Alice and I went up to Michigan together in August 1991 to take Joel to Ann Arbor for a few days of freshman orientation. Alice was still living in Madison at the time, so we met in Rockford, Illinois, and drove over to Michigan in her bronze Nissan pickup.
      Alice took advantage of the trip to apply for some nursing jobs in Michigan. We drove back across the state to Grand Rapids, where she had worked before. She showed me where she used to live and where she'd taken art classes at the Kendall art school, and then, after registering at a motel, we drove over to the state park in Holland. We walked on the beach and out onto the jetty and looked at all the boats out in the lake. And the next morning she applied for a job at Blodgett hospital.
      I was still sort of thinking, at that time, that I might move to Michigan myself. If I could establish residency somehow, Joel's tuition payments would be thousands and thousands of dollars less.
      But it didn't happen. Alice got a nursing job in Iowa City, and I went out to California.
      And a couple of years later Alice got married to someone else.
      Why do I still keep having regrets? Why do I still keep seeing those boats out on Lake Michigan and thinking I might have been in one of them with Alice?