We met on my first visit and first hour on the beach in 2001. I was super-cautious so we were friends a couple years before I began coming to see him. Each of us had responsibilities at home and migration wasn’t in the cards. I tried to visit a couple times a year although once more than a year passed. Texting became an exquisite lifeline. In 2009 I was determined to make a 3-month visit. With some adjustments everyone back home got along without me, so I kept planning the next long stay. That’s when we really began to know the person we’d fallen in love with and I started thinking about living here. 160-character texting is still our primary communication whenever we are apart