I walked out tonight, up Bryn Mawr looking for a liquor store, found some cheap red wine that reminded me of the old paisanos, good old days. I thought of the old Spaniard and his stinking cigars and dim dominoes, my literary father and his cloud of reefer smoke, the elitist would-be sugar daddy and his disdain for wines under 30 dollars a bottle. I've found cheap red wine is best for communion with all kinds of fathers.

Today I spent hour after hour in a wi-fi café trying to feel connected to the world around me, yet tonight, without trying, I felt connected to the city, to my neighborhood, to the streets and the few people out walking them. It's a great time in Chicago. Though it's cold, spring is wafting in on the wind from the Lake. People open doors for each other, drivers let pedestrians cross in front of them without honking, windows are open, eyes are friendly. The city is relieved to be out from under the weight of winter. It's already thinking of summer, the slow days and sweat and beaches and heat lines waving over the blacktop, over the hoods of mad cabs.

Now I'm two glasses into my bottle of wine, feeling soft and hazy and happy, gentle in the newness of the weather, in the time of my life. I've been e-mail flirting with a man who is auditioning for the role of my Rebound Man.

It's been almost seven years since I had that rush of anticipation, the shyness, the hope and heat of figuring things out for the first time with someone new. It is now as it was before: I'm not the marrying kind. I tried. It wasn't right. It was fine, but not right. I need something different to be complete. The catch is I always will need something different; there'll be nothing different enough to stop me searching again and again.

Seven years and I'm getting back to myself. How did it get to be so late?