We sat on the shore of the river looking down at a wide bank covered with slabs of rock. The water was low, exposing more of the land and widening sand bars. The warm sun was soothing after a bike ride along the riverwalk. We met here to go biking on our first date more than a month ago. I knew from dreams and visions that I would meet Jimmie, but the first date was odd. He looked like a man I’d been dreaming about sporadically for three years (although I thought his name would be Jonathan). However, I kept noting to myself that I was not in love with him, as in my dreams. “Must not be the guy,” I thought. Now I am in love. In the most untroubled, pleasant, liberating way, I am in love. Funny, I don’t know why I assumed I would feel that way from the outset.
Before a year has passed, we will most likely part ways. I started searching for jobs in other cities, and Jimmie is in precisely the same situation. He’s been designing roads and bridges for a company in town, but like me, he longs to live in a different region, and he doesn’t know where he’ll end up. Like me, he might remain here for awhile, but everything is up in the air.
What do you do with someone who will probably be gone after a short time? Push them away or savor them even more? I savor. On the river bank, Jimmie told me he wants to be careful, although he didn’t necessarily want to do anything differently. We hiked down to the river’s edge and explored the rocks, and I was reminded of Andy Goldsworthy.
Andy is a sculptor whose medium is nature itself. In the documentary, Rivers and Tides, Andy travels to the edges of rivers and seas and builds intricate formations with just rocks and sticks, leaves and twigs, flowers or ice. One scuplture may take a full day to create. Soon, however, the water washes them away. Like the Tibetan sand paintings, enormous effort and concentration goes into making something beautiful that disappears in a flash.
Some precious relationships from my past are now flotsam and jetsam in the waves. It’s hard to gaze on something in that phase of existence. If you expect to see what it once was, whole, then the sight is very disturbing, like an exumed body. If, on the other hand, you enter into this process with a willingness to love even the impermanent, the decaying pieces are just a testament to how much you loved. How much you still love. I still love them.
I want to love Jimmie the way Andy loves the natural world when he explores the stones and sand and sea. Andy created one shoreline sculpture that collapsed four times. With each collapse, he slumped for a moment and grieved, then resumed his work. Each time, he said, he learned more about the stones. Each time, the sculpture got a little higher. His task, as he saw it, was to come to know the stones so well, that he could build them up to their full height. So there are no mistakes, no wrong turns, and no failures. No one is a waste of time. Everyone is precious.
Already, this sculpture, my relationship with Jimmie, is taller than the ones that came before. On Thursday night I was waiting for Jimmie to come over. We had tentative plans to watch a movie. He was in a rush after work, so he wasn’t sure he could make it. He lives more than thirty minutes away in a neighboring town. I got my kids to bed and cleaned up. I went all out, sexy clothes, candles and soft music. By 9 pm, I hadn’t heard from him, so I sent him a message. He called to say he had just spent an hour getting his hair cut, and he was too tired to come over. I was upset. “An hour cutting your hair on a night when you’re trying to make it to my house?” I said. “I’m going to sleep now.” I got off the phone. I reconsidered dating him.
A past love used to do this to me all the time. He would make big plans with me and then cancel at the last minute. He once invited me to a camping event on Labor Day weekend. I was going to spend that weekend with my children, but I switched days with my ex-husband so that the whole weekend would be free. Then he changed his mind. I ended up going on a camping trip by myself.
A few weeks later, he called to reschedule another date, and I told him how challenging that was for a single mother. After yet another long conversation about it, he made solid plans with me, and the next night, he called to cancel that as well. We were talking on the phone about it, trying to work out the emotions, when his cellphone died. I drove over to his house to finish the conversation. It was a Thursday night. I didn’t really feel the need to keep talking. I could have just gone to bed, but he once told me that he valued tackling issues as they arise, “when they’re fresh.” So that’s what I did. When he opened the door, however, I immediately knew from the expression on his face that I’d made a mistake. Even after one year, we didn’t have the kind of relationship where I could just show up at his door unannounced. He invited me in, but I could tell he was uncomfortable. He felt intruded upon, but it was too late. In the hours that followed, he volunteered new plans. We would go hiking that Saturday.
The next morning, he called and canceled our Saturday hike. I broke up with him less than a week later. No amount of love can compensate when someone, for whatever reason, does not value their time with you. We tried one last time. About two weeks later, our plans were to spend a Saturday evening together. A world music festival was blossoming across town. Tibetan monks had created a sand painting in the university building by the lake. DJ Cheb i Sabbah was playing that night on the water’s edge. He asked me to come over, and when I showed up, he was unshaven, wearing a white undershirt, and just wanted to eat chicken in his bed and watch television. I was content until he told me, for the third or fourth time since I met him, that his heart was just not opening to me. He was sending every signal: “I don’t care if you are here or not!” So I left. I went to the music festival and danced by the water.
Everyone has their style, their preferences and needs. Ours did not match. No one is obligated to value their time with me. I felt enormous love for him, and I still do, but the only way left to express it was simply to stop making plans together.
Waiting for Jimmie to come over, those thoughts and memories were going through my mind as though they happened just yesterday, and I thought about Jimmie, “I don’t know about this anymore. Maybe time to cut things off.” After I hung up, Jimmie sent me a short message: “I understand why you’re upset. I think I just wanted to look good for you. I really enjoy our time together.” My heart softened a bit, but still. I didn’t reply. I made a bubble bath and watched a movie on my laptop, which I positioned by the bathtub. I soaked in the hot water nibbling chocolate and strawberries and sipping peppermint tea.
An hour later, I was getting cozy in bed reading “The Spell of the Sensuous,” and I heard tapping on my bedroom window. It was Jimmie! I opened the door. He was sharply dressed, clean shaven, and apologetic. Sending every signal that our time together matters. I greeted him with a smile and a warm embrace. “I said I was going to come over, so that’s what I should do,” he said. He didn’t want me to go to bed angry. “There’s a time for talking,” he said, “and a time for doing.” I was touched. He snuggled up against me in bed. In the dark, I whispered to him stories from my book about sparkling stars and fireflies reflected in ponds in Bali. We kissed and made love. He stayed the night and rushed to work at 5 in the morning after making love to me again.
Soon, the sea may wash us away. The waters will grow high enough to loosen and separate the rocks. Ever since I met Jimmie, he’s expressed a deep desire to leave something behind that is lasting. “I can build the greatest bridge,” he says, “but in just a few decades or a century or two, that bridge will be gone,” then he rambles about writing a novel (about a collapsing bridge, no less) or finding some other way to leave an imprint on the world. His imprint on me will dissolve, like everything else, but what a beautiful imprint.
