O Meu Diário de Coimbra

Wise hands and barking dogs

A few years back — Melissa and I had temporarily broken up (though we didn’t know how successful the breakup would be. Happy to say not at all) — I invited dear friends Patty Hipsher and David Blatt over for dinner, which meant I invited them over for cheese pizza. (I have been told by some that when it comes to the world’s greatest food, I can be something of a bully, and while I’m not, many of you are preparing and enjoying pizza incorrectly and you must be stopped), David glanced at the picture on the counter and before he focused on it thought it was Melissa and me.

When Melissa’s hair is short, well, you decide.

I think my mother, who died 20 years before Melissa and I met, would have liked her third daughter-in-law from me.

“Ba, pretty, but so young she is.”

“Yeah, Mom, I know.”

“Does she know how old you are?”

“She does.”

“All right . . . enjoy.”

When she and my father reunited after 18 months of being apart, which is precisely the time Melissa and I were apart, my mother had been asked by some in the neighborhood of their home in Greenlawn, New York to be the block captain.

“You going to do it?” I ask.

“I’ll do it on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I want a gun. They have to give me a gun.”