how to meet and marry an Irish Man

The first step, you might think, in meeting and marrying an Irish man would be to brainstorm ways to meet an Irish man--"conferencealert.com" will let you know of upcoming conventions in Dublin, perhaps, or joining a Joyce reading group, on the presumption that the Ulysses-obsessed might have Irish friends. Or, you might take to lurking in an Irish pub: Tampa's 4 green fields boasts of the only thatched roof in North America, and you can drink Smithwick to your heart's content, instead of the liquid bread known as Guinness.

But, while these steps could certainly prove useful, and might well be worth adopting along the way, none of them -- or even the brainstorming itself -- is the first step. The first step -- and this is especially important if you are a slender but flabby single mother of four, pushing 50, satisfactorally employed but financially depleted, and only recently divorced from Beethoven -- is to get in shape. Miniature bat wings probably won't keep you from getting laid by a drunken guy in a bar (which virtually anyone in a very large bracket of adults can do if they put their mind to it), but your goal is not to have sex but to meet and marry an Irish man, with whom you will have fabulous, mutually-satisfying sex, as well as fabulous, mutually-satisfying conversations. This last pretty much cancels out the pairing up with a drunkard in a bar, since you hate drunkards, which will make meeting and marrying the right Irish man so important.

The purpose of getting yourself into shape is not, it is crucial to recognize, to make you more attractive to others. It is, first and foremost (beyond preventing osteoporosis and eliminating the need to drink that nasty skello-grow once a month) to help you feel better about yourself, and more attractive, so that, in turn, you will feel complete without a man (Irish or otherwise), but will, nevertheless, attract the right calibre of guy, such as that Irishman you are going to meet and marry. Besides, you will not be matched with the right sort of guy if your match.com profile declares that you never exercise.

How you get in shape is pretty much up to you, but I would propose not being too doctrinaire. You could return to your glory days as a 5k runner -- maybe even break that 30 minute mark, and meet a well-toned runner at that terrific nighttime run catered by the Columbia restaurant. But adding races to your schedule is not a great idea when you are a single mother of four, already overcommitted financially and temporally. Even if your ass is flabby. And when you finally have a weekend morning where you don't have to drive to a rehearsal or a playdate or a bat mitzvah, do you really want to get up and run? With that fair skin, Irish men should not be running out doors, anyway.

Your Irish man may not be hiding at the Y, but you can use the elliptical, finally learn to spin (if you ever figure out the schedule), try to rediscover your abdominal muscles (remember the four children?) in core class or pretend you are your instructor as you look in the mirror at Zumba. Plus, doing Zumba will prepare you for the night of salsa dancing with your Latin lover, Diego, and will help to save you that $25 a month co-pay for skello-grow. Even if it breaks Diego's heart, you can put that $25 a month toward your trip to Ireland.

isn't it romantic?

When people learn that your husband is a composer, the first response is always, "How romantic!" And, indeed, it is. The things is, though, the romance isn't about getting flowers, or a deep look in your eyes, or lots of sex -- although these are all things you experience, at various times. (Frankly, there could have been more flowers.) I was never awoken, like Cosima Wagner, to a chamber ensemble, arrayed on the stairs, playing an arrangement of my husband's hits that would enter into the orchestral canon as "The Naomi Idyll." (My children, however, were kept up many nights by loud banging on the piano, and I often fell asleep, over the years, to the rather endearing click of his fingers on a keyboard, when he courteously put on headphones and worked electronically.)

No, life with a composer is romantic in the more accurate, historical sense of sturm und drang, poets setting out in a rowboat in a thunder storm, with their dead friend's poetry in their pocket; or the annoyance of Liszt, distracted by the babies constantly nursing off of his lover -- Wagner's daughter, I believe -- and offended by the preposterous assumption that somehow one's offspring should take priority over artistic creation. No, I was married to Beethoven, only with an acute sense of hearing and probably, to be fair, a much better aroma.

Being married to Beethoven does have its moments of glory; sharing in the premiere of the 9th symphony is an incomparable high, especially when you have listened to the evolution of the an die freude theme and even collaborated with Schiller on the text. What is not fun is listening to the rants about how no one recognizes that he is in fact Beethoven, the injured merit, the perceived slights. And the fact that Beethoven thinks it is okay to keep you up for hours, ranting at you, because it is your fault that he is not living in Vienna, or NY, or San Francisco, and because your ears stick out and you refuse to cover them, and because you want to be Mary Shelley instead of the Immortal Beloved.

But, at a certain moment, you can realize that "Isn't it romantic?" doesn't have to be your song, and you can gather up Bathsheba, and the Rockstar, the Butterfly, and Tigerlily, and compose a new melody, with lyrics all your own.