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The Diaries

One year before: A futon, old quilts and memories

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She's been gone five days this time, my last exwife, my Diana. The futon that I brought from the barn for her visit still lies, in the middle of my living room floor. Covered with three of Miz Kelly's old quilts the Dresden plate, the Sunshine and Shade and the jumble of rectangular cloth strips that look like technicolor bar codes. All bought for ten dollars apiece, in 1969, from a battered chest in a back room for my first exwife and me, from the woman whose home this farm had been for three quarters of a century before we had arrived. Quilts still sturdy and warm, still colorful and simple in their beauty, surrendered by that first exwife without regret and waiting here for Diana's return.

She‘s been gone for five days this time, as I start to write these words. The last time she left, she had stayed away from this farm, and from me, for seventeen years. And the pain of her leaving had lingered like a wellworn weight for (at least) thirteen of those years. So in a sense, she had truly been gone only for four years, but in all that time, her picture had remained visible, on the living room book shelf, to remind me of her lingering loss and my pain. But I had finally learned to breathe, to be happy and to move on. So her return an abrupt and mysterious surprise but sweet nonetheless was a gift that she did not owe me. Perhaps she owed it to herself, to fill in the gaps and to answer questions of her own. Whatever brought her back, her presence for the five days she was here was a blessing beyond my expectations, a gift that is still beyond my reckoning.

The pain of her longtime loss began going away once we had finally reconnected, over the phone four years ago. I had suffered a glimpse of my own mortality, running an alcohol detox center on the Wind River Indian Reservation in northcentral Wyoming, watching people struggle with their demons, drowning their waking nightmares (and themselves) in ethanol and street pain. Because I had grown close to some of my "frequent flying" clients the dumpstersleeping Arapaho man, the Jenny Crank dieting dirtylegged white girl, the wheezing and kerosenebreathed oldbeforehistime cowboy I felt the need to write my first and only will. In that will, in addition to leaving my land and everything else I owned (stuffed in forgotten boxes in the barn and the abandoned houses on the farm) to my four full brothers and sisters and the halfsister who I had been introduced to by my Dad when I was 30, but only after dating her twice, I decided to leave a portion of my worldly remains my left behinds to Diana. A call to her parents' answering machine, asking for Diana's address, occasioned a concerned message from her that was waiting for me at my Wyoming home when I returned from a short trip off the rez'.

And so our reacquaintance had begun four years ago, as the early snows of Wyoming winter drifted outside my cabin door.

Our conversation then had been long 90 minutes to catch up on the 3,652 days that we had been apart, since the time my Ninth Step letter to her had occasioned a simple response a beautiful oriental card, royal blue and decorated with ancient cranes and herons, with a short message inside "Thank you." that was her final goodbye. Or so I thought. But when we spoke four years ago, when I reassured her that I was not dying (just getting prepared to do so) and when she shared about her second husband (whom she had only married four months before) and her new stepson, there was a warmth, a caring and a quiet (but detached) concern that began to slowly fill her hole in my heart. That conversation started a healing process that continued, even though our conversations did not. Perhaps a Christmas card and jars of berry jam passed between us afterward I really can't remember. But the thing that happened that call that had bridged such distance and warmed a cold, drafty place in my memory was the start. Of something.

We had not spoken again for another two years, when my work had taken me to San Francisco and so nearer to her than I had been in forever. I had called, to see if she could join me for dinner in the city, and she instead invited me to eat lunch with her in Santa Cruz. She had seemed happy to hear from me, looking forward, she said, to setting eyes on each other. And she had shared that her second marriage was ending.

Even with that knowledge, though, I had not been anxious about our visit, driving down the coastline toward her eyes and her smile. I had been proud of myself for not feeling any other way, for wanting to see her without expecting to expect more. And that had been good. Because she met me at the small town café/bar in Boulder Creek, after a redwoodlined curvyroad half hour drive from the ocean, with her new man, the one she cheated on husband #2 with, the one who was there to size me up, the overlyfriendly one, offering to help me with problems that he knew nothing about two minutes after we met. Insinuating himself between us, as he had between Diana and her other family. The one with the big plans, Diana said B then and now. The one who offered Diana a home place on the Big Rock Candy Mountain. The blowhard, the fake, the poseur. The one she's still with.

That time with Diana, though, had been nice, once the selfimportant one had finally left us alone. It was easy seeing her there across from me in the dark café while California afternoon sun framed her face and beamed off her blondtipped eyelashes to forget her new man as soon as he left. It was easy to fill up two hours with smiles and remembrance and tales of singular daringdo, of places I had visited, and been a part of, alone without her. And it was easy for her to glow, because that glow was her, was what had changed me the moment I had first seen her. Like some soulful radiant energy, affecting me from the start but leaving me cold and broken hearted later, when the glow had been dimmed by the continent between us. And the longer than a decade.

But that afternoon alone with her in the small café in the small town in the redwoods had been warm, had brought another healthy dose of selfworth and thankfulness within me for the short time we had been together, before. Had accelerated the healing. But it had not emptied me of common sense, nor blocked my desire to exit quickly as she invited me back to the ridiculously expensive "cottage" that her new man had coaxed her into buying, to tour it with him and her soontobe second exhusband. Knowing right away there was one too many men from her life there in the tiny front yard of her shack, knowing that one too many one was me.

As I left her that afternoon, juggling her own afterme life as best she could, I had taken the long road back to San Francisco. Along Skyline Drive, alternating views of the ocean with the sprawl of San Jose and the faint familiarity of Palo Alto (as Stanford had been another brief stop in my younger life). I enjoyed that drive, that time to think about Diana, to be thankful for someone well worth missing but thankful for not then missing her again. And to have dinner with another lost love, perhaps the woman I should have pursued before Diana's glow had intervened, to have an elevated evening with another dazzling beauty, but one as dark in her beauty as Diana's beauty was light. To exchange kisses in her small car, in a dark parking lot, on the other side of the Bay and then to go to my hotel room, alone. Thankful for the many mysteries that had been my halfformed attempts at love, but still leaving them where they were, and going on alone. Again.

That had been the last time we had seen each other that April day almost two years ago. But I had included Diana in a mass mailing of two letters that I had sent to other loved ones over the past year. The first, a response to a request for advice from a new, casual longdistance friend who asked me what love was (and is), a chance to look at my own healed scars and think about what had been worth those cuts, what had not, and the something better that replaced those earlier fitful, unsuccessful attempts at bonding with another the gift, the soothing salve of respectful relations with several women, some lovers, some almost lovers, one the lover of my father all friends. I enjoyed writing that letter, and had heard back from many people I sent it to. I had forgotten that I had sent that letter also to Diana, and, as she had not responded to it, I could not have imagined how she might have taken it. But she had received it, had read and reread it, and placed it in her memory, as another counterweight to the pain and loss we had caused each other and that she had forgotten about so completely as to be puzzled when she reminded herself from time to time that we had spent four years together. Had filed that letter, and those sentiments, away, but not forgotten it or them.

