the spark we lost

16

Soon after my birthday you signed up for that class with Pete. I always wondered how long you kept in touch with him after you left New York. I know he meant a lot to you. Clearly. He's the one who jump-started your career . I always wondered if, in him, you'd finally found the support and guidance you'd always wanted from your father. You were the happiest I'd seen you while you were taking his class, selling photographs, with his help, to the Village Voice. It made me think briefly that maybe I was wrong, maybe you were were wrong, maybe you could be happy staying in New York.

You'd taken on dinner responsibilities, too, because i made it a point to stay out of the office until Phil left, and he was working later and later then, trying to come up with a new seasons worth of ideas of It Takes a Galaxy. Do you remember the night I came home even later than usual— close to nine— and you'd made pasta with homemade pesto sauce? There was a bottle of wine open and you'd already had a glass. When I walked in, you were setting the table. Ella Fitzgerald was playing through the speakers attached to your laptop.

"Well, hello," you said. Your kiss tasted like Malbec.

"You're in a good mood tonight," I answered, shrugging off my denim jacket.

"Guess who's going to have his photograph printed in the New York Times?" you asked.

I gasped." You?"

"Me!" you said, giddy. "Pete connected me with the right people over there, and they're putting the one so took down our block, when the water pipe burst in the middle of the street. It's for a feature article on the crumbling city infrastructure. "

I dropped my bags on the floor and threw my arms around you. " Congratulations— to my talented, brilliant boyfriend."

As you lifted me up off the ground and lowered me into the couch, I thought that maybe, just maybe , this could work long term. Maybe you wouldn't leave after all.

We ate dinner that night half dressed, and afterward I shared some news of my own. Phil had asked me to help him come up with some ideas for next seasons shows.

"This is it," I told you. "My chance to reality influence what kids in our country see and learn and understand."

You sat up with me late that night as I brainstormed ideas in bed, acting as my incredibly supportive sounding board. But I wasn't happy with my list. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw your camera.

"Hey," I said." Any ideas in there?" Whats on your memory card?"

You brought your camera into bed with us, and we clicked through your photos one by one until I made you stop at a little girl in the window of a first floor apartment, her hands gripping the window bars.

"What's her story, do you think? " I asked.

"Loneliness?" you said. "Parents who left her while they went to work? A dreamer whose yearning for something else?"

"Dreams! We should do an episode on dreams."

It was episode one for your second season.

And I got promoted at the star of the next quarter. But you were done before both of those things happened.