D and I talk about fifteen minutes a day, between my work schedule and his. We see one another about once every six weeks. We've been together since the last millennium; we've lived apart - first in separate states, then coasts, then countries, then oceans - for longer than it took Odysseus to make his way back to Ithaca. Today D starts the weeks-long land journey home to Farfara. It's like living in the era of stagecoaches and telegrams.

We'll meet in Washington on Valentine's Day, whence we'll wend our parlous way north in a snowtireless U-Haul through February-drear Maine and New Brunswick. Home: permanently.

This is my idea of romance, and I want no other.