And then my second letter had arrived. That one occasioned by the sudden, shocking death of a young 12-STEP friend, whose last conscious evening on earth had been a loving and complete one with his wife, before his heart gave way. The second letter had been a paidinfull expression of thanks to all who meant much to me, just in case my own heart stopped before those words of thanks and appreciation were spoken. I knew that Diana received the second letter, because I both mailed it and emailed a copy to one of her old Nashville friends, who was planning her own trip to the Bay Area. I wanted Diana to have that letter, one way or the other. Perhaps that extra effort had been what brought Diana's quick response over the phone, within a week of receiving the message of thanks from me.

Hi there. Thanks for the letter, it was lovely. I'd like to come visit you, on the farm, soon.
Is that alright with you?

And so it began the waiting, the smiles at odd hours, the gentle inhaling and exhaling of breath and of memory. And mingled within the hours of a longoverdue cleaning of the house (finding in the back of one cabinet a pregnancy test that I had certainly not needed since Diana left), the thankfulness that my longing for her had not returned. That would have clouded the time between the waiting and her return.

To paraphrase my old football coach: "No expectations no pain all gain."
Or my Canadian cannabis friends: "It (truly) is all good."
Or my 12-STEP lifeline: "It takes what it takes."

So when we met at the airport on a blustery Friday afternoon, as the Nashville weather slipped from its overly long Indian summer to the first winter's chill, we came together with clean slates. We were glad to see each other, and the only baggage that Diana brought was what fit above her seat on the plane. I scheduled a dinner with two of her old friends (Lanny and Tyree) and offered to schedule time for her with more of her Tennessee friends. But she said, "I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but Bernie, I'm here to see you." So after that first night dinner with those friends, we left for the farm.

As we drove down the last part of my farm road after the hour drive from the city, and Diana caught her first glimpse of the farmhouse, she said, “It’s just as I dreamed it would be.” Not “just as I remembered it”, but “as I dreamed it would be”. After quick introductions to the two new dogs (we had shared three), I gave her a tour of the house so she could see the changes. New siding, a new deck and lean-to for shade on the north side, a new enclosed sunroom on the south. Carpeting in the bedroom and - most important - a tub and toilet in the house. When she had left, the tub was outside the house, in the wood-fired sauna. And the toilet was an outhouse, up the hill above the blueberries and below the pines. Diana marveled at it all, quietly wandering from room to room. She saw her picture on the bookshelf, and commented on it. She saw the photo of Hedy (my Navajo female friend) and I in the office, and commented on it. Then she opened her bag, got out a change of clothes and went to soak in the indoor tub, while I stoked the wood-stove fire for the cool night ahead. I offered her my bed, but she demurred. The futon, covered by the old quilts, was where she would be.

The first morning back, I awoke first, worked on the ‘net for a while and then cooked us breakfast. We wandered the farm for a while that morning, in my new (for me) pickup truck. There was more “new stuff” for Diana to see, everywhere we went. New pastures, five new acres of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries where only woods had been, a new lake and a new pond, a new barn. New land also - 41 more acres up near the Natchez Trace - with a wide-eyed view to the east and south and a first chance for her to get a full view of the entire farm. I was proud to say to her at that moment: “Everything you see - for as far as you can see from where we stand - to the north, east and south is mine.” Not “ours”. Even though I had welcomed Diana “home” the night before, that had been shorthand for “Welcome back to my home, which once had been yours too.”

As we wandered the farm that first morning, Diana kept saying to me, “I just don’t remember all of this.” That was the first time, but certainly not the last, when Diana would mention “not remembering”. There was much she did not recall, things about the farm, about the community, about me. Disturbing blanks of memory, sometimes of trivia but other times of the basic elements of our lives together. I kept asking whether she thought she had simply blocked painful times out of her mind, but she said that her memory lapses weren’t simply of our time together, but of other long, large segments of her life. It was the first time that I became concerned about her, about how she was today, but it was not to be the last.

We left the farm tour for my Saturday morning 12-STEP meeting, where I introduced Diana as “my last ex-wife” to the laughter and entertainment of my clean and sober friends. It was a good meeting (as usual) and I had a chance to both share my experience, strength and hope with others; and to share Diana one-on-one with several members. (Two of the women, before introducing themselves to Diana, whispered to me, “Bernie, she is beautiful.” Yes, I said - I knew. Except for a blond streak in her hair (which Diana said now hides a gray swatch), she looked as she had looked when she left. Perhaps her skin held a few wrinkles where none had been before, she was certainly slimmer (a bit worrisome to me since she had never been heavy), but she was basically the same. But I noticed that she applied makeup as soon as she got up from the living room floor that morning, and added perfume when neither were necessary. Certainly not for me and certainly not for the farm or my friends. For whom, then, and for what reason?

Driving to and from my meeting, we discussed how long it had taken me to get sober, and how much her loss had played a role in my finally “getting it” and keeping it. I mentioned a time before, some fifteen years ago, when I had called to tell her about another attempt at sobriety and she had called me, later, to celebrate what should have been my 90 day “anniversary” (if only I had not relapsed on the 89th). I had been honest with her, that time, and the disappointment, the sadness, had been thick in her voice. As I remembered, that had been our last conversation for a decade. But Diana said she had no memory of that incident.

After the meeting, we drove down the Trace to the Water Valley overlook - a hilltop vista that spread open to us the eight mile valley from that ridge-top all the way to my home. A bright blue day, pointing out landmarks that reminded her of some old friends that she would not see during her visit. Chances to catch her up briefly on their histories also, those long-ago friends who would remain unseen. Friends (like her) who could not brook solitude and so were destined (like her) to go from partner to partner, from highs to lows, from together forever with some new “special someone” to alone again. Naturally.

I always joked (when referring to my own earlier life) that there was only one thing worse than being a hopeless romantic and that was being a hopeful one. Now my romance was reserved for my writings, my land and my dogs. My family and friends. My communities (12-STEP, middle Tennessee and Indian Country) and my work. My five female friends, with the emotional safety (for all of us) that came with numbers, their husbands and distance. Now my way of describing my relationships was to joke that my best relationships were with women who were separated from me by at least a two day drive. Accurate and acutely descriptive of my own solitude. No regrets, just lots of time on the ‘net and the phone. And quiet time with memories. They could be quite satisfying, and had been for a while now. But at that moment, I was in the presence of my last true love, and she was marveling at the view from a Tennessee ridge only eight miles from home, and far from her current life in the California coastal mountains above Santa Cruz. But she looked content, relaxed and happy to be here, and with me. As I was with her.

We drove back to the farm, and Diana stretched out on my upstairs bed to take a nap while I typed away on the computer. Trying to save this country, the other “more perfect union”, from the election theft that almost everyone was sleeping through. While Diana slept above me, in the loft bedroom that we once had shared.

