Summer Romance

“You get a dog and you know two things - you're going to fall in love with it and it's going to die one day. You knowingly walk headfirst into a heartbreak. That's the basic madness of dog ownership.”

“Because that’s what life is—joy peppered by loss. It’s why you get a dog. And then you get another dog.”

“You can’t just keep doing what you’re doing and wait for it to turn into something happy. You kind of have to look for the happy things along the way.”

“When I’m quiet I can hear my heart yearning for impossible things. I want a perfectly pared-down home, and I want to hang on to every scrap of the past. I want a break from my kids without missing a single minute of their lives. I long for a partnership, and I long for freedom. I long to be enmeshed with someone without losing myself. I want all of it. Maybe”

“Life’s going to do what life’s going to do, Alice. You might as well have a dog.”

“Because that's what life is - joy peppered by loss. It's why you get a dog. And then you get another dog. Madness repeating itself just to get another taste of joy.”

“It's a lot easier to work through other people's problems. I think I must be very attached to my own.”

“You’re the architect of your own experience.”

“And now I can never unknow the truest true thing - the intensity of the love you feel will match the intensity of its loss. This is practically physics.”

“It’s funny, what you’ll do for your kids but not for yourself.”

“Love is not If you clean up, I’ll help you through your grief. I’m not sure what love is, but I think it’s something different from that.”

“I am the architect of my own experience.”

“Because that’s what life is—joy peppered by loss. It’s why you get a dog. And then you get another dog. Madness repeating itself just to get another taste of joy.”

“No,” I say. “He caught me. Just like Fancy would have. And I’ll always catch you too.”

“It’s starting to feel like a champagne summer.”

“Remember she is as close as your breath.” I have turned that sentence around in my mind for years. I originally took it to mean that she would come from the beyond and stay right next to me throughout my life. Her spirit would wrap itself around me when I needed her. And, maybe. I feel her presence all the time. She has the habit of leaving hearts in the bottom of my coffee cup and sending cardinals into my line of sight when I’m thinking of her. But what I’ve come to understand is that the love we receive, especially from our parents, becomes a part of us. We internalize the ways they showed their love, the things they always said. Their comfort becomes self-comfort. And that love, like our breath, is inside of us and outside of us all at once.”

“This is Ethan’s superpower, I think. His ability to meet people where they are and just hold the space for them to step into their best selves without any expectation of what that might be.”

“Spring is always coming,” Phyllis says. “It never doesn’t come.”

“he’s looking at me like I’m someone I used to be.”

“get in my car and talk to my dead mother.”

“He listens to me in a way that makes me want to share everything.You get a dog and you know two things - you’re going to fall in love with it and it’s going to die one day. You knowingly walk headfirst into a heartbreak. That’s the basic madness of dog ownership.I’ve lost all of my friends by now, but it was worth having had them.”

“You get a dog and you know two things—you’re going to fall in love with it and it’s going to die one day. You knowingly walk headfirst into a heartbreak.”

“Spring is always coming, and I know for sure that I will always have a dog.”

“How complicated it is to be a daughter and a person.”

“The thing about motherhood is that day to day there’s no measurable outcome. The mark of a successful day is just getting everyone back in bed.”

“Ethan is something I never thought possible—a partner with whom I am totally free to be myself. A summer romance that doesn’t have to end.”

“I love the way summer rain comes out of nowhere and hits you hard like a love affair.”

“am I standing here in my Costco underwear—the dowdy blue ones!—on this particular day. Note to self: better underwear is self-care. “You okay?” he asks, taking my other hand. And I kiss him again, which is the answer. As”

“I want a perfectly pared-down home, and I want to hang on to every scrap of the past. I want a break from my kids without missing a single minute of their lives. I long for a partnership, and I long for freedom. I long to be enmeshed with someone without losing myself. I want all of it.”

“Spring is always coming, and I know for sure that I will always have a dog. Author’s Note When my mother passed away in 2009, my sister received an email from Sister Maureen Murray, who had been my mother’s teacher at Marymount High School in Los Angeles.”