In February we were wondering how you make love last. Sometimes, for some people, it seems like the love stops when the changes stop. My friend said, “So do you have to keep on buying houses, having babies, and fixing up sailboats to stay in a relationship?” He wanted to know what it feels like when you know it’s right. I said I didn’t know, that maybe you can’t know when something is right, but that you probably know when it’s wrong. So what is it, then, with everyone I know being in these 4, 5, 6+ yearlong relationships that dissolve unexpectedly, without fanfare, and for reasons that we cannot explain? People ask why it didn’t work out and you have to say something broad about life, like your lives were different, going in different directions, and you loved each other but it wouldn’t work out. What were we waiting for, all that time? Were we even together, any of us, in the end?
But now my former boyfriend (F.B.) is moving with our good friends the J’s into a cool little house in Seal Beach. His landlord is Hawaiian and planted banana trees in the backyard. Main Street is nearby, and they’ve got a cat. F.B. e-mails me some photos this afternoon, and I look at them and I write back “AWESOME” even though all of a sudden my heart feels a little weird and I’m like, “Banana trees? Okay. Why were there no banana trees when we were together? Why do I now think maybe we can make it work for a little while longer, that maybe it’s worse here without you, and that maybe we’ll be fine, sitting together barefoot on the back patio in the shade with the cat?”