When we were together, it had been a smaller room, with only four feet of clearance between the floor and the ceiling. We had to bend down each night in the loft, bowing because it was required, not because we were paying respect to our marriage bed. Oh if that had only been the case, if we could have had the understanding then that we have now. But that was then. So we bent down then to get into bed, and then stayed apart most nights, sometimes just tired from our day’s hard work, other times tense and distant on all levels. And occasionally, not often enough, sharing a laugh and a chill, as when the big corn snake that wintered in our attic scraped its body along from one rafter to the next, followed by one more mouse’s last frantic cry before remaining forever after silent. There was something fascinating to me about that unseen show, and something more than a bit unnerving to Diana as she listened to the same sounds. This was the country, the backwoods, and corn snakes were cheaper than exterminators and more effective and less messy than mouse traps to reduce our wintertime field mouse tenants. So we listened to that natural accommodation in the crawlspace above us, without coming to one ourselves. At least not very often.

That second day of her visit, I started the wood-fired sauna before Diana awoke, and repaired the chimney cover that kept the rain out of the sauna fire as she moved around slowly and quietly, by herself, in my house. I had asked her to steady the ladder for me, since my last time on the sauna roof ended abruptly when the ladder skidded out from under me on the leaf-slippery deck and I had landed hard on the soft ground, head first and then my arm and leg whip-lashed against the deck on the way down. That day, I had stayed conscious, knowing I was hurt but also knowing that if I allowed myself to pass out, I might never awaken. And so I had willed myself awake, and upright. Had driven myself to the hospital emergency room, with blood streaming down my face and neck from the head wound (the best way to avoid a long wait in any ER), had spent the afternoon and evening being poked and prodded, X-rayed and Cat-scanned, monitored and looked after by another casual friend whose wife was also in the ER that day. And then I had gotten up, by myself, and gone home, bandaged, set together with slings and sedatives. I had survived, again, and had new scars and bone bruises to prove it.

And so I asked Diana to steady the ladder, but then had gone on without her, to leave her alone in the house and to keep to my pattern of solitary service to my home and farm. But with enough foresight and good sense to tack a piece of board behind the foot of the ladder, to keep the ladder from giving me flying lessons yet again. With that simple precaution, I had gotten safely onto and off the roof and done the repairs in short order. While up there, I was surprised to find my old wallet there, one that I thought had been stolen after the funeral of one of the rougher offspring from among the Bud Kelley kin, when I invited the dead man’s daughters and their men-friends down for a quick tour of the house. I had not hesitated to call the oldest Kelly girl then, suggesting that “someone” in their group had walked off with the wallet. And all along, there it had sat, on the roof of my sauna, the leather slowly warping and melting the paper contents held inside it. Discoloring the money and rendering my important papers useless or at least difficult to read.

Having thought the worst that day after the funeral, it was now suggested (by the terms of my continuous sobriety) that I offer an apology, sooner rather than later, to that oldest Kelly girl and - through her - to the rest of her family. Still jumping to conclusions after all those years, that time before the raid that had changed my life forever. The raid that now had me being grateful for each moment-to-moment, that had me accepting that everything that happened had its purpose, that had me asking myself whenever any momentary confusion or roadblock appeared, “What’s the right thing to do at this moment?” While Diana moved calmly and at ease in my house, everything happening to me on that roof was a metaphor for what might have been, if my hard edges had melted sooner - before she had come to this quiet hollow the first time.

I climbed down off the repaired roof and told Diana that the sauna would be hot soon. I was not presuming anything, and so I was not surprised when she said that she would skip the sauna and take a long soak in the claw-foot tub instead. “But you go ahead, enjoy the sweat. I’ll cook dinner and have it ready when you finish.” And so I did. Laying in the hot room, opening up the breather on the rectangular bedroom stove that heated the sauna to fire up the burning oak and black walnut inside, staying there for over an hour without once coming out to cool off. Letting the sweat start slowly, laying on my back as the sun’s light faded in the south-facing window, waiting until I was slick, in the dark, relaxed and ready for whatever came next, before I left that hot space. A quick bath, dressing in sweat-pants and long-sleeved tee shirt, enjoying the smells of spaghetti coming from the kitchen. Joining Diana on the sun-porch, still flushed with heat but peaceful as a well-fed calico. Our conversation started up again and continued with the same themes that we would revisit throughout her visit. What it had been like, what had happened, what it was like now. And what had gone on in between that long-ago time together and this time, condensed but so much sweeter.

The details of how we had come together were clear. We had both just come out of relatively long-term relationships (for us) and so were not yet protected by any perspective or sense of comfort in being alone. Diana had literally broken up with her four year long boyfriend the afternoon of the evening that I first saw her - when she had been flushed and angry at the loud noise that her coke-addled new roommate had generated when a group of us stopped by her new house. I had been alone for a while longer, breaking off a two year relationship that fall because of a new woman I had met on the road - back when attraction was all the excuse I needed to unzip my pants to release the conscienceless beast within. But, at least for me, it had been more than a rebound. A spark, bright and loud enough to be noticed by everyone else in that living room, had flown between us; and so I had fled quickly from Diana’s anger, hoping she would not remember me as one of the loud strangers in her new living room, the next time we met.

While Diana had not remembered that evening (mission accomplished!), she remembered the first time I asked her out, stumbling over the words and then the furniture as I beat a quick retreat after she said “yes” to an evening together. “You were so sweet and so flustered, you started making me smile from the beginning”, Diana said over our spaghetti dinner. And so we had started our sprint toward each other back then and then, together, toward marriage. That first date had ended with our first sex, she had moved from Nashville to my farm within a month, her mother had come to visit two weeks thereafter and - in her presence - we had started making plans to marry. In retrospect, neither of us could figure out what the rush was. But we were racing side-by-side, fast but with our eyes closed, toward another train wreck.

One of Diana’s strongest memories of that courtship happened when her mother was visiting. Diana and I had gone up to my office in Columbia for me to get some paperwork and made love in my overstuffed office chair while her mother waited for us, downstairs in the truck. She glowed for the rest of the day and into the next -- surprised by the unexpected pleasure and knowing from whom it had come. It seemed odd to us both, given how strong that memory had been, that we never made love that way, in a chair, again. To me, that was as good a sign that we were two people, briefly together but always apart. For years after the breakup, I joked over dinner, I had thought about that oversight and had regretted not moving that office chair into our bedroom and using it often.

