The last time you were In Love was when we met. You were locked up in your bedroom with all the lights out. At work you hid your face with your hair which you didn't like either. You hated your skin; you were so ashamed of your psoriasis you wouldn't wear shorts even though the sunlight made it better. Your eyes were always red from either crying or contact lenses.

The last time you were In Love you spoke of nothing and no one but the one with whom you were In Love at the time. Remember when you spoke of nothing but your husband all the time? When we met you were still In Love with someone who was not In Love with you. For years you gave everything you had and all that you were to someone who wasn't In Love with you yet you still spoke regularly without malice or contempt.

But over the years I knew you the leaves of all our conversations changed color with each new season. Like Wisconsin in November, the kind of talks we had never lost their brilliance. There was no movie, politician, science, art, event, song, entertainer, even sport we couldn't talk about. We never had a shortage of topic leaves to fill any Sunday morning trash bag or after dinner basket. We could rake any icon or technology into a pile, walk away, then jump right into the same pile or another; any topic, anytime, for any length of time.

Trees remind me of the morning after you had lasik surgery. You were afraid that your eyes might have been damaged in the surgery. I tried to make you laugh to keep you from crying on your newly burned eyeballs. But when you opened your eyes after removing the bandages you saw the world for the first time again. In the front yard of the house you lived in as a child you danced and sang in front of a tree you climbed a thousand times as if you had never seen it or any other tree before.

The last time I saw you I looked up at the tree in front of the spot where you parked your car. I remembered that new Saturday morning after your eye surgery. In my head I saw your nightgown trailing behind you as you jumped and turned to embrace the new orange leaves falling from the old familiar tree. I remember feeling relief that the surgery went well but I also remember feeling happy that you were happy. I remember feeling that your life was going to be changed forever.

I remember hoping you would soon become the person you wanted to be.

The last time I ever saw you I started to cry at the memory of you under the new leaves. I wasn't sad that day because you were leaving. I was sad because it was the first moment of many since that I realized you were already gone.

As you walked to where I was standing next to your car under the leaves you saw that I was upset. In a tone and manner I did not then recognize but have since come to know quite well you told me to just grow up. You then put you new eyes, new hair and new skin in the car to go see your new friends and the one with whom you're In Love now. You shut the door and left.

You are now the person that you wanted to be when I first met you.

You have broken out of the dollhouse bedroom you locked yourself into nine years ago. You got yourself out of the Pit of Unanswered Love in which you fell last decade. You may not have crossed out all the items on your Susy List of Things To Do but whatever game you thought you lost or were losing when you lived in Sunnyvale you have won. You are a professional career woman who is In Love for the first time since 1997 or longer. You have new, stable friends who look up to you and serve as a solid personal network. You don't have contact lenses or psoriasis. You don't smoke.

And you did it all on your own.

So will I. I will get my license, career, teeth, eye glasses and car. And just like you, I will do it on my own. Except for once difference: When I've become who I want to be all on my own, I will have done it all by myself.