My niece graduated last weekend. We went up to Mass for it. The weird thing...

[NNadir]

4. Yeah, I know. I'm just sensitive because I took some crap for it at the time we first became lovers.

I had a friend who called her my "child bride."

She left home, more or less, when she was 17, and had lived on her own and supported herself while taking university classes, so by the time I got to know her, she was every bit an independent woman of considerable sophistication. She's had a number of serious relationships before getting to me and knew the good and bad of men.

She was telling me the other day that she had been approached on many occasions by lesser known Epstein types, and in fact, managed to escape a few close calls on "dates" she shouldn't have gone on.

I too was initially attracted to her looks, but when I arranged to meet her informally, I realized that she lacked a shred of vanity; was disinterested in her looks which she regarded as something of annoyance, since people got weird around her; I felt comfortable becoming a friend, putting aside romantic fantasies to try to see who she really was. I quickly learned who she really was was amazing, magnificent, bright, funny, open, generous, tolerant, a lover of beautiful things, of art, of nature, of science. of music and mathematics. We were pretty close friends for well over a year before we were lovers, and we made sure that in becoming lovers we remained friends, which we are to this day.

Now she's in her 60's, me in my 70's and we're still in love and that distance in age doesn't mean a thing anymore.

My niece though, she's a kid, chronologically the same age her aunt was when her aunt and I became lovers. It just struck me somehow.