What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding (32 page)

But then my siblings spoke.

And they were eloquent, and beautiful. I was so
proud
of these people that Patty had made. They told us all things I had never known about their mother, and spoke about her in ways that made me wonder if I would have hated her so much if she hadn’t been cast as the Bad Guy in the movie of my life. Then they led us all in an Our Father, a prayer I only knew because I had said it at a tremendous number of other people’s weddings:

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

I had spent the week watching my siblings sleep in one room, piled on and around each other for support, just like their family-centric mom had taught them to do. And I realized that, someday, when my own mom dies, and when our dad dies, I’ll have them just like they have each other. If it weren’t for my stepmother, I would have had to go through that alone. Instead, I’ll probably go through it in a bed filled with people and dogs and cats and snacks. And, so, I stood up, and I thanked Patty for giving me the greatest gift of my life.

And I wondered if she might not have been so awful if I had been as kind to her as my boyfriend’s kids were being to me.

V
acation romances are so sweet because they’re finite.
Every
moment together is one of your last. They’re the one bite of dessert you’re allowed on your big diet, the fifteen-minute nap stolen by an exhausted new parent. The world is a thing that exists only to tear the two of you apart, which brings you very close together. And the fact that you found each other at all, on this huge planet, in this Bedouin cave or that boat in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, feels like a
miracle.

But regular relationships are going to end, too … even if it’s when you’re a hundred years old. Furthermore,
life
is going to end. (I’m tempted to say, “Life is going to end,
man
,” because my reference to mortality makes me feel ridiculous. But it is, man.) And if you can somehow remember that all of life, and every relationship, is going to end, man,
every
moment becomes sweet.
Every
kiss
could
be your last, even thirty years into a marriage, even if you marry a much younger spouse who is supposed to outlive you, even if you Settle for Mr. Good Enough who you’re sure will never leave you, even if you wait for Mr. Movie Moment. It’s all as fleeting as a once-in-a-lifetime weekend on an exotic island. The challenge is to hold on to that.

T
he summer after losing her mom, my baby sister came out to L.A. and went to summer camp with Rob’s boys, who are about her age. Rob’s oldest son pointed out that if Rob married me and he married my (adorable) sister, he
and his father would be brothers-in-law. Which will most probably end up a TV pilot. Watching my sister and Rob’s sons play together felt like the happy ending to so many sad divorces, so many splintered families. The pieces were finally re-forming into something new.

Am I still terrified of settling down? Of course. But I think it’s going to go okay. Last week I had a Saturday-night family dinner with the three boys. I picked up dessert, which has become my thing. Rob had just had a work triumph, and so I also brought a bottle of champagne, and a bottle of Martinelli’s. He wasn’t sure if he’d gotten the champagne flutes in the divorce, but we found them, buried deep in a high cabinet. We blew dust out of the flutes, and poured four glasses of bubbles.

After dinner, we decided to play Wii. The kids turned on the game, and dozens of avatars they had created ran around on the screen. There I was, the little me they had made, and I wasn’t fat or old, like I had feared. I looked a lot like me. A little version of their dad was there, too, and both kids, and both sets of grandparents, and the kids’ mom. All of us running around on the same screen now, together.

I ran this book by Rob before I sold it (making him read this last chapter first; I’m no dummy). I wanted to make sure he was okay with it for obvious bleeding-on-Brazilian reasons. After settling down with a couple of stiff drinks and the manuscript, he reassuringly offered me his complete support. And then this:

“You inspired me,” he said. “I’m kind of jealous of all your adventures.”

Oh shit.
The
last
person I want getting inspired to run off and have sexy single international adventures is him. But then he continued:

“I think before we have another kid, I want to have been on all seven continents with you.”

I told my mom about this perfect ending that he gave me, for my life, and for my book. Our girl doesn’t have to stay home to find love and family, she has to hit the road again, but now with one to three extra boys in tow!

“Hm, interesting,” my mother said.

One week later, she called with an offer she had never before made: for my Christmas present, she wanted to buy Rob and me a trip.

“Anywhere in the world Rob has never been,” was my mother’s only stipulation for her attempt to purchase a grandchild.

