OUR FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY My girl friend and I have broken up five times in four years: she = 3   me = 2 (Although she says I responsible for all five) We often flip roles playing the perpetrator and the deeply confused. These vacations from our relationship showed us how exhausting relating can really be. Making the infrequent static of our daily union seem like perfection. Sometimes distance does make the heart grow fonder, and from those distances we’d spin back to our predictable, comfortable center. We now think this history is the heart and soul of our connection. It is the holy litany of time spent, battles compromised, relentless measuring, assessing, the distrusting and trusting of feelings. Our fertilizer was not the temptation of pheromones, high heels, blood red lips, tight jeans, or calypso music amidst clouds of camel straights, but a forced march over an undulating landscape called our history.