Remembering Your Name

[I am done with romanticism after this, I swear.  My sister got married on Saturday, so I have an excuse.]
[This didn’t turn out quite like I planned.  I’ll have to return to it, I think.  Oh, and much appreciation for all the love on my last entry. ‘Twas nice, you know. I’ll keep noting back as the day wears on–got a lot of it to do, dontcha know.]

Do you remember when we planted our first field?  I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t–it was the dusky farewell of the Holocene, after all.  We’d grown tired of chasing gazelles, wild cattle, and boars over the ruddy steppes cradling the headwaters of the Tigris, so we settled in its floodplain.  We planted wheat to the east, where the first daily glimmer of sunlight blanketed the fragrant loam in sparkling gold.  We planted barley to the west; when you crouched over, seed in hand and baby at your breast, I admired you.  I didn’t know how to say it, and writing didn’t exist yet, so you never knew.  Well, know it now.

I remember the first letter I wrote you.  It was in a cave in the Levant, and you were sleeping by the coughing embers of a dying campfire.  I used a crude pick and etched cuneiform into the cavern wall, wanting it to last.  It wasn’t long or eloquent–just that I loved you.  I can’t recall what our names were, but if I saw that cave overlooking the Dead Sea, I’m quite sure I’d remember them.  When you awoke, we walked.  We didn’t stop walking until we reached the Mediterranean.  I built a a house out of mud bricks reinforced by timber, and I planted a grove of fig trees to the north.  When I died, our three sons buried me beneath them swaddled in a shroud our daughters wove.  You hitched a slab of limestone to four goats and had them drag it over my grave, and when they were finished and the marker was in place, you carved a missive in cuneiform: I love you, too.

I don’t want to upset your immortal modesty–I have known it countless times, by now–but you were Helen.  Yes, that Helen.  But I was not Menelaus or Paris, or even Achilles or Agamemnon.  When Troy fell, I was to you a nameless soldier.  You raced by me clad in a brightly-dyed peplos, scared yet determined to survive.  I ran after you, my sandals clapping hollowly against the mosaicked floor.  I heard the clanging of bronze weapons and the screams of dying men and women.  As you escaped into the countryside outside the city, I was the last soldier killed protecting the underground passage you used.  Above me, the torch’s fire leapt like your fiery blonde hair bounced as you ran.  Paris loved you, and you loved him back–but it was never quite right, was it?  And as you watched the penteconters of the Greeks disappear into the mists of the Aegean, you knew it.

Do you recall the Roman Empire?  I remember it in its entirety.  We met the Sybil.  We witnessed a kingship become a republic, and we mourned a republic made an empire.  I fought in all three Punic wars, twice as a Roman and once as  a Carthaginean.  I shook Scipio Africanus’ hand as we rowed home, traversing the same waters from which I’d see Vesuvius roar its anger some three centuries later.  I planted bougainvilla around the vineyard, and we spent the warm harvest nights barefoot and stomping grapes.  We liked to make love after sharing a small cask, both of us breathlessly thanking any number of gods–first Minerva and Jupiter, then Mithra, and then finally the Father and Son–that I’d survived the endless wars of human history.  Wine stains, and when the lighting is right and I’ve had a glass, even today my feet are purple.  When I’ve stumbled into some woman’s bed on an unseasonably warm May night, it’s your sweat I taste.

When the Romans left Londinium, we stayed.  The Angles and Saxons arrived, and we learned Old English.  Londinium became London, and we lived, with each other as the only permanent thing.  I built us a house in Battersea.  I built us a larger house in Beckenham.  You died in childbirth three times.  I fell at Hastings, just moments before Harold Godwinson.  We were Norman, now, and we spoke Middle English.  We lived in Charlton, and then Charing Cross.  As decade gave way to decade and life gave way to life, we were French, too.  We had a home in Brittany, a place on a cliff where the Channel meets the Atlantic.  Medieval life was hard, true.  But on feast days we rested.  We sat on surf-beaten rocks amongst waves bearded by frothy foam.  You rested your brunette hair on my shoulder, and I rested my hand on your knee.  We stank–holy hell, we smelled–your legs were hairy and my hair was greasy.  We laughed at it all, though, and traipsed through the freezing water.  We were happy.

I captained a Spanish galleon in the Treasure Fleet, the low forecastle of my ship making its urgent way across the ocean.  Sailors jockeyed through the rigging like monkeys through vines, while I barked at the helmsman to get us home.  Faster.  I’d named the ship after you, and the men made good-natured fun of me for it.  As the sister ships disappeared behind me on the horizon, the British privateer knifed through the fog in front of us.  The demi-culverins bellowed as I shouted orders in the melee, and as my galleon sank to the bottom of the sea, I thought how appropriate it was that the fish might sing your praises.  You stood on the docks in Seville, your brown eyes searching the ocean for a galleon that literally had your name on it. 

We’ve seen every age, every epoch, every edge to every sword and every bloom to every flower.  You were Molly Pitcher and I was Paul Revere.  You were Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Seneca Falls and I was John Brown at Harpers Ferry.  And everywhere I went, I went with a name on my lips.  I shouted it to Tenzig Norgay as I struggled toward him through the snow.  I stared down Hurricane Camille, eye-to-eye, and shouted it into the wind.  The Earth echoed in the sound and still my feet shake in the reverberations.  I feel the shivers and shudders travel up my legs and my heart quakes in remembering the emotion.  But I can’t remember the name.  You had a name, I’m sure, beautiful and elegant and words that long survive their speaking.  So remind me of it, please.  What was your name?