“‘A good man is just so hard to find.‘  I remember hearing that a lot when I was growing up. But, seriously, how hard can it be to find a man who’s good?”  She was actually posing the question. I didn’t respond. “There are plenty of men out there.—‘damn near half of the population’ my mom would always say—and there must be a few of them everywhere that are pretty good. Maybe you’ve noticed some of them around town?”  Was she really asking the question, or was she pausing for dramatic effect?  “My friends tell me a good man will hold the door for you when you’re walking into Starbucks, and they offer to pay for your latte when you left your wallet in the car.” I felt warm in the cool night air.  “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever met a guy like that.” I held my breath.

            “Okay, so that’s exaggerating. I knew one once.”  I exhaled, and a jet of steam flew from my mouth. ”He was kind and sweet, and he always knew just what to say. He’d bring me cupcakes sometimes when he came home from work, and he’d always bring my mom flowers on Fridays. Usually, he brought daisies, but every once and a while he’d bring home tulips. I really loved them because my mom and I would play peek-a-boo through the stems of the flowers.”  She stopped and thought for just a minute. I imagine she was replaying the scene in her mind. As she looked up into the night sky, the reflection of the waxing moon was caught in her eye. “The vase would be so thick with stems that she would have to pry them open to see me hiding behind.”  She motioned with her fingers to exemplify her mother peeking through the stems.   “It’s amazing how wonderfully simple happiness was when I was young.”  She paused again. Realizations come too easily from hindsight. She swallowed. “He’d always build a fire in our wood stove, and wrap me in a blanket and set me on the couch in the winter. We’d turn on some Christmas special and sit around as a family watching it. I would snuggle in between them, and I always fell asleep before the Fraggle Rock part in the Muppets Family Christmas.” She laughed. “I’ve never even seen the end of it.”  She paused to adjust her shirt just a bit.  “I’d wake up the next morning in my bed, and he would make pancakes and bacon, and I would be so happy running to the kitchen because I loved bacon that I wouldn’t notice my bare feet on the cold linoleum floor. He’d yell at me to go put on socks, and I always did. “