This Is How It Always Is: Part I: One Date Summary & Analysis

Penn is an only child, and when he tells this to Rosie on their first date, she is sad for him, like he is dying of a terminal illness. Penn doesn’t know how to respond, but he has been self-conscious and awkward since they sat down, so at least he is consistent. Rosie is a friend of someone Penn knows from school. Penn is in graduate school, getting an MFA, and a girl in his program asked if he wanted to date a doctor. She knows one, the girl said, and she’s into poets. Penn told her that he isn’t a poet, but he agreed to the date anyway. It seemed ridiculous, him dating a doctor who’s into poets, but he is always looking for new writing material, and it seemed like the sort of situation that might yield something.

Getting ready for the date, Penn felt strange, almost like he was coming down with the flu. He considered cancelling, but he figured since Rosie is a doctor in a hospital, she can handle a few germs. When he arrived at her house, and she answered the door, Penn was immediately struck by her. Rosie is beautiful, no doubt, but it is more than just her beauty. Penn is a fiction writer, not a poet, and he doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but there is something about her—and it is making him nervous.

Staring across the table from Rosie, Penn asks her if she has many brothers and sisters. Rosie looks down. She had a sister, but she died of cancer when she was 10 and Rosie was 12. Her name was Poppy, Rosie says. Their parents had a thing for flowers, and Poppy was nearly Gladiola. Maybe that is why she thinks being an only child is so sad, Penn says, and Rosie agrees. She likes him already, she says, probably because they are both only children. That night, as Penn lay in bed alone, he comes to a “realization.” He knows he will have a daughter named Poppy, even though he has no idea that Rosie herself came to this same realization years ago.