I had to reproduce to have a soul mate. I’ve been ill-married four times now, but at least we made two people while we (all) were taking one another apart. Lily and Vera have been loosed upon the universe.

I love them both, unequally and infinitely, but Lily is my correspondent. She’s the female I would have been. I’m the prototype for the guy she’d be.

Vera has a strong side, but we’re fundamentally different. Lily acts like she carries a high testosterone level. I used to know life was all chromosomes but now I’ve learned. Now I have respect for the endocrine system. Hormones are powerful.

So Lily ranges and I sit tight. I’m like the fixed point of Donne’s compass; the farther she travels the more I lean toward her. I traveled enough when I was young: never less than United Premier level in my prime. Then it was my wife who formed the stationary compass point; now I stay home, rather retired, with the cerebral, verbal, needy, incompatible love of my life.

I told Julia this morning that I’m finished. I more or less challenged her to move out, abandon me again, head back to San Francisco and all her cerebral, verbal, needy friends. I meant it at the moment but I didn’t think she’d do it. She’s still into trying to make changes so we work. She wants me to change too, but I’m waiting to see some effective modification in her before I figure out how to alter me. As I’ve told her a dozen times, I spent months on my own issues after Barbara left, and I’m now fairly satisfied with myself.

After all, what am I asking of her? To put the spices away so we can find them again. To stack the pots so the non-stick finish isn’t scratched. Am I really supposed to see my care of tools and equipment as some quirk in me that requires repair or accommodation?

“If you don’t have the time to do it right at first, where will you find the time to fix it?” That’s true about life too. I’m older than Julia and I’ve considered the question more, and I do know the recipe for happily-ever-after from here.

I already live in one of the perfect parts of the world, and I own a tidy house with a garden. There’s time and the places for golf when the weather is good – excellent for exercise and meditation – and it’s easy to go for the thrill and warmth of skiing in the winter.

All I needed was a companion in my Eden. My Julia from when life began. Finding her again after 45 years, talking her into leaving that stale career, that boring marriage, her static weeks, those were like miracle beads accumulating on a cord of silk. All Julia had to do was come here and move into my paradise already prepared.

But I didn’t write any of that to Lily. If she were here I’m sure I’d be talking to her about Julia (except, I hope, for the physical comments), but by e-mail I didn’t want to discuss the fray. I stuck to the Bible, especially because she seems to be headed for Jerusalem. “The thing that ultimately struck me most about the Old Testament,” I wrote in response to her news that she and Jay planned to interview rabbinical students, “was that there’s never a commandment or even a suggestion that we write it down.”

Of course I couldn’t stop there: “See, the good thing about writing is it locks the words in without change. The bad thing about writing is it locks the words in without change.”