Love in the Time of Climate Change (39 page)

“Here, let me keep you warm.” She took off one of her gloves, put her hand in mine, and we slowly walked back to the Field House.

Halfway there she stopped and turned to look at me, with her free hand wiping away a bit of ice stuck in my hair.

“So,” she said. “I've been meaning to ask. Do you date ex-students?”

There was a piece of ice in her hair as well. I gently pulled it out.

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I've never dated an ex-student.” I looked into her eyes, and smoothed back her hair where the ice had been. I took one of the pigtails out from under her hat and gave it a gentle twirl.

“You'll be my first,” I said, smiling.

We walked back to the party, hand squeezing hand, just in time for the raucous countdown to the end of the world.

S
AMANTHA TURNED THIRTY TODAY
. It was a gorgeous August Thursday, and we spent the morning wandering the apple orchard at Quonquont Farm, the trees heavily laden with fruit, branches almost bent to the ground with the weight of Cortlands and Red Delicious and Granny Smiths. I told her the story of last September, of no apples.

“Not this year,” I reassured her. “This year is going to be a great one.”

We ate lunch while soaking up the view, snuggling together, her hand on my thigh, my arm tightly around her. Afterwards we snuck off to a secluded spot in the far corner of the orchard and made passionate love beneath the apple trees.

She seems really good with thirty. Beyond good. She says she refuses to be caught up in this “oh my god I'm getting old” angst-filled bullshit. She says birthdays are for celebrating, not agonizing over.

She says a lot of wise and wonderful things.

After we made love we lay together, staring up at the patterns the sky and clouds made in the spaces between
the leaves on the apple trees, and she told me this is the happiest she's ever been. It took my breath away.

She says I'm a really good boyfriend. That I'm a keeper. She says I'm fucked up, but mainly for all the right reasons. She says she's pretty sure she can handle my issues, many though they are.

Jesse told me that if it lasts another month I'd be a raving fool not to ask her to marry me.

“Trust me on this one.” he said. “It can't possibly get any better than this!”

He and Sarah and Samantha and I hang out a lot together. We're a great foursome. We all really like each other. Actually, we all really love each other.

I'd like to say this new and wonderful relationship has made my OCD fade away, or at least that The Issue has become more manageable. Truth be told, it's just as intense. Maybe even more, now that I'm so in love with Samantha.

But it's different now. Profoundly different. I still wake up in the middle of the night, dripping sweat, feeling my heart beat, nightmares of drought and famine and rising oceans and biological chaos racing through my head. But I wake up in her arms. Her body lies still and quiet, enveloped by mine. I listen to her breath. I bend my knees so they are right behind hers. I hold her breast in my hand. I press my lips up against the back of her neck.

And it all becomes more than bearable. Much more.

But love has complicated things. It's not all peaches and cream. I can handle the thought of me, alone, struggling through a nightmarish future of climate hell. With just myself to worry about, I think I could manage. I really do.

What's hard to bear, what's absolutely terrifying, is the thought of Samantha going through it. It kills me. One of the great pitfalls of deeply loving another is stepping away from self and caring so desperately, so passionately about someone else. And with the future so uncertain …

And if we were to have children?

I can't go there right now. I really can't.

Samantha keeps telling me what a good person I am. She's so complimentary about the work I do, about the impact I'm making in my students' lives, about how important I am. She says she doesn't know anyone doing more about The Issue than I am. She's my biggest cheerleader.

And I'm hers. I do a great job building up her ego, impressing upon her how wonderful she really is, telling her over and over how much I'm in love with her.

But it doesn't always make things easier.

I resurrect the fantasy about living before the Industrial Revolution and all the shit of modern civilization. A little house and a little farm. Sort of like Bramble Hill, where I took my students. Only this time without the geese. Samantha in her old-fashioned sun bonnet, long, flowing dress, digging potatoes and turnips and nursing our baby. Me in britches and suspenders pulling the plow on the back forty, happy as a clam. A bucolic farm, healthy and loving family, no obsessive worries about the end of the world as we know it.

It just doesn't seem fair. Not to minimize the concerns those old-time folks had, but it seems to me we've oneupped them. They'd agonize over the weather that day; we agonize over the future of the planet.

I know, I know, all times are tough. It's just that these times feel tougher than most. More interesting than most.

Probably every generation says the same damn thing.

Anyway, I'd love to say there is a happy ending to this story. I really would.

Boy meets girl. Boy spazzes around, fights endless demons, acts like a thirteen-year-old, does idiotic things, but ultimately boy gets girl.

That much is true.

I'd love to end by saying “And they lived happily ever
after.” Not just saying it but SHOUTING IT! SCREAMING IT!

AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!

But I just don't know.

Samantha says I think too much.

Duh!

She says I need to calm my mind.

Hello? What else is new?

She says I need to come over here right now and put my arms around her and snuggle up right next to her and read to her, for the fiftieth time,
The Lorax
by Dr. Seuss.

Wow! That I can definitely do!

I don't know about the happily ever after. I really don't.

What I do know about is the happily right now.

And that's a great place to start.