ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 273: Time to Go Home In the evenings — it’s now early October — I often walk to Sky Hill to watch the late light gild the trees and slowly leave the trees, to see a low layer of clouds turn hazy pink then take on lavender…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 272: Count My Blessings In One Thousand Days in Tuscany, Marlena and Fernando talk of death — she, unwillingly, but the subject comes up because their good friend Floriana is dying of cancer. “I want to stay as long as you do, but not any longer,” Fernando…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 271: True Friends One of the joys of finding a writer I like is re-reading that writer’s work. Just now I’m re-reading One Thousand Days in Tuscany, Marlena de Blasi’s account of her life with her husband, Fernando. Fernando’s a Venetian banker and she’s an American chef…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 270: Yard-Sale Spell Driving down a busy street, Joshua passes a yard sale. He spots a vintage radio among the clutter. I don’t need an old radio, he tells himself as he continues on, but the radio calls out to him. …

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 269: Cathy and Heathcliff Revisited I’ve never been able to get beyond the first page or two of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, yet I’ve always loved Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, especially the scene between Jane and Rochester in the garden, when Jane asks of Rochester: “Do you…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 268: Moderation At the end of this long Sunday, Joshua calls. “I went to the track,” he says. How many times did Ernie and Joshua come back from the track totally spent physically and usually fiscally, almost too tired to tell me what happened — yet tell…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 267: Malibu Man This Sunday has felt slow and heavy, mainly because I’m making myself re-read Codependency for Dummies. It’s difficult to absorb, but digest it I must. It’s good for me. To break up the reading I go to the park, passing mamas and papas pushing…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 266: A Sweet Echo Tonight the moon is in what Ernie and I called its Venetian-mask phase — three-quarters. I walk to Sky Hill and take a seat on a bench just outside the hilltop shelter, with a view of the wide evening sky over the treetops…

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching Book Two, Chapter 265: A Most Helpful Self-Help Book The self-help book which has helped me the most — and the one I’ve been the most resistant to — is Darlene Lancer’s Codependency for Dummies. I’m resistant to this book because its contents describe the co-dependent me so incisively that…