3 * 2 * 1
For the first day of spring I put on my new (to me) red shoes, which have a little strap across the top of my foot, and which have no heel. I did not put on tights or even knee socks, because it is spring. And although the weather is basically the same as it was yesterday, this morning I left my down vest and my knit scarf and my fuzzy hat in the front hall and I walked down my front stairs in a denim skirt and red shoes because today, unlike yesterday, it is spring.
Then I rode my bicycle to work. I used to ride my bicycle all the time but around November I started finding reasons not to. First it was dark early and the drivers weren’t used to it. Then it was snowy and icy, which was the only legitimate excuse of the lot. When it warmed up I had grown used to my new rhythm, a bus ride in the morning that let me read before work, and an hour-long walk home to unwind. Plus I had a flat tire. Insurmountable!
But you can’t coast through spring on lame excuses. My crocuses are popping all purple and white, and my daffodils, and yesterday I pulled the ivy that creeps over from my neighbors’, and new this week I can walk home from work and still have a beer on the porch before dark. So it’s bicycle time. I got a pump last weekend, my very first bicycle pump ever, and this morning I inflated my tire and then clicked on my helmet, and straightened my antennae, and strapped on my bag, and biked west.
Mist condensed around my eyes and I remembered certain muscles in my legs, and half way to downtown I unbuttoned my cardigan to cool my shoulders. I’ll do it all again in a few hours, after I’ve watched Portland State crush Xavier, or maybe not. It will be dark by then and I’ll put on my lights, the white one in front and the blinking red one in back, and I’ll pedal my way home in the rain.
riddance
I am remembering the conversation I had with a friend several weeks after the end of Operaman. I think I’m too accepting of small problems in a relationship, I said.
Those problems weren’t small, he replied.
I was on the fence, for a long while, about the Accidental Date. Not about him in particular, but about the whole idea of dating. Because for the past few years dating has left me feeling so bad, and so often.
I hate to admit it but the slide started with Frenchie. When he shot me down it was small enough that I would have popped up quickly, except that I was in a new town with no network and no footing, and while I was down Disaster came along and kicked me. Operaman picked me up and I had just enough time to remember how much fun being up was before he dropped me. Twice.
When the AD appeared I was pretty finished. I felt like Fine. Let’s hang out. You stay over there.
And even after a little while, while I reluctantly acknowledged enjoying his company, I still wasn’t sure it was Something. Because it all felt a little too… easy.
What I needed to figure out, with a little help from the patience and humor of the AD, is that I can be excited about someone without a sense of futility and impending doom. It does not have to taste like Trouble that I can’t help wanting anyway. A kickass relationship does not actually have to Kick My Ass.
I think of this one girl I dated for years, a friend tells me, and how I used to say I loved the way she challenged me. But looking back I realize it felt challenging because everything with her was a struggle.
And struggle simply isn’t synonymous with adventure or spontaneity or growth. Struggle is just struggle, and there isn’t any joy in it, and it doesn’t leave room for much else.
I don’t equate lack of struggle with lack of Issues. Who’s alive thirty years without becoming a little complicated? Issues is not the issue. Ultimately the only Issue of consequence with Operaman was that he didn’t actually want to date me. For which reason I now propose this dating mantra for universal adoption.
I will not date someone whom I do not want to date.
I will not date someone who does not want to date me.
It’s alarmingly easy to come up with reasons to break one of these rules. It’s always a bad idea.
I realize just how bad an idea it is a little more each day, as this thing with the AD continues to not be a bad idea. Like last week when, hearing that I have an upcoming conference in Phoenix, he suggested we make a week of it in the desert.
We did not weigh the pros and cons of a trip or agonize over scheduling. He shot me an email proposing it, and I accepted. We are both busy people so we moved things around, with great pleasure, to fit it in, and now in ten days we are going. I didn’t have to convince him that it would be fun or worth his time. I didn’t have to agonize over whether a week together is at this point a good idea. In fact I didn’t have to do much at all, except say yes. With the AD my inclination to say yes all the time finally seems like a strength instead of a weakness.