As for Diana, that bout of lovemaking had been a strong memory not only for the pleasure but for the singularity of the memory. “Did we have sex often?”, she asked over dinner, “I just don’t remember.” And the truth was that, unlike our past (and future) behavior, we had not. I remembered a few other times - laying together in the bright afternoon spring sun, on clean straw spread between the newly planted rows of our first garden together; holding her close in her Dad’s spare bedroom as soon as we had arrived in the Bay Area for me to begin grad school at Berkeley; sharing sex one morning before I rode my bike the seven miles to class (and then wondering for a week thereafter whether she might be pregnant.) I told Diana that I regretted the fact that I had been most solicitous of her after that time, so uncharacteristically nice to her near the end, when I thought she might be pregnant. And I told her that I regretted other times, when she would lay in bed wanting me, when I was too stubborn or self-absorbed, too sad about something, to roll over and want her back. Diana said she didn’t remember those times, and I wanted to believe her.

Dinner was done, and so was our first long foray into the distant, painful and hardheaded past. But we were still smiling. As I cleared the table and washed the dishes, we were quiet for a while. Processing, thinking to (and of) ourselves, burying some regrets after having spoken them aloud. I had rented four movies for us, and we ended the night watching “The Missing”, a recent western filmed in northern New Mexico, the early scenes set within sight of Jicarita Peak. Basket Mountain, the Picuris Indians named it, the second highest peak in New Mexico and the massive Southern border of the land that I have coveted there for the past decade. The movie was fitting, both because it allowed me to point out New Mexico sites that meant much to me (and which Diana longed to experience herself) and because the plot spoke of a father’s and daughter’s estrangement, search for mutual understanding and final reconciliation. When the movie ended, Diana said that she was anxious to get to New Mexico soon, and I said that there would likely be a cabin waiting for her there, one on my friends’ land, filled with artwork (some which I have donated) and surrounded by solitude.

Neither of us have ever had children, and I mentioned that being childless had always been a regret of mine, mentioned when people would ask how I would live my life differently if I could. Being one of forty-three first cousins and the oldest of five children (twelve, actually, if I counted the half-brother, the step-brothers and sisters, the adopted sister, the half-sister who I had briefly dated before my Dad reluctantly made me aware of just why we had felt from the first that we had so much in common), I just always thought that I would have children. But being the child of divorce, I also wanted to wait with each new love to make sure that we “fit” before bringing children into the world. “Yes”, Diana said, ”my parents’ divorce had been so painful and had taken so much out of my mother and of me that I didn’t want to have children and then leave (or be left by) their father.” We agreed that it was probably best that we had remained childless. I joked that, these days, my palms would start sweating whenever I was asked to babysit my grand-goddaughter (my little sweet pea Grace) alone, even for a few minutes. Perhaps I would have grown into the responsibility of parenthood (and become less self-centered and not an alcoholic), but that had not happened. As for Diana, she shared that she had lost her uterus to fibroid tumors in 1997, and so did not regret what she now could never have. But she enjoyed her step-son and still had him in her life, at least in part. Given how full of love she is, I knew that her step-son would always keep her close if he could.

We talked a bit more that night, sitting on the floor and then laying on the bed, about our efforts to understand each other back then with the help of two marriage counselors. Diana remembered that before we left Tennessee for Berkeley, our Nashville counselor had asked us to give the relationship one more year. That deadline, to the day, had come while we were sitting in another new counselor’s office, a first session Diana dragged me to and one that did not go well. Midway through that first (and last) Berkeley session, Diana had gotten up, said “this isn’t working” and raced me to the door. And to the beginning of the end of our relationship. She had already moved out several weeks earlier and - far from regretting that move - I had been relieved to be able to focus on schoolwork (I was completing a two year MPH in nine months, taking seven classes) and my three jobs, finally, without the constant tension and daily arguments that were our life together then. I was shut down to her, and she would soon learn to shut down from me.

I told Diana that the first time I began to regret our separation was several months later, as I left Berkeley to return to Tennessee, with a new degree but without a job to go to or her to go with me. I had called her from San Diego to tell her so, and while she took the call and her voice came to me over the hotel phone, there was no heart and soul home on the other end of the line. As BB King would sing, “the thrill (was) gone -- gone away”. Only to return, tender and transformed, these years later.

And then we went to bed, me staying upstairs again and Diana back down on the living room floor. She said that she had been cold there on the floor the first night back, despite Miz Kelly’s quilts above and below her. And so I stoked the fire some more and turned down the ceiling fan. We joked about my enjoyment of the cool and her thin-skinnedness now. We marveled that, in our years together, we endured so many hardships, physical and emotional, and shrugged both off because we knew no better or weren’t equipped (or ready) to do anything about them anyway. So our last glimpses of each other that night were more smiles and expressions of gentle concern for the other’s welfare. So sweet, so simple, so weightless. And so to sleep.

Sunday morning brought banana and pecan waffles, bacon and sausages, pots of coffee and more talk. But before that, I watched my Sunday morning political talk shows while Diana slept. A creature of routine, broken only by surprises like a stolen election and the sudden thawing of a frozen piece of my heart. Things that get your attention, that shake your routine, that have you questioning basic (bedrock) assumptions about life and love, about our country, about the rules we play by, about how our behavior can change, about our world-views, both small and large.

We took a long while over breakfast, having no particular order to our conversation. Everything was fair game, and so now it was time to start talking about the people (some of them lovers) who had come after our marriage. I had begun to sort through two large boxes of photos a while back (after the raid), when I was - for a brief moment - trying to put my affairs (literally and figuratively) in order, before I went behind the federal prison walls. And one of the folders into which I had sorted my life was labeled “wives and lovers”. So I pulled out that folder and shared some pictures (not all) with Diana and the stories that went with them. Some of the women had been in my life only a moment, some were still friends, none were still lovers. But there were stories to go with all of them. And places -- New Mexico, San Francisco, Hawaii, British Columbia, New York City, DC, the farm. And none of the pictures were of Diana.

In turn, Diana shared that the men she had chosen to be with after me were, at first, a reaction against her negative feelings for me at the time. And so she had chosen “wishy washy” men, ones with whom she called the shots, ones who bored her quickly but caused her no pain. And then, in reaction against the passive men, she had formed a bond with an Aikido instructor, he from Japan and more traditional (and demanding) than I had ever been. She said that she had been on that see-saw for some time now, back and forth between wearing the pants and walking seven steps behind. Having met her last ex-husband and the man who ran her life now, it appeared to me that the see-saw was still in use. After all, a happy medium was only a quick and passing fancy on a see-saw and required a mutual understanding of and desire for balance and the respite that came with it B for most, equilibrium was not the point of that playground toy. But it was not yet time to talk about where she was now. That would come later.

After breakfast, we got back in the truck, now accompanied by my two dogs, for a drive to Santa Fe (Santee Fee, as the locals pronounce it). Annie, the older dog, stood up on one wheel well and Duke, the almost two year old pup, on the other, tongues wagging and ears flapping, smiling dog smiles into the breeze, in that state of any moving dog’s heaven that is the back of a pickup truck in the country. Dogs never tire of it, and are always ready to go ... anywhere. We drove on the new highway, straight, wide and on the ridge; where once we had ridden a slender, windy road to town, skirting the ridges and rolling through cupped valleys. Like everything else, Santa Fe was different. Where an overgrown and abandoned field in the center of town had been, there was now a town square. Something else for me to show Diana and to be proud of - the flower beds, the gazebo, the split rail fence from the edge of an old farmer’s field, now framed by Bradford pears and forsythia. I told her the story of starting the square, and the pleasure I still got by tending the flower beds each summer, my continuing gift to the community after more than a decade.

