Norman is sweet. One of the kindest, most empathetic people I’ve ever met. Norman is cute. Taller than me. Norman doesn’t think I should lose any weight, and in fact has come out verbally against it. Norman goes out of his way to help people. Norman has gone out of his way to help me, when we were both elected student reps in grad school. Norman is of course Italian.

There are only two reasons I didn’t seriously consider dating Norman when we were students together.

The first is that he’s 15 years younger than me. After this 30d30d experience, I’m happy to toss the first reason out the window. Compared to the other ‘young’ 30d30d date I had, Norman is clearly a much better fit – in terms of intellect, maturity, values, and interests.

The second reason is that he had, and still has, a serious girlfriend.

Norman was the anchor of my trip to Puglia. When Dora and I had reason to disentangle our Italy trip plans from each other, Norman was the main reason I stayed back a little longer. He lives in London, but he’s been with his family in Puglia during covid times. One might say I rented a car and drove 1300 km from Sicily to Puglia to Trieste to Venice just so that I could see Norman for one evening. Technically. Might. I mean, there were other great perks to seeing Puglia. But.

It had been a terribly long and exhausting few beautiful days of whirlwind solo-roadtripping around Puglia … Starting with an epic road trip from Ragusa through a ferry (where I coincidentally ran into Dora again!!!!!) to a Best Western with a sea view, and adventuring around the beautiful peninsula that is the “heel” of Italy, culminating with seeing him.

I was excited to see Norman. Norman was excited to see me. He was working long days. Both of us were tired. And yet so uber excited to meet. We hadn’t seen each other since ….

Maybe January, pre-covid times, in London? Can that be right? And since pre-covid times seem forever ago, we really hadn’t connected in forever!

I arrived in the evening, checked into my hotel, and immediately we met. Was hangry and thought I told him so, but it was only 7pm so in his mind this was way too early for dinner Italian Time. So we spent 3 hours catching up while mostly starving and hangry, but it didn’t matter. I was just so filled with joy to see him. He showed me around the old city, the place he grew up, and I fell in love with it. We waited forever to get a seat at the octopus place, and then he forgot to order octopus. We talked about work, friends, life, covid, not covid. It was marvelous.

I thought about extending my stay in Puglia, and getting to see Norman again. He wasn’t free the next day though. I decided at noon that I wouldn’t do it, and suddenly drove off, determined to do a 10-hour solo drive to Trieste. I don’t know why I did that. Avoidance? Because as I drove away, I started crying. I realized how much Norman meant to me. After years of knowing him, and months of not seeing him, an intense 4-hour catchup simply hadn’t lasted nearly enough.

I count it as a date because, well it was, even if he has no intention of cheating. I honestly don’t know what lesson to learn from this.

And yet I do. That deep down, I just want a pure-hearted, uber-kind soulmate to hang out with.