“WHAT IS YOUR STRONGEST HAPPINESS?” I SAY TO A MAN for whom I care. We are in the new summer cottage. Rain is pouring down from a sky that is drearily gray. I had imagined us walking about naked and brown and beautiful and discovering new things from each other in the sun.

“My happiness?” he replies, and looks up from what he is reading. He does not know what I am thinking. Perhaps he is afraid he might not say what I expect to hear.

“My happiness—I think it is when I have worked in the sweat of my body a whole day on something hard and physical. When I’ve had to use my entire body, when I’ve become exhausted and my limbs are aching—and then finally I finish. Come in and sit down. Rest in the knowledge that I’ve achieved what I set out to do. Relax in the joy of a job well done.”

He does not ask what my happiness is. But the next day I know. We have had a sumptuous lunch. He praises my cooking and takes several helpings. And we lie on the bed and are close. Sated with tenderness. When we no longer have any fears or questions between us. Only tender pleasute in the other’s body and hands and face and expression. I am together with him, in the only way that I really live.