I woke up at midnight, not too much different an experience than a boy might have when the clock strikes twelve and suddenly it's Christmas morning. Sure, I had no presents to unwrap or turkey supper to tuck into or carols to sing, but it was a moment filled with anticipation, the pregnant pause before the magic starts. I took that moment of anticipation and overdue magic to shut down the house, let in the cat, turn off the tv. Somehow the movie I had been watching went past the menu and cycled over again, maybe onto it's third or fourth pass, hard to say. Somehow that bit of mundaneness was sweet in itself. Somehow starting our day with such trivialities was just was the doctor ordered.
I think of when all this started, this 27th of August stuff, and know, too, that that day was a purely mundane day as well. I wrote you the night before, and for the life of me can't remember what prompted me to send you that poem. No matter, it was bold move beyond measure, and to think that you read it, loved it, sent back a reply ("My own Cyrano") and, to top it all off, asked me to meet you at IKEA to look at dining room tables was anything beyond what I had anticipated for that very run of the mill Saturday. I had been working on the house for weeks and needed a break. Somehow I skirted my typical Friday night beer drinking the night before and was lucid, perky, unlined. I think of how I've been treating myself these last few weeks..hard working, disciplined only in knocking off at six and prepping supper and having my wine..and wonder, if that day was today, would I be able to pull it off?
I have to look back at that man, at that man who was clearly in love with a totally restricted and off limits woman. I worked with you, in some small way supervised you and to top it all off, you were not only Christian but married with children. I don't know what it was that drew us together but it was there from the start. It wasn't just me, as the letters that went back and forth clearly spelled out. Somehow that moment, finding that return email was the final brick in the cornerstone that we had been laying out for years. Somehow all those moments of side by sideness at the check-in desk, of talking about kids and Colorado and road trips all added up. Somehow all that business of integrety and plum trees and swap meets added up to a one man and one woman who needed to meet in the parking lot of IKEA that day. It was a strange sort of math, but all the columns added up.
I think of that day often, of your hands covering my eyes while I talked to you on the phone, of wandering the aisles of the furniture store and playing "house" with their staff, of my raggedy quilt and how it felt just right to sit on it, sip malts, tell tales, all under that Oregon Maple tree. Whenever I see Bartlett pears I think of that long drive to Tacoma Boys, and when I think of seals I think of that one we spied off in the distance there on the shore of Point Defiance Park. I think, more, of how we wrapped that day, how we walked arm in arm back to our cars, how we hugged before we parted and let that first kiss sort of land. I can touch my throat where that kiss of yours skidded off. I can still feel the scar that that brand left behind and cherish almost more than anything else I own.
Yes, I have to wonder if I would be up to the challenge if you gave me that challenge to meet you today. I am just as broke today was I was that day. If I had to find money for the bridge and to buy malts and to put gas in the tank I would have to pass. What if I hadn't seen that email you sent me till the afternoon? What if I had just jumped straight on into my projects and missed that opportunity to meet? What if your afternoon had been truncated, what if the family wanted to meet you in Sumner to look at furniture instead of hanging out at the fair, which was only blocks from where we were sitting? What's more, what if you and I never met? Would today be just another day? Would your life have been graced with the magic we found that day under that maple tree? Would you have ever found the time and place in this life to give your heart away like you did that day?
I think of the math and all the variables, how you fell upon the ad in the paper that you, in the end, applied to, how I was picked to run the Paging Department earlier that year, and so, in turn, how I was qualified to assist my colleague across the water in Port Orchard with substitute interviews. I think of planetary alignments and birth orders and chance trips, I think of all the roads that we traveled to end up in Kitsap, of all the squandered moments and breaths taken and chances dashed and bits of luck squandered that drove us to the branch that day to meet. But more, I think of all the moments and breaths and bit of luck that got us together under that maple tree, the ones that allowed us to ignore the children and the religious quirks and the fact that it was damn near impossible for us to do what we wanted to do, and that was love.
No one was going to allow it. The world was dead set against it. But we drove to Tukwila and met in the noisy parking lot of IKEA, not so much to snub our noses at the world, but to see if what we saw and felt and knew in our heart of hearts was real.
We found out, over time, that real is as real does.
I woke up last night at midnight and contemplated what I wanted to do to celebrate this day. I have work to finish up, sure, but I did put together a sign and posted it on the road. I made a pineapple shake and later on I'll shake out my quilt and take a drive, someplace close, someplace we graced. As I said, if this day today was that day then the chance are that I would have not been able to meet you, but then again, see, it was a magical day that day, a day not too much unlike Christmas. We had ALL the gods and angels and even lesser petty demons rooting for us, sprinkling our path to Sumner with love and mischief and magic. We were meant to meet, to be, to love, even if just for a little while.
But today, today is the 27th of August. Know that no matter where you go or where you are or who you are with that you are loved.
Always, your WHMB
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