These three very similar statuettes portray Aphrodite. Lil and I didn’t recognize her when, in 1974, we purchased the bronze on the right in Pompeii. As newly- weds, we were en-route to Canada with Adrian to start our new life together. How serendipitous, then, that the little statue whose delicate beauty so appealed to us was the Greek goddess of love.

The original was probably the small terracotta sculpture in the center that is now in the British Museum and dates back more than 2200 years. The bronze on the left, also in the British Museum, is an equally old copy. Our little statue is a fine art reproduction and, although there must have been hundreds produced around the time we bought it, the beauty of the original is faithfully conveyed.

We were quite poor at the time and we sacrificed lunch to help pay for our Aphrodite. Weeks later, she was the only beautiful presence in the scrubby little furnished apartment above a convenience store that was our first rented home upon arriving in Canada.

She was wrapped, packed, transported and unpackaged fourteen or fifteen times as we moved from apartment to house after Sarah’s birth, then from city to city in Canada and, later, to Jamaica where she watched our armed robbery but was herself left unscathed. Then to the United States to watch the children grow, then bid farewell to Adrian as he left home for university. Back to Ontario and then Quebec, only to return to Ohio before a final move to the Southwest where you might think she is quite out of place. Is love ever out of place?