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Well, did the cooking thing with Ed. It wasn't horrible.... it was lots of chopping...dried cherries, then rosemary and slicing strawberries and prunes. Easter is this week, so pork tenderloin was on the menu three different ways. With every meal, I made suggestions on what it would be paired with as a better suggestion. I'm not sure that it was fun for the chef, but it was for me. We had garlic bread with butter and Gruyere, I thought it would have paired perfectly under scrambled eggs, crumbled sausage and both red and green pepper. I would have made the trifle with coconut milk soaked pound cake instead of lady fingers. I would have thinly slice the pork with the grainy mustard sauce with beer braised sauerkraut and served it as a sandwich on egg twist rolls with picked beets. The whole evening reminded me of the first summer that I lived here and my time with Erica. She was hoping to go to pastry school and we spent days making dessert recipes up in our head. I'm smiling right now thinking about her wanting to take fourth of July weekend off and my bribing her with sweets to stay--she did. I'm not sure that I wouldn't be bought for the same amount of french pastries...and besides, no one who's close to me misses out on their 'frannie time'.

As for my time with Ed, the evening had me feeling like we're less than pals...I practically ignored him. I told the stranger/chef things about me that we've have never talked about. He was quiet, I didn't stop talking to the chef, which is the opposite of what our dates are typically like. He let it slip that he's dating someone else. I don't care. I might have wanted to have showed up to another of the cooking classes without him, but it's his space and I won't have him feel uncomfortable being there with someone else and having me there too. It's not a big deal to me, but it might be for him.

The chef and I talked about her kids. She had older one's and then adopted 4 from the division of youth and family services. She has a fifth one in the house; but she won't adopt the baby. She told me that her 6 year old is a boy and when he gets off of the school bus, if she isn't standing there waiting for him (she has a nanny) then he cries...and then she punishes him for 'crying for nothing'. It broke my heart to hear her say that. On the one hand, he's still a little boy at 6; I know six years olds from stable homes who cry over nothing--heck *I* still do. But it broke my heart to hear this woman think that she's raising him correctly and at the same time teach him not to listen to his feeling. He's being punished for what he feels--that his feelings are somehow 'wrong'. Whatever is going on with this kid, whether he's feeling that he's about to be abandoned again, anxiety, stress relief from whatever's going on in the bus--whatever--his crying is crying out and she doesn't see that he's begging for help; and he may not even have the words to describe what he's feeling.

So after hearing that, I woke up with a new perspective on Frank not letting me try on his ring. It occurred to me that he has had so many women in his life that he thought that he could trust and couldn't. So many woman that have hurt him that he doesn't know what it looks like when a good woman, a woman he could trust with anything walks into his life. I felt sad for him. His picker is off; he doesn't know how to pick the right woman. I see the changes in him. His nephews have all gotten married and had children. He told me that he's past a place where he wants to go to the parties and be around the kids. It's surprising to me. He's Italian and there is that great love of the family being together--all of it--the more the merrier. But, that needing for peace it's something that I've seen in men as they begin and work through andropause. The women who used to be exciting; the up, down, yes, no, will she, won't she, the need for the constant chase, the conquer; all begins to disappear into something that becomes exhausting and the quiet and the comfort of attached love instead of lust-filled love comes to the fore.

It's easy from this vantage point to look at the men that I know in their early forties who are still looking for that thrill and think to myself wait and see what the next seven or eight years will bring to your life. It's only then, that your eyes and your heart will truly be open.