We drove past the old Methodist parsonage, where my small consulting company once held court, my home base away from my home office after the sound of the fax machine at all hours was more than I wanted. My staff had found that seven room house and, from it, we had handled projects in Alabama, Wyoming, New Mexico, California, Montana, Mississippi - all interesting, all lucrative, all contributing to improving communities in some way or another. Back when my life was moving forward, when it was not on hold, waiting for someone else to decide what the next phase would be. An office only ten minutes from home and then only a short walk to the town square, so I could alternate hours on the computer or the phone with breaks in the flower beds dirt. A nice life, a productive life, a contributing life B my life as I had been privileged to live it. Then.

I didn’t belabor the details of my work with Diana, because that wouldn’t have meant much. Later in the visit, I showed Diana my web-site, still on the ‘net though it had not been updated in years. Witness to what had been, not what was now. But she had seemed impatient with that evidence of my work. Because that was not what her visit was about. After all, I was not interviewing for a contract with her. Instead, we were clearing away the cobwebs and filling in the blanks. But talking about my work allowed me to mention New Mexico again, and the many beautiful weeks and months of visual splendor, the learning from and growing to care about Indian people, and to be trusted by them. That she had wanted to hear about, the beauty and the Indian mysteries revealed. She shared that, just as the farm (and I) had called her back, so too was New Mexico calling. She knew that there was something there for her too, in the enchanted land.

We had shared a few days in northern New Mexico, on our way to Berkeley together and to our breakup. We pitched a tent back then beside a clear, cold brook up in the Pecos Wilderness, near a field with no one around. And then we left that tent, unslept in for four days but waiting there for us nonetheless. To sleep in hotel rooms in Santa Fe and Taos, on hard beds with the buzz of bright neon and fluorescents to keep us from sleep, while our tent - our own private meadow with only the stars for night-lights - had remained empty. We remembered that trip and that chance for peace, quiet and beauty that had been left untaken. And regretted that decision also. But Diana would go back, soon she said. And I would call friends, up on the llano above Penasco, Rodarte and Vadito, near the Rio Pueblo, within walking distance of “my” land with its seven mile perimeter. Bordered by national forest, friends and a monastery of silent Buddhist nuns. Praying (and breathing) for all of us. Where I had been refreshed and renewed many times by quiet peace and beauty - and solitude. It was something else I wanted to share with her, though only at a distance. (And since she left, this time, those arrangements have been made. The cabin is hers to use, whenever she is ready and willing to be there, alone with what might become her New Mexico too, as it had become mine so many years ago.)

Back home then, to another nap for Diana in my bed and another afternoon for me with maul and chainsaw, adding another truck-ful of oak and hickory, tulip poplar and cherry, to the woodpile near the back porch. I chose to cut on the northernmost edge of the farm, near where the Natchez Trace horse trail touched my land. There I cut and split, split and loaded, cut, split and loaded some more. Two small tankfuls of chainsaw gas was enough to allow me to split wood through the last quarter of the Titans game (a rare win for them, and no better place for me to enjoy it). And enough to fill the sturdy Toyota, with time in between to wave at the beautiful young mulatto girl, riding her paint pony on the trail between her curly blond-haired mother and her strong Black father. I smiled at the young girl and she shyly smiled back. And I told her Dad that they could not have been in a better place that day, on horseback in the mid-afternoon sun, cool breezes to keep their horses and themselves from becoming too warm, together in the country. And he agreed.

Down off the ridge, throwing wood from the truck, expecting that Diana was already up and moving. (She was, though moving very slowly.) I promised to take her to Lanny’s, her former employer and friend during her stained glass days, who had become my ever-since friend also. So once again in the truck, leaving the dogs behind this time. Taking the back roads, up the farm trail to the Old Natchez Trace. Then on Tom Rail Road, past Bootleggers Lane, to Shoals Branch, to Pinewood, to Spencer Mill. To find that Lanny was not home. And then the long ride back, with a sliver moon to mark our way home. I talked about us (maybe) climbing one of the farm ridges when we got back - the middle ridge on the farm where I have thought about building a new house someday. The ridge that opened up into a view of the farm to the south and southeast, where I could see three of my farm’s valleys and yet still be tucked into a second growth of hickory woods. It would be a good place to gaze on that sliver moon, and to be silent together. But Diana had shivered at the thought and by the time we made it back to the farm, it was dark, she was cold and I had seen all of that moon I would see for one evening. But it was enough.

Our movie that night had been “Big Fish”, the fantastic and visually interesting tall Southern tale by Tim Burton. Entertaining and absorbing for us both, laying there, tired and relaxed, on the floor at the end of my bed. One of the movie’s story lines had been the final effort of an only son to come to understand (and believe) his father, in the days before the father’s death. And so, when the movie was over, we sat on the floor and talked about our Dads, hers still living though showing his age and mine now gone for five years. (Lord, had it really been that long?)

I told her how my Dad and I had grown to be so close after she left, how I often called him at the end of the work week, from some other exotic place on the road, to share my own tall tales with him. I told her about teaching Dad to access the Internet one winter morning in the last year of his life, in the last small house he would own. And to prove its power, how I had located one of Dad’s old World War II army buddies within thirty minutes, a quiet, large South Dakota farm boy, Dad said, who had saved his life many times, both in his battles with the Japanese and with drunken northern American soldiers. And then we had called that friend - who Dad had not spoken with for a half century - and I had listened while they talked, Dad saying over and over “I just can’t believe it’s you.” Thanking me with his eyes while he held the phone tight.

I told Diana how I had kept Dad’s short email messages thereafter, until the feds erased them. How I had gone to Belize on vacation after Dad’s first chemo for bladder cancer, how I had stood for him in the prayer spot at Tikal in the middle of the plaza of those Mayan ruins, how I had found a quarter mile of cascading waterfalls the next day, driving alone through the Belizean jungle on Dad’s last day and had thought of him. Not knowing that the chemo was killing him, that he was delirious in the hospital, fading in and out, remembering his trip home from the war, thinking he was in that time again. While I had stood by the waterfall and thought how nice it was going to be to share that adventure with Dad also.

And then to be awakened early the next day, by a worker at the resort where I was staying, to find my brother Martin on the phone, saying simply “he’s gone”. To tell Diana about the trip down the mountain, crying so hard and so strong that local hitchhikers would drop their thumbs and turn away, when they saw my red and melting face in the rental car. How the airlines brought me home so fast, how my brothers, nephews and I carried Dad’s casket (five times heavier than the weathered, wasted body that lay within) two blocks from the funeral home, past Dad’s office, and to the Catholic Church. The church where Dad and I had both been baptized, and where he had sat, quiet and feeling unwelcomed, every once in a while during the years after his divorce from my Mother, after he had been excommunicated. (Back before annulment became another, more palatable and tolerated word for divorce in the Catholic faith.) Sitting, every so often, on the back pew, alone.

