A Many Splendid Thing… *Edit* With pic

    In but a brief moment the calm slipped away and chaos entered through the rear truck doors, pushed in behind duffles bags of dirty clothes, one topped with a monkey pillow pet the other with a duck pillow pet, somehow sporting zebra duct taped designs that I was pretty sure weren’t there before they left for camp, heralded in under giggly tows of unkempt hair that lay cattywhompus as proof positive that they had slept most of the bus ride home.  That last second of bubbly quiet rushed out in a torrent into the cold that had landed on us the day before as if  the only way to remove it was to push it out in a huff and fill evey nook and cranny with noise and chatter and strange, camp like smells that bordered somewhere between wet socks and … well, I didn’t want to know, it was all going into the wash anyway.  Last summer I learned that river soaked shoes dropped in a garage do not improve with time and so nothing here goes on a retreat that cannot be washed and bleached, if needed.  Girls are not all that different than boys when you come down to it, I thought, until you get to the chatter.  "Did you miss us?"  "You won’t believe who I made friends with!"  "One kid snuck out and got caught at a gas station!"  "There were three bands!!!"  "Something was wrong in the bathroom and a toilet exploded!  That was cool"  "Twice!"  "Did you miss us?"  "Mom, I had to sleep on the top bunk – without guards – and I didn’t fall…….."

    "….Did we fall asleep here?"  I was still in that place where I wasn’t sure I was awake yet, that sweet place that you like to stay in for a little while longer on a cold morning or a sweet morning when your body says that maybe it really is the weekend and a few more moments won’t hurt a thing."

    "Yes, Darlin’" he looks down on me, "We did."

    I cat stretch a little and realize that he must be right.  Afterall, how else could I be looking up at him if my head weren’t on his lap?  He must have thought I was cold because he had put the little couch blanket over me and I tried to remember what we had been talking about, there on the couch, when I had laid my head on his lap and I couldn’t remember.  Something, I am sure, and maybe nothing as well.  Sometimes I just like to hear his voice and will nod at all the right times, with the rhythm that wives know, just so that he will keep talking and I will be lulled into that serene and safe place where all seems right in my world.  I wondered how long we had been asleep as it was still dark outside but my body clock told me that it was closer to morning than anything else.

    "All night?"  I would have thought my neck would be hurthing.

    "All night."  I wondered if his back is hurting.  The couch is reclined but sleeping sitting up probably isn’t much fun if you’re not a horse.

    "Why didn’t you move me?"  Because it doesn’t make sense, any sense at all, for old people to fall alseep on the couch.  Not when there’s a perfectly good bed two rooms away.

    "Because I enjoyed watching you sleep with your head on my lap and I didn’t want it to end," he whispers, as his hand caresses my face, and….and I think I could lay here forever, just like this.

    "My group went to a nursing home!"  "We cleaned up a park"  "I cried, in front of people!"  "I don’t think I should have gotten two shakes, I almost threw up on the bus!" "Hey, stop interrupting!"  "You had your turn!" "Old people can be funny – and sad too!"  "I didn’t need all that underwear!"  (I didn’t need to know that.) "Look at the shirts we got!" "I still have money left!" "It was so cold…….."

    "…are you still cold?"  He wraps a big arm around me and pulls me closer, protecting me against the headwind rushing in between the cars in the parking lot.  We didn’t really have big plans for the weekend, just wanted to hang out together, and thought it would be fun silly to walk around the mall.  It is cold, our coldest day yet and the temperature just keeps dropping as the day wears on.  Old man winter is coming down in an angry blast and we skidattle ourselves in a hurried fashion to the doors.  It’s much warmer inside, though my nose still feels the cold, and although he could remove me from his tight cuddle now, he doesn’t.