This spring we hit Asia and South America, trips that incredibly poetically filled up the last page of the single-girl passport I got for that first trip to Argentina. That passport features a photo of a shiny, bleary-eyed, thirty-year-old girl who had rushed to the last-minute passport desk after a sleepless night spent tussling with a young punk rocker. It replaced the passport with the photo of the pudgy-cheeked college senior about to go to Europe with her first boyfriend for the first time. Both of them are now in a hidden drawer with my grandma’s jewelry, the place where I keep my most valuable possessions.

I’d tell you the stories from my first trip out of the country with a boyfriend in almost fifteen years … but they’re personal. I will say that it was
really
nice to be flying back
to Los Angeles free of the debilitating realization that I had to get back on
Match.com
when I got home. And I will say that all Rob has left is Antarctica.

“Surely he’s not going to hold you to Antarctica,” my mother said.

“Awesome for Awesome”

In perfect-movie-ending timing, as I write this last chapter of a book about my single life, I’m living the last week of my single life. Rob and I bought a house together in Santa Monica for the four of us and my cat and his sons’ dog, and we’re moving in next week, the same week my book is due. So I’m sorting through closets filled with decades of old love letters and pictures and plane tickets, old money belts filled with lists of long-gone clubs in Amsterdam and international phone numbers and travelers check receipts (remember those?). I’m putting them all away into boxes as I run back and forth to my computer putting away memories into this book. The book can go on a shelf in our new house, the boxes might have to go into deep storage. But they’re both getting put away.

I found a renter for the single-girl house that I bought nine years ago, the house I thought I’d only be in for a couple of years before finding my guy. A hilarious comedienne is moving in, using it as her landing pad after a divorce. It makes me happy that someone who makes me laugh is
going to lick her wounds in the house that kept me warm and safe while I licked mine.

I’ve been walking around my neighborhood taking pictures—of the baristas who helped me learn how to have Sunday breakfast alone, of my favorite Banksy mural of cats running across a wall down the block. I’m only moving eight miles away, but I’m saying good-bye to this place like it’s an exotic, beloved foreign land that I may never see again. I’m
really
sad about leaving my house, and my life. But how lucky is that? It means despite the lonely moments, the nights in bed saying “I love you” to no one just because it had been so long since I had said “I love you” before going to sleep, that I was happy here. Even though this book was all about my struggle to NOT be a sad, single girl looking for love, that does not mean I was not often a sad, single girl, and I was absolutely looking for love. I just thought love was going to look different than it turned out to look, and so I ran away from it a lot. But my story wasn’t ultimately a sad story. Being a single girl was pretty spectacular. Thank God I’m blue about changing my life. It means I’m trading awesome for awesome.

I don’t think I would have published this book if I were still single. I would have been afraid it would be too much for someone who was considering dating me. Even though I was comfortable in my skin as a single woman, and I’m proud of the life I’ve lived, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to do something as naked as write this all down if I was still looking for love. Shockingly (to maybe only me), being in a relationship has done the opposite of limiting me. It’s emboldened me to try something much scarier
than I would have tried if I were alone. Maybe Rachel the Hasidic journalist was right: love frees you to be the person you actually are.

My ending up with a nice guy with two kids in my own town is as much of a miracle as it would have been for me to end up with a priest from Argentina. It took an
awful
lot of running to and from so many things to turn into the person who would make this choice. My nice guy may live in my city, but I had to travel farther to find him than I had to travel to find Father Juan or Aleg or Inon or Cristiano. It was a long trip … but a great one.

So, finally,
finally
, I didn’t choose a bite of decadent dessert that leaves you hungry, and a little sick, and disappointed in yourself for the poor care you are taking of your body. I’ve finally chosen a healthy, delicious, three-course meal. But if there is one message I want to put out into the world with my little life story, it’s this: It’s also okay to sometimes have popcorn and red wine for dinner. It’s a harmless kind of naughty that can make a night alone on the couch a lot of fun.

Also, get on a plane by yourself and go have an adventure. I know I still will.

So, now that you know the whole story, here, finally, is my last dedication: