the fern unfurls.

In the past month, I have gone to Arizona, turned in my BA, gotten a haircut, gotten A's in all my classes, made a fire, and started dating someone. Happy springtime.

Did you see how I threw that in there--"started dating someone"--as if it weren't totally antithetical to how my life works and earth-shatteringly different and unlikely with my luck? As if I have ever really, consistently been dating one person? As if it weren't so strange as to be almost experimental?

I suppose it is. Experimental, that is. It is new (a few weeks old, now), fragile. He has relationship anxieties, I have relationship anxieties. We don't launch into long, emotional praises and reassurances. But we want to be kissing each other. So here we are, slowly navigating the dating terrain (and such new terrain!) while looking out for sharks and wildebeest. (Imagine us in khaki adventuring outfits, please. I am.)

Here's what I will tell you about him: He rarely drinks alcohol or coffee, but he has a kitchen drawer devoted to cocoa. His head is framed in cherubic brown curls. He is French. He is a teaching assistant in my Global Warming course, but he is not my TA (except he actually is, de facto-style). He is 6'2". He is in a play, is over half-way through "War and Peace", writes fiction. His bedroom is spotless and the shirt he sleeps in is under his pillow. He laughs at my French pronunciation, when I get brave enough to do it. He freely criticizes American food, and then shamelessly pulls out a box of Cookie Crisp to feed me with in the morning. He smiles frequently. He is frustrating. He is cute.

We will call him F.

F. and I are dealing with what I have termed a low-maintenance relationship. We date only each other but we do not monopolize each other's lives. We see each other when possible but we do not have talks about The Future. We are trying to do that thing where we enjoy each other's company without owning each other. It is low-pressure and frighteningly natural for me, the perpetually-single. I am not in love with him. But I like him a lot.

Of course, exploring the terrain of a relationship is new for me in almost every way. Lately I've been noticing that my own identity starts to grow fuzzy when I'm with him--it's as though it becomes ungraspable--what is it? What do I care about? What do I do? I have enough trouble with this when alone, but F. is the unshakable, regimented soldier of science. He's in the lab in the morning and at night, has a fangirl-like devotion to his elusive and brilliant advisor. He's building up material for a paper. His spare time schedule is filled out like he's at summer camp--three hours of rehearsal here, dancing on Friday nights, squash on X days, a day or two set aside for writing, and me after his activities, to drink tea with, to kiss. He approaches life like he knows exactly what he's going to do with it.

I'm glad of it, but it makes me wonder what I'm doing in comparison. He writes more than I do, and he's the geophysicist (geochemist, actually, I think) to my pseudo-journalist. My future feels a little like the valley below a cliff, and I'm teetering on the edge. I have a thousand interests and nothing is screaming for my attention. My goals involve what I'm making for dinner tomorrow night. I fear being herded into a secretarial position, pushing papers around a desk, getting put in the place of someone who doesn't know what they want.

F. is low-pressure, is fun, is warm and affectionate. But involvement with him is making me believe I better figure out what I want--and fast.