And I told her about the four eulogies we had given Dad, with a church filled to overflowing with Dad’s patients and colleagues, his family and friends, his children and grandchildren. And how I had cried then, fumbling over the words, finding it hard to force those words out that were my last public goodbye to him. How I had ended by asking everyone to keep my Dad alive in their hearts, for him, for me and for us all. And then, while cleaning Dad’s house and packing up everything he had been left with at the end, sorted and set out so that we would find what he wanted each of us to take away, to stand in his small bedroom and play the final messages on his answering machine, from so many people who had been concerned about him, in his final week. Among that recorded stream of sentiment, two messages from me, with word-picture tidbits from Belize to share, looking forward (I had recorded) to telling him the whole story. I had cried again then, listening to my voice echoing in an empty room, and to the final message on that tape that had been recorded by Dad’s longest psychiatric patient, leaving her message for us because she had known Dad was dead and she knew that his children would be there to listen, to take away the remains. And I cried while telling Diana all of it, or at least the end of it. It didn’t take much for me to cry, even now, thinking of my Dad and what his loss still meant - another large hole in my heart, a heart that was aging along with his memory.

We ended that night, laying on my bed again awhile, first facing each other and then curled in a spoon. Lay there together long enough for me to feel Diana falling asleep, her body gently jerking as it floated into dreams, but also feeling Diana fighting that sleep as long as she could. Because for her to truly sleep, guilt-free and unencumbered, she would have to get up and go downstairs. And so finally she did, to find her futon and her quilts, in the middle of the living room floor. There in the dark in my bed, after she left, I relaxed - more than I had relaxed the two nights previous - and went to sleep myself, soul satisfied. Our talk and her touch were so soothing, and so empty of intent and regret, no expectations. So satisfying, as only something you’ve waited almost two decades for can be. And so to sleep once more, with Diana in my home, safe and silent, nearby but still free (from me).

Monday, our last full day together, was another bright and clear time. More talk, more drives over the farm and through the countryside, more naps for her and farmwork for me. She looked tired and too thin when she had arrived so the long naps and the big shared meals were as healing (perhaps more so) than our talks. We had gone to my noon 12-STEP meeting in Franklin and I had been the last person to share (saying to a newcomer that 12-STEP worked “... if you want it to work - not if the courts, or your family or your ex-wife want it to.”) Friends from that home group had come up after the meeting to meet Diana and to welcome her home for her visit. Other women again whispered to me, “Bernie, she’s beautiful!”, before they introduced themselves to her. Ann, beaming from ear to ear, asked me “Is this the woman whose picture is on your bookshelf at home?”, and then continued her wide, sparkling smile through her own short introductions. Rebecca, relatively new to the program but someone with whom I had clicked immediately, whispered , “Bernie, she couldn’t take her eyes off you while you spoke. She was soaking you in, and glowing.” I was so proud to be there with her, having shared with my home group a time or two (or twenty) over the previous two weeks that Diana was coming, as a way to vent any anxiety I might have about her visit and to remind myself to do “the next right thing” always, then and now.

We had gone to lunch (Diana’s treat) and then, on the way back home, she called her man and several others back in California, checking on the progress of the café that she was opening, though it sounded like that it had really not been her idea. Things were not going well, workers were leaving and not saying when they would return, new issues were surfacing that Diana - having never worked in a restaurant, much less owned one B was just thinking about. The opening day was to be delayed again, so many things not yet done and so many new things becoming apparent that would also need doing before (if) the doors opened.

But Diana’s guy was full of more fantasies, was blowing more smoke up her backside, and trying to do the same with me. (To be fair, I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling at the moment, with his woman and his meal ticket so far away. And I really didn’t care.) After saying her goodbyes and her “I love you(s)”, she turned and said to me, “Gary says to tell you he loves you too.” I said nothing, then or thereafter, for one of the very few times in my life.

I continued to sit in silence next to Diana and steered the truck toward the Natchez Trace bridge that straddled Highway 96. A massive and yet delicate span between two ridges, with curved supports that made it unique for the eastern part of the country (and perhaps the world). I listened to her conversations and had bitten my tongue. Hard. Not really knowing her circumstance and not wanting to know more about her man than she had already shared, I knew to be silent. And by being silent, to do the next right thing. She was not mine to try to change, and she had not been for a long time. Now, at this moment, what was emerging was hopefully a new friendship, a new space where I could start caring for her again without expectation or regret, and so I had to be delicate and sensitive, and to bite my tongue. There were lots of circumstances in life where attraction worked better than promotion, and having Diana examine her current life as it appeared to be unfolding, at least in part outside of her control, was one of those situations. For during her visit, there had only been three times when our conversations seemed to make her uncomfortable, frustrated and fidgety. And all those times involved conversations about this guy she was now with.

The first time had been the first day after she arrived, when we were driving to my Saturday 12-STEP meeting. Diana had asked about the progress of my case and I had explained the ups and downs of it, the not knowing what waited ahead, the worry whenever I arrived home to find my telephone message light blinking, thinking it was a message from my attorney that the worse was yet to come, but that it was finally on the way. Diana asked whether I was prepared to go to prison and I told her that I tried not to think about that at all, to stay in the moment, to breathe and be thankful for where I was now and not where I might end up. I told her that, if I went to prison, I fully expected to die there. Because I couldn’t imagine sharing a space with 500 others, living under bright lights 24/7, saying “yes-sir” and “no-sir” to strangers who had the power to make me say those things. To be away from the farm, or at least some part of the natural world. I knew that wouldn’t do, and that my heart would burst or I would break my knuckles on someone’s nose, before “they” put me down. “Now you see why I don’t dwell on that future”, I told her. “Why suffer those fears and dwell in that pain sooner than I may be forced to.”

That’s when Diana had said that her man could help me. It seems that he was an expert in hiding, in changing his identity, in running from the mistakes he had made (or, who knows, the crimes he had committed). He could help me, Diana said, to start over, somewhere else. To change who I was to avoid my future, to run from this impending punishment, to avoid prison and an early death. I didn’t ask Diana for any details, though I really wanted to know what her guy had done that was so terrible that he needed to hide himself so thoroughly, to erase what he once was. It would not have been proper and, besides, my guess was that Diana probably didn’t know the truth anyway. So I just told her that my running was another way to let “them” win, that I needed to be present and not a silent witness to the process that locked people like me up for sharing “illegal smiles” with family and friends, for providing relief to sick people, both acquaintances and strangers who sought me out. “I’m not ashamed of what I have done, so why should I run and act as if I am?” She had been quiet then, understanding (I hope) what I was saying. And what I was not saying about the path that this guy - her guy - had chosen for himself.

