The 13:53 Frecciarossa (back) to Venice     Call it hitchhiking at 30,000 feet. Thanks to a perk Delta Airlines extended me after Carolyn’s passing, I am able to fly free on a standby status to wherever Delta flies. And I’m able to add a companion with the same status. Since I hitchhiked in Europe in the […]

   The last time my thumb was out was to indicate to the waitress that the eggplant parm was for Carol. Prior to that, you’d have to go back almost 50 years to the shoulder of Highway 90 just outside New Orleans, where the thumb of a freshly graduated college boy was outstretched alongside a […]

Carolyn once remarked that I was the most romantic man she’d ever met. Over the years I’d been described quite differently by people who knew me. It started out with “head in the clouds” (parents), then onto “daydreamer” (teachers), “space cadet” (male friends) and “deaf” (girls who’d been asked for a second date). There’s no doubt Carolyn bore witness to all these former appellations, but in her world they all amounted to the same thing. For the first time in my life I was with someone who not only would not try to change me, but was also not making novenas hoping for a miracle.