I have FALLEN IN LOVE with a Trumpster…how can this be? Is it really true that opposites attract in this (political) fashion? I am an independent who votes progressive – meaning democratic😊

But my heart does not KNOW this.

It is magical how Dave and I met in July 2020, experiencing our first date and kiss at Eternal Flame Falls – yes, a flame exists with water pouring over it. By chance I am swimming laps in Skaneateles Lake when he comes out to swim near me and says hello. I see only his head and shoulders, which ignite an attraction. I can’t believe we continue a conversation while I continue to lap. Then, follow him out of the water, to view a 6’2” broad-shouldered, muscular-armed man that fans the embers into a flame of rare attraction.

We share a love of nature, especially waterfalls that sizzle into falling in love like the rapids of creek walks we’ve shared for a month. Our conversations are easy, until I learn of his support of Trump. Dave says, “I don’t want to argue.” Dampen our flame, I sense. “It’s good to argue, discuss, to understand one anothers point of view” I say. Respectfully.

We engage over his NRA fear if gun laws are changed, we will go down the slippery slope to no guns. I point out how Trump has pulled us out of the Climate Treaty and without BIG attention to it we will not have a livable planet. No guns needed. And if the Affordable Care Act is decimated, isn’t health care a basic right to be able to protect ourselves? To live.

Dave points out how losing jobs to immigrants and China’s cheap labor will harm Americans. Yes, economically, and these issues have been and will continue to be addressed…but what are our priorities? Dave concedes that he doesn’t like Trump’s character calling him an idiot, but what is most important is that we are able to have a constructive ‘argument.’ He agrees.

Dave is in the process of leaving an abusive marriage where his wife calls him names, says she wants to kill him, while drinking most of the day and talking to herself. All his family, even his two adult children want him to leave. I understand it is difficult to leave the home he’s known for 30 years; has built with his large carpenter-hands that warm mine along with my heart into a oneness of making love wildly and tenderly.

His open-heart surgery a year ago sent him to the eternal light of choice, fighting back for life. To live. I drive two and a half hours from Ithaca to Mockingbird Campground each weekend, to hike to various waterfalls, six weeks in love, Dave saying: “You’d drive all this way to be with me?”