“My son will never be hungry,” the Fish Lady told me after we discussed the price of haddock. “I will always have a variety of things to eat in the house for him.”

The morning was perfect, beyond any expectation. We went to the orchid show, and we were in a pink-cloud honeymoon that neither of us expected but we both felt intensely for an hour and a half.

I had swum my laps and was lying in 90-degree water, with my neck rolling slowly back and forth on the hot cement rim of the pool, my eyes closed, the sun in my face. I was in heaven, or so I imagined, and asked for the sound of Ray’s voice and Sebastian’s bark.

Who gives us permission to live fully? How do we break the chains? 

“You’re gay and religious,” I was told by the podcaster.

“When did you know that you had fallen in love with me?” I recently asked Ray. “You can take your time and think about it.”