Moving on, looking back

I'm still want Diana in my life. Now that she's planning to go back to Italy, my plans or maybe call them my fantasies have taken a new shape. Since she'll be moving back to Italy in 6 months, what's the cost of doing everything I can do renew the affair? I'd rather have her leave in the middle of a relationship that's a relationship, not monthly movie dates, at best. Perhaps it can start with the road trip to the Cape we discussed, hopefully something that can happen without the kids in tow. And if for some reason, she decides to leave off or postpone going back to Italy, I'll ask her to marry me. Would she say yes? Almost certainly not. Would just asking take the relationship to a new place? I think so, though quite where it's hard to say. That really depends on what happens leading up to such a point, in which case perhaps the marriage offer doesn't really matter -- except as my own symbolice goal. But this has to be something that works for good. We've tried and failed too many times already -- 3 at least -- for another failure to be acceptible.

The hardest part might be the kids. V. obviously still enjoys having me around, but then she's young and enough of a prima donna to like anyone who likes and pays attention to her. S. is another case. She's seemed more aloof the last couple of times I saw her. But then she's an adolescent, and it would be self-asorbed in turn to think that this had anything to do with me personally, rather than just the fact of my being another, and after all not so familiar adult in her mother's company. However if she were aloof because of me personally it might only be to her credit, since she might reasonably wonder why after all that happened I still ready to put up with seeing D. on such a tentative basis, 'as friends', maybe friends with a special affection but that's all. There would a feeling of shame, of falseness, even of a kind of meanness towards the girls, at least, if D and I were to start up again on any but the most rapturous terms, and even then a lot of convincing would be necessary (of myself first of all).