Hey.
Remember
when we were in the third grade? Actually, it was just me in the third grade.
You were in the fourth. You were a dusky girl back then with thick dark eyebrows
who could run faster than me. You chalked our names as an equation on the
blacktop outside of Helen Keeling Elementary, the sum of us equaled love. I was
horrified and thrilled each day it didn’t rain.
By sixth
grade I had definitely warmed to you. You were fair and blonde then. We were
square dance partners once, remember? We were learning the Virginia Reel and
your hair kept brushing my face, putting me in such a daze of Hubba Bubba and
Jean Naté that I couldn’t promenade.
Let’s just
skip that incident in the eighth grade, you know, with Mr. Lenhardt and the great
intercepted love note scandal. You hid behind your Trapper Keeper while he
knelt before you, pantomiming a wedding proposal. Everyone could plainly see the huge ballpoint I LOVE YOU that I’d tried to make
three dimensional and emanating friction lines as if headed to or returning from
infinity because we’d been studying metaphors that week.
Does high school ring a bell? I always wanted to ask you
out, but you were too busy trying to get your hair to do that thing and timing
your locker routes to coincide with that guy’s, the one who drove the Jeep, while I
was doing my best to clear up my acne and not wear the same shirt twice in one
week. I used to take the long way back from Spanish just to walk behind you,
and once, while shagging fungoes in right field, a ball hissed past my ear because I was too busy watching you come in from track.
How about that steak house we both worked at in college, the
one with all the ferns and that steady loop of Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens
songs? I loved you from the first time I saw you refilling the salt shakers. Even
when we danced all night at that Reggae bar after the company softball game, I
still didn’t think I had a chance with you. Remember how I was asked to leave because
my cleats were damaging the dance floor? Steel drums can do that to you.
And what about that wedding? What a relief it was to send
everyone home and get out of those shoes. For consummation, we ordered a pizza,
watched Saturday Night Live, and laughed about how the dye in my tuxedo socks
turned my feet a newborn purple.
Speaking of newborns, thank you for telling everyone that the reason I briefly lost consciousness during the birth of our first child was that I hadn't eaten that day or I had the flu or I just donated a heroic amount of blood, et cetra. Dammit, I love you.
When I think of our days together as parents, I think of an
extremely long poker game with a streaky dealer and no free drinks, but I’d
give anything to be able to play again with you.
The time as empty-nesters wasn’t much fun, come to think of
it. We were both really into our own things, lost in how to be alone with each other
again. Remember those wood working classes I took, the lathe I talked you into
letting me buy, and all the baseball bats and table legs I gave everyone for
Christmas that year? I didn’t see you much then because you were so busy
supporting that cause.
Who could forget my first heart attack? That was weird how
it brought us back together. I wanted to say something funny in the
ambulance to break up that terrified look on your face, but I couldn’t, so I
tried to wink, and you screamed to the driver that I was having a spasm. Then he
really floored it and nearly killed us all.
I’ll take the blame for the summer I volunteered us as camp
hosts in Yosemite. Two months of living like submariners in our R.V., clouds of
vampiric mosquitoes, vault toilet maintenance, and collecting camp fees from a
string of solitary, anti-government types—you never stopped complaining. But
only you would risk a rabies treatment to free a raccoon from his pickle jar helmet.
One of my most cherished memories is that morning in our
seventies when I hung up that new copper wind chime on the patio. You were
still recovering after your plunge from the step stool, and my hearing aid was on
the fritz. You directed me like a labrador with your cane. There wasn’t any wind, so I brought the fan outside and we held hands,
dozing to the peals of one of the lesser metals.
I can’t be precise, but there was a Zen-like moment in
accepting that I occasionally forgot who you were. It meant that every so often
a beautiful stranger would tell me she loved me.
And talk about your déjà vu. It seems like only yesterday when were both dream and hope again. We ran into each other chasing wisps of memory down the long carpets of eternity. We weren’t even intentions yet, let alone atomic material, but that’s never mattered before. I would know you anywhere.
