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happy anniversary
March 09, 2005
disclaimer - i'm happy tonight. with help, i'm working through problems, one at a time. i feel and know the will and love of my friends beneath me. i'm not sad about what i've written, but it is important to me. so, please, let me say what follows. just listen, don't analyze or worry or draw conclusions - just hear it. also, there's a picture that goes with this - it'll be up later...
dreaming of the tenderness,
the tremble in the hips,
of kissing mary's lips.
dreaming of mercy street,
wear your inside out.
- peter gabriel, mercy street
today is 36 years, and it is nine years.
march 9th is, for me, a day to mark beginnings and ends - my birth, and a small sort of death.
i never believed in a simple, easy to come by sort of love. i believed in the love of poetry and shakespeare and love songs. i know relationships aren't perfect, and people aren't flawless, but i still believe that love itself is.
in my life, chances have been missed, passed up, lost. and there's always the compass in my heart that knows which way my soul should go. it's always been there, though sometimes i've denied it, let other things pull me away. but at the end of the day, ignoring its pull would go against what i believe of love, and what i've known of love, and that just won't do.
i've known lots of love, and will likely know more. i've known, in brief flashes, the kind i seek, but only once was it so complete and enduring. from the time i met her, 16 years ago, waiting in a shakespeare class that would end up being canceled altogether, i came to know love as the supernatural force i had always believed it would be.
she was married nine years ago today, on my birthday. i wasn't invited, which was at once horrible, and for the best. she's had two children. she lives in california. we are connected now only by gossamer threads of silence that run through our mutual best friends.
it is 36 years and nine years, but no so easy landmark exists for the day, the moment we last were in love, were still the people in the time and in the place that allowed that love to flourish, for our souls to know each other.
sadly, i can't even remember the dates to celebrate the other moments in that time.
the day that turned to night, sitting together, my face in her hands, the quietly powerful moment we both knew, both remembered, but didn't acknowledge until years later as the moment we saw our own love in the other's eyes.
the nights driving home that i'd look over and watch her asleep in the seat beside me. the roadtrips with my car full, her in the backseat, smiling in the rearview mirror at me, only for me to see.
the night in my car out in the university's farthest parking lot, protected and alone, together and hidden in a heavy downpour. inside, warmth and passion and laughter and quiet. she was late to meet the girls at her dorm, and she and i were a secret then. she needed an alibi, and i see her stepping out into the cold rain, closing the door behind her, smiling, laughing just on the other side of the window, even then, love in her eyes.
36, nine, 16, and it's not so much that girl, or that face that i miss, for they're long gone. it's that love that i miss, that i wait for, the promise of which i look for in the faces of the women moving through the world around me.
so many memories: some of them real, some from the dreams i still