Then, the second time she had been uncomfortable had been while we sat on the porch at sunset that same night, and Diana had tried to explain the many “enterprises” that this guy had gotten her involved in. Mysterious bank “trades”, “seasoned” corporations, an ever-changing mix of “business partners” with their own schemes, getting Diana to fight (unsuccessfully) with her bank over something that perhaps had only cost Diana more money and her own good credit, spending $300,000+ for a 900 square foot shack with no insulation and little shade so “she could get in the game”. (What game, I wondered silently, the debtors’ game?) I tried then to get some handle on what she was talking about, had asked her just where their money was coming from these days (since Diana had quit supporting them a while back with her work as a physical therapist and was now deeply embroiled in “what”?). But Diana couldn’t explain it, whatever “it” was, and my questions had clearly made her uncomfortable. “You know, Bernie, you’re asking me the same things my Dad has asked, and my friends. And you’re expressing the same concerns.” Again, I had stayed silent, hoping that she could really hear my own uneasiness that the people who have always loved her, all her life or at least for the past two decades, had been so far unable to reach her with their concerns. Maybe she did hear that. I can only hope.

The third (and last) time there was any discomfort between us had been when we had discussed a close friend’s two year relationship with a still-married woman, how that affair was making that friend lie to his children, his family and to me. I told Diana how much that hurt, to see my friend being set up for future heartache or, at the least, to be living with the daily disconnect between his own basic goodness and his restless and uneasy bargain with this married “fuck partner of convenience”. As far as I knew, this woman was still going home to her husband and her child every night after “playing tennis” with my friend (nowhere near a court, I imagined, but with lots of racket and little love), and I said that I fought to find some respect for that woman (and had failed) and was still so concerned (had been) for my friend and his blind side that I used to see in my own mirror, back when I had no boundaries other than the limits of what was possible (and not what was proper). I should have known, as she sat there defending my friend and the woman he was involved with, that I was hitting another nerve. But for me, the third time, the third chance to practice sensitivity and silence, had not been a charm. Without really thinking, I had been telling Diana’s recent story, and hadn’t thought it out enough to know that.

You see, her latest man had entered Diana’s life when she was still married, with a stepson that she loved (still did) very much. They had met when Diana had become involved in another hare-brained scheme “to make billions”, the new guy had helped preside over Diana investing $12,000 in the scheme and receiving nothing in return. And while picking her pocket, this man had filled her head with fluff, serenaded and then seduced her, persuaded her to leave her husband and son in order to be with him (in reality, to take care of him). All the while promising (who knows what)? The Lord only knows, because I don’t think Diana did, then or now.

But for some people (for Diana), imagination may always be (may always have been) the best aphrodisiac. For others (for me), it was memory. And so I couldn’t relate, but nonetheless I should have been aware. Thinking back on it now, my words about my friend and his fuck partner must have hurt her. It probably didn’t help that I also shared with Diana that, in my past, I had also dishonored my vows with my first wife, and so had already “been there, done that, still had the blood-stained tee shirt” to prove it. I said to her that I had grown out of that serious self-centeredness, of not respecting certain boundaries, at least when it came to bedding married women. To be honest, there was still some occasional verbal foreplay and not-quite phone sex with one particular married woman that still happened every once in a while, but that woman was a continent apart. But nothing more, for a long while now. It just wasn’t worth the pain, the regret, the very cheap thrills. I said all that, without thinking that my words might have been a mirror to Diana’s life.

That was, and remains, my one real regret, of the brief time we had together.

Back at the farm that Monday afternoon, one more nap for her, more farmwork for me. After only four days back together, we had already slipped into a steady pattern of healing and of progress, of restful sleep for her in my empty bed and refreshing, solitary physical work for me. Both of us catching up on what we needed most, her the quiet time and me the steady routine of gathering the stored warmth of firewood near the back porch, for when she went away again.

That last afternoon together, Diana reached Lanny on the phone and so we made another trip to his land. In his early 60s, Lanny had finally moved out of East Nashville after decades of living and working in and around downtown, after many beautiful stained glass contributions to homes, work-sites and places of worship, of many good deals (and a few sour ones). Lanny was excited for another chance to see Diana before she got back on the plane to California, and so the two of them sped through their own catching-up while I sat and watched, and listened. Tales of their adventures, of their other loved ones won and lost, of where each of them was now and what had brought them there. Of regrets and unexpected rewards that came with just hanging on, of having - and then moving slowly toward - a vision that was doable, that was within reach.

We sat in the loft of Lanny’s barn/shop/temporary apartment, them telling tales and me just watching and listening. As engaged as they had been with catching up, it was left to me to watch the time, measured by the lengthening shadows and fading light coming through the loft’s southern window. And so I had gotten us up to tour Lanny’s house in progress, being built to the north of the barn, already taking shape with Bricko block, floor joists and a thick cedar corner-post salvaged from his land (or slightly off it). We toured what was there and Lanny filled in the blanks (and the missing two floors of what would be) with clear images as we walked in slow circles in the half-finished basement.

We could feel the soon-come warmth that his passive solar design would bring and marveled at the expanse that would be his finished home. And we could chuckle at his outdoor shower, fitted on the basement’s western wall, already working to make his “roughing it” period before the house was finished much cleaner and more pleasant than Diana’s time with me in the Tennessee woods had been.

Touring Lanny’s house, Diana had begun talking about building a home for herself, one day. She had been vague on the details, though - the where, the what, the when. But it was easy to be inspired by what we were seeing and by the enthusiasm with which Lanny shared his dream, the cedar and the concrete, the open spaces soon to be filled with large expanses of clear glass, with French doors and stained glass transoms. I pulled back the plastic sheet that covered the large hole in Lanny’s southern wall and we shared his view of the approaching winter sky - with that same sliver moon there to greet us and to remind us of what nature always offers right in front of us, if we’re slow and silent enough to catch a glimpse of it, and to breathe. Selfless in our awareness and appreciative of what there was to see. And able to offer silent prayers of thanks, for slowing down, for seeing, for being selfless and silent, and for breath.

We would have stayed longer, both of us. And Lanny surely didn’t want us to leave. But Diana’s remaining visit was now being measured in hours, not days. And we still had things to say. So we left after sunset, Lanny and Diana sharing a long goodbye hug, saying “we’ll see each other, again, soon” without knowing whether that was true or not. Lanny talking about coming to California, Diana talking about coming back to Tennessee. Again, soon. Me just standing silent and apart, letting them do what they needed to do, to keep the re-connection strong after the end of this day. Diana saying, as we left, “Lanny, I’m happy for you.” And me knowing that Lanny was happy for me, for the unexpected gift of five more days with my last ex-love.
Back home, both of us with the hunger as only a long and relaxed visit with Lanny can bring, we decided on waffles again. Sweet, solid, filling. Diana sharing that having waffles for dinner had often been what her Dad would cook when he was left alone with his two young daughters, during those brief years when they had all lived under one roof. Me being quietly thankful for any memory that would connect her past with her Dad (who she still loved strongly) and this fleeting, remaining present with me -- our last night together, this time.