    I like things that smell pretty.  Not flowery pretty so much, unless it is lilies, but sugary pretty and spicy pretty and yummy pretty, somewhere between a lotion and a really warm cake.  I sniff all the scents at the foo foo counter, try a special one on, find a special one for him, and curl my nose up at some of the harsh ones in  way that tickles him and makes him laugh.  He wants me to pick out one so he can buy it but I tell him no, he spoiled me so much at Christmas that I a perfume rich for months to come.  So we walk out, smelling oh so pretty or oh so gaudy depending on whether you are upwind or downwind from us, and he pulls me close again as we walk.  

    "I do get to buy you a bead for your bracelet, though, right?"  And it’s a foregone conclusion because he had already planned on that for Valentine’s Day and his jaw was set and well, you know, it was his surprise.  And so we went to the jewelry store and I picked out a pretty bauble and tried to ignore him as he tempted to look at the big sparklies for our next big anniversary. 

    "Honey, we don’t have a next big anniversary for years,"  I remind him.

    "All of them are, Darlin’."  The gentleman behind the counter smiles warmly and I believe I blushed.  When was the last time I blushed?"  Now my face is warm and I am not cold any more at all.

    "…so cold that I wore both pair of my pj’s every night!"  "And I wore all my socks!" (kinda sorta smells like that isn’t an exaggeration.)  "But we ate good!"  "I had pancakes every morning, eggs, and all the Mountain Dew I wanted!"  "Lindsey ate the biscuits but she’s allergic to something in them!"  "I think she’s the one who exploded the toilet!"  "That’s nothing, Pastor Carson says no boy in hisdorm will every get beans and Slim Jims again!"  "Yea, well did you hear what he told the boys?  If he caught any of them near the girls dorm, he want going to break their legs"  "And he’d do it!"  "He’s huge!!!"  "Not as big as dad, but pretty big!"   "Remember when Travis smarted off to him and he said, ‘You are……….’"

    "….so beautiful.  You still take my breath away."  I am mid-bite into a sugar dusted pretzel nugget and it’s probably just a girl thing, but my first thought was to wonder if I had smudged icing on my chin.  I want to laugh this off, toss a nugget at him, or none of any of that because I really just want to look at him looking at me.  Because this is why I fell in love with him.  In the hundreds and hundreds of very well and good reasons I had to fall in love with him, this is what clinched it.  I believed him when he said he loved me and….I believed him when he said I took his breath away.  No one had ever, ever, looked at me the way he does.  

    At our tiny little table in the little courtyard where, just feet from us, people hustled by with bags and missions and children held tightly by their hand, time had slowed to a trickle and rewound and unwinded to a place where another little table existed and the lines on our faces smoothed away, his hair was black again, none of our bones or joints ached, and this time he blushed as he did oh so many years ago when we worked up his nerve to whisper…."Lady, I love you.  Would you be my wife?"  

    A hundred times yes, a hundred times over, for once and forever …."Yes."   

    And so we shopped and we laughed and we visited quite a few of our favorite places and drove around old neighborhoods where we had memories and found new places we had not yet discovered, dined on fabulously fattening morsels and ended each evening by the fire, snuggled warmly together under the couch blanket in a place where nothing cold could reach where we still laughed and were silly like only the young seem to have a right to be.  It was the sweetest time and sweetest spirit that swooped in to love and heal our hurting hearts.  And although neither of us would have caused it to end, it was also right that it did so that we could take our renewed selves back out into the cold places that are still waiting to hear about love. 

    "Did my cats miss me?"  "Did you remember to feed my fish?"  "You didn’t let Ravi into my room did you, he steals my ducks!" "I need a shower!" (yes, yes you do) "I’m going to sleep for a week!"  "Wait till you read my journal!"  "Do we have chores today?"  "Can we have pizza for dinner?"  "Hey…..what did YOU guys do while we were gone?"

    Roo slips his hand over mine on the console between our seats, steals a quick glance at me and a wink, and says…..

……"Oh, you know, the usual."

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."  ~ Robert Frost

Happy Valentine’s Day
Lama