Recently I heard someone talking about snowflakes and how they aren’t really unique all the time, how there are several of the same pattern that fall, that especially the snowflakes that fall at a certain temperature tend to be exactly the same (as much as anything made of meltable substances can be).

I’m sitting here in the middle of a snowstorm of pretty identical looking snowflakes and thinking about love and affection and all that.

One of my sons told me that after my divorce I should give up on romantic relationships since I’d failed the first one. That was something like 6 years ago and the words still ring in my ears, along with “don’t make a decision by not making a decision” and “beer before wine and everything’s fine”. Or is that, “wine before beer and everything’s clear”?

I can never remember.

Suffice to say I’ve had beer and wine both ways, make lots of bad decisions by sleeping through them, and still try at relationships despite my obvious problems with maintaining them.

If I believed in the soulmate thought I’d have bought an African Grey Parrot and stopped trying by now.

(I may still. I still dream of training one to nag my kids from beyond my grave.)

But instead of thinking soulmate, I’m thinking snowflake. If several of them look like each other, I should be able to find someone who “looks” like me. Someone who can blow around with me and fall down with me and melt together with me.

I’ve always loved the cheesy line from Romancing the Stone, where the writer denies that she is a hopeless romantic. She says she’s a hopeful romantic. I suppose, for all my cynicism, I still have a little beating pink heart.