Mid winter reflections of a slug

We are having lots of snow here. The temperature is momentarily back up to around 30, and that’s where I like it. For about ten days the thermometer was reading in the teens and single digits. That’s when the ground freezes, hardening to ice all the layers of snow and melt. On top of that falls a fresh dusting of snow, and driving becomes a hazardous winter sport. Get behind the wheel and the thrill of adventure sends adrenaline coursing through the system. By sheer grit and determination I will the car to stay on the road and moving mostly forward. I am definitely getting too old for this, because too easily the image incongruously pops into my head, of me sitting in front of a fire with a lap robe and a good book. At the end of a typical day of fighting the road, the drive bookending a grueling eight hours of sitting cramped at a desk helping people spend obscene amounts of money for a few days on the snow, I drop exhausted into bed with the dull mind of a slug.

Yesterday, on my day off, I gave Manny a massage. I have a certificate saying I am a trained masseuse, if I never mentioned. I am so out of practice that I have to have a cheat sheet sitting on the unknowing patient’s back telling me what to do next! Nevertheless, I set up a rollaway bed here in the basement, and Manny laid quietly on his stomach while I tried to relieve some muscle pain he’s been having in his back.

Manny is checking me out as a potential life partner. This brings on a whole range of mixed feelings. He milks cows on the night shift at the dairy next door. He is an intelligent, sexy, sensitive man who could do much more with his life, but now he is a slug at a dairy farm.

I heard myself telling a dear friend that I am repulsed by the idea of losing my independence. Repulsed! What a strong word. At the core, it only tells me that Manny is not The One. Surely when I meet The One I will concede my independence happily.

For many weeks I was intrigued by the idea of it. I fantasized, given the parameters of who he is and with what resources, and who I am and what I have. I liked best the idea of moving into my house in Florida. I would live on my social security check and focus on writing and getting published, letting him get a job at whatever comes to hand, and he is handy.

Because he works seven nights a week, it is difficult to find time to spend with him having casual conversations. So he finally arranged to prepare me lunch at his house, rearranging his sleep schedule. The massage was, so to speak, the dessert. But we came to my daughter’s house to do it, because here the rollaway gave me 360º access, and because here we were adequately chaperoned. We did get to speak, and it turned out more like a job interview than a romantic luncheon. I tried to penetrate through the slug mentality to connect with the creative man I believe him to be. But either I am wrong, or he has morphed totally into a slug and it is too late. I sought out his dreams, his visions. Finally I just asked it outright: Where do you see yourself in five years? Right here, he said, milking cows. Now I think I am over it.