Instead of watching our last rented movie, I pulled another off the shelf - my favorite. “Rancho Deluxe”, a mid-70s film set in the Montana mountains, starring a young Jeff Bridges and a then-unknown Sam Watterson, with Elizabeth Ashley, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickens and music by Jimmy Buffett. A modern outlaw tale, about a refusing-to-grow-up young man from southern California wealth (Bridges) and a very mixed-blood Indian (Watterson), minor stock rustlers and randy roustabouts who dreamed of their own “big score” and then of retirement to Rancho Deluxe, in the shade of their own Big Rock Candy Mountain. And of the comedy of errors that had taken them from successful small-time schemes to the rueful comeuppance of that movie’s climax. It had been my favorite movie from the first time I had seen it, as the opening film in the American Film Institute’s “Sleepers of the 70s” series, back when I was an up-and-coming young bureaucrat in the Carter administration.

In my own mind, I had always been a bit of an outlaw (a sensitive sociopath, meaning no one harm, just smiling as I thumbed my nose at those laws that made no sense to me, truly my father’s father’s grandson.) And unlike the characters in that movie, I had already owned a piece of my “Rancho Deluxe” by the late 70s, and was on the way back to it back then, with only a short detour to Stanford and to my first fall harvest of illegal smiles in the Sierras with Modesto bikers as my guides, stocking up with seed and skill to re-enter the world of the wildest moonshine holler in middle Tennessee, finally ready to take my rightful place as heir to that holler’s history, to add to and to embellish its reputation in the years beyond. We laughed at the movie and nodded in somewhat sad agreement that it had been a premonition of my life, of the excitement that had been part of living my path and the rueful end that might be its climax.

Paths taken and not taken. That was what we talked about, our last night together. What we would have been like, what our lives would have been made of, had we stayed together. We agreed that we would probably have had children (or tried to) and that the result of bringing children into the world would have been to blunt our trajectories a great deal. I could not have worked 70 hour weeks with the Tennessee AIDS Program, nor would have wanted to. I could not have risked taking on the Governor back then over his homophobic and short-sighted policies, nor been asked to join CDC after quitting that Tennessee job in successful protest over those policies. And that would have likely meant no New Mexico and no groundbreaking work there, no projects in Alabama, California, West Virginia, Hawaii, Montana. It would have meant no Wyoming, and no relations with (and deep feelings for) the Navajo, the Arapaho and the Shoshone. We both agreed that it would have been a less adventurous path for me, and more than likely one that was less accomplished.

Of course, it was easier for us to think about what I would not have experienced than what might have taken its place, so we didn’t talk much about what had been missed. A child or three, a loving and beautiful companion, a long time together working the farm, bringing up our children together in a world that was rapidly disappearing everywhere else. Oh the fun we might have had, and the lessons we might have learned, if only we had been forced to grow up sooner by our staying together. How much sooner I might have sobered up or stopped the other things that I so enjoyed, when the only one who had been left there to suffer the consequences was me.

As for Diana, she wondered aloud whether she would have ever gone to college and then to graduate school, as she had done after we parted. Whether she would have ever had the chance to prove herself to herself, to have taken on a helping profession that I was sure she was good at, even though she had fallen away from it in her current life. That was all she mentioned, that and the fact that perhaps she had never really wanted children anyway and likely would not have had that choice to remain childless, had we reconciled, finally grown up together and remained on the same path.

There was something so liberating, so freeing, about the conclusions we came to, together that last night, alone in this old farmhouse in the place we had shared for a short time such a long time ago. To begin to wrap up this visit, this reconnecting, by giving thanks for what life brought us after we parted, rather than dwelling on what we might have missed. And with that next-to-last conversation, before our last night together, I realized that everything really does happen for a reason and that my regrets over all these years might have been misplaced, more distraction from being present during the moments -- the months and years -- of travel, of meaningful service, of broad contribution to my profession and to the communities, here and scattered throughout the country, that had been my calling -- my life -- after Diana left. Sitting there together, talking it all out, and then laying together one more time - in the end, everything had been worth it. Now, and only now, that was possible to see. So before Diana got up that last time from the loft to go to her own bed, I whispered, “Happy twentieth anniversary. It has been nice, though the seventeen years in the middle are a bit fuzzy.”

We both then laughed, hugged and parted.

Now it is time to end this remembrance. Two weeks ago at this moment, I was just leaving home, heading for a noon 12-STEP meeting and then to the airport to pick up my last ex-wife. Nine days ago, at this time, I was putting Diana back on a plane, hugging her at the airport, being kissed gently and quickly by her when my arms left her sides for the final time, me telling her “I’ve always loved you and I always will” without asking for that sentiment to change our future (or her present) in the slightest. She had just given me such a gift by coming back, if only for five days and four nights. She had trusted me again, and for the most part, I had earned that trust and more by that short time we spent together and the memories we shared. I truly didn’t know what lay ahead for her, or for me for that matter. But I was armed with the serenity prayer and the wisdom to stay in the moment. I knew that I didn’t need a Big Rock Candy Mountain to be happy, that the serene world that is still my Tennessee holler farm, spiced with the occasional fantasy of “my” mountain-top retreat in northern New Mexico, are quite enough for me, thank you. I didn’t know what Diana needs to be happy, at that moment and perhaps really ever. But I knew that she knew that I would always be here for her, if she needed me. Because I told her so. And I believe that she believes me.

It has now been nine days since I started writing this remembrance. I have not heard from Diana, so I hope and pray that she is well. I have sent her three e-mails, one with a picture of me in the New Mexico mountains with the words “Thank you”, one with two pictures of newborns and big dogs wrapped in a sleepy embrace, and the final one a message that my New Mexico friends were waiting for her visit and willing to share their (“my”) cabin with her. No messages have come back from her, so it is time to stop. Writing her and writing this remembrance. Sixteen pages is enough, for now. I have these thoughts and the caring and concern of my 12-STEP and real world friends and family, most of whom have asked their own gentle questions about Diana’s visit - what it was like, what happened, what it is like for me now. And my answer has been, “It was very unexpected and very nice. We talked and walked the land and rode through the countryside and ate and napped and held each other - briefly and without expectation. It was all good.”

And now, it is quiet and cool here again in my hollow. The futon and the quilts are still on the living room floor, covered now with old and newer memories. And I am alone again, naturally.

Mother Earth, thank you for the serenity that is every moment for me in the here and now, the calm courage to face the unexpected and sometimes very nice surprises you bring to my life, and the hard-earned wisdom to be thankful for it all. And nothing more.

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