who knows where I came from and cares to stay in touch.

How Do You Mend?

Match dating situations 1, 2, 3, and 4 with the correct responses (A, B, C, or D).

#1: After two dates and making a third date, for trout fishing, text arrives from #1 cancelling, saying he thought he could handle two relationships at once but he felt so guilty and needed time to straighten things out with his long-distance girlfriend of three years, whom he sees only on weekends, but I was so interesting and attractive that if he did break up with her, could he call me?

#2: Charming, cosmopolitan date so mutually thrilling that two days later we meet again at a cafe, where he delivers, out of the blue, a most cynical two-hour harangue on politics city, state, national, and global, with a preview of the coming apocalypse. After several courteous and failed attempts to change the subject or get a word in, I openly showed boredom, but it was as if I were not there. Realizing that I would honestly prefer to be having coffee with Todd Aiken, I say a polite goodbye. Text arrives that evening asking do I like him, and apologizing that he sometimes talks too much, and he is such a progressive that some people are not used to it.

#3: Scientific type agrees to meet. The day before, I email him to confirm. He replies he can't make it, is too busy with work, and will call "in a couple of weeks."

#4: World-class tightwad, age 68, who brings me an empty wine bottle because it's pretty, is plainly told that we can be friends but no more than that. This sets him on fire, not to go out on actual dates, but to take long hikes together and send me late-night drunken texts. As a friend, I accompany him to his colonoscopy, and when he awakens he warns me that he is naked beneath his gown and I am not to peek.

A. F--- you.
B. F--- off.
C. ROTFLOL
D. All of the above.

Venus Retrograde

A little bit of grief this spring over a relationship that was long-term and long-distance. After two years and ten months of being together, I totally faithful and trusting the man completely up until the last few months when I got mildly suspicious, he admitted he was seeing a married woman, and another woman, and maybe yet even another one (he knows how to seduce the lonely ones), and offered me a deal: We could keep seeing each other just as we had been, maybe a little less often, like every five to seven weeks. Translation: I could stay on his string. "I've never thought that love was finite," he said, not realizing that what he'd just offered me was very finite indeed.

The torch in my heart flamed out instantly. I was calm and composed. I said, "I'm so disappointed in you." I asked him what if I'd been messing with other men. He declared he'd be happy for me.

No normal man thinks that way. And anyone involved in adultery isn't very smart. If that was his chosen relationship I had no choice but to leave him.

He'd given me his mother's brooch, an amethyst surrounded by beads of millefiori glass. It was an unusual costume piece and went with everything. Unfortunately I never photographed it. I wore it near my heart as an emblem of love. I was wearing it and removed it and handed it to him, saying, "Give this to someone you love."

"I did!" he said. But his definition of love wasn't mine. I like honesty.

I wished I did not have to, but I packed up and walked out into the night and got into my car for the two-and-a-half-hour drive home. He was upset. He wanted me to stay. We could have dinner or something. I said, "Only a foolish woman would stay."And I stand by that. I drew the line. It feels much better to be the dumper than the dumpee.

In the future I will trust less, and will love less deeply. And that's what I've got to say about the planet Venus going retrograde on Tuesday.

Midwestern First-Date Advice

A third drink before dinner shows a lack of respect for oneself AND one's date. At such piggish behavior, put $10 on the table and leave.

Men, don’t wear sandals. Midwestern men have notoriously scary feet.

Men, dive for the check and refuse to let the woman pay. Since you’ve just met, the woman has no other way of telling whether you valued her time and company. (No Midwesternista is a feminist on the first date.)

Women, carry enough cash to pay the check in case he “forgot his wallet.”

Don't wrap up the catfish bones to take home to your cats.

There’s no turnoff like a dinner date who explains that he can’t walk very well right now because a thousand-pound hay bale fell on him.

Women, cleavage shouldn’t look like tonnage.

Something bigger than a breadbox in a car’s back seat – a cooler, pet carrier, cardboard file-boxes, child seat, tools, fishing gear -- shows that there's something in your date’s life that’s far more important than you’ll ever be.

Ya Think He Kinda Likes Her?

Neighbor Shelley's suitor has been courting her for over a year. She pays him no mind. So Sammy gifts her with all sorts of artistic creative floral arrangements he builds and leaves at the gate of her driveway. Once he gave me a wonderful hanging plant that he had extra. Shelley lets the stuff rot right where Sammy left it. It's such downright odd behavior that I think Sammy might be her ex.

Sammy stops in front of my house if he sees me workin outside, and is polite, and asks me if I've seen Shelley, and where she might be these days.

This morning I saw a van come and go, and later I saw that Sammy had outdid hisself on this Halloween display. He brought in bales of straw, mums and pumpkins, the cornshocks and skull, the cobwebs he draped over the arrangement and the bushes. If I were her I'd at least give the man the time of day.