A raisin, or how about a date?

If a relationship is a sunny day, the breakup is a thunderstorm.  Afterwards, the sky is cloudy, leaves and branches clutter the streets, and a cold wind blows.  The clearing up of this scene can take some time; I’d give it a few months, or even, if it was a stormy story to start with, twice the length of the relationship itself.  (It’s something to keep in mind.)

But eventually you get to a point of equilibrium.  Your bittersweet – or just bitter – feelings have more or less been put to bed, your body adjusts to its renewed singleness (ahem), and you embrace your routine and daily life.  It’s a peaceful place to be, actually.  No one to answer to, and open possibilities.  

But somewhere in the back of your head, there’s the nag.  It won’t come at first.  But if you haven’t found someone else a year (and there are lonely lapses throughout that year) after breaking up, the seeds of hysteria start to sprout.  OK, I shouldn’t speak generally.  Maybe just for those of us ladies who are approaching a certain age…

Anyway, in some ways, I’m now enjoying this calm between boyfriends.  There’s some lonesomeness, but it’s a bit of space to refocus, think about my work and my future for a while.  (As if I never stopped thinking about those things even ONCE when I was involved!)  I’m just young enough to believe that I needn’t consign myself to spinsterhood, but old enough to know how to go about finding someone, and to understand my feelings.

I’ve learned that I know the kind of rapport I’ll have with a person the instant I lay eyes on them.  I accepted a job two years ago even though I had a bad feeling about my boss-to-be.  For the first eight months of the job I would be her punching bag.  Many jobs ago I met my beautiful colleague, who didn’t return my smile.  We wouldn’t work especially well together, but our friendship continues to this day.  And a blinking young man with a classic haircut, whose eyes grew wide when he first saw me, he would be a lover for a while.  Unfortunately, my clairvoyance has its limits, and seems particularly strong only in retrospect.  That boss nearly killed me with stress, that boyfriend made me feel lower than low.  

In a favorite short story of mine, the narrator describes the moment she meets the man who will change her life: “I haven't had this feeling in so long I don't even recognize it; at first I think it's fear.  My hair follicles seem to individuate themselves and freeze; then it's like my whole body flushes.”  Another woman wrote that within 15 minutes of meeting the man she would marry, she knew had found him.  

I do believe I’ve had parts of this sort of moment over the years.  Parts, but certainly not the whole.  

Life in a city without a car is very public.  Your walk to the train encounters neighbors, you stand with a crowd during the commute, and come across even more people on your way to work or school.  As I did when I lived in New York, I find myself semi-hoping that Mr. Fantastic will sit next to me on the subway, open the door for me at Starbucks, or simply chat me up from out of the blue.

Occasionally these prayers are answered by an angel with a mischievous sense of humor.

In September, when the evenings were still long but the light was beginning to be honeyed by the sun, I sometimes sat in the public garden reading my New Yorker.  Once, I sat on a bench, enjoying the company of Adam Gopnik and fatefully wearing a cute dress. The lanky shadow of a skinny man and his bike drew near.  He asked me if I knew if there was a grocery store nearby.  Is that a pickup line?? The garden is off of Newbury street, Boston’s Madison Avenue.  I offered whatever advice I could, and he didn’t leave.  He mentioned twice – with a shrug and a flail – that he was divorced, evidently bitter about it, and newly moved here from Texas.  I decided not to bring up the fact that I am angry with all red-state residents.  I noticed how short he was, and that he was probably in his mid-forties.  He asked me what I do and where I lived.  I told him I go to NEC and live in Brookline (lies, lies, lies), and tried to get back to my magazine.  

“Say, do you want to exchange numbers, maybe get together sometime?”  

Thank you Roman men who taught me how to say no!  

“Oh really, are you sure, I mean, maybe just as friends?”  

When a lady declines, Bubba, it does not mean that she needs more convincing.  It means that you are too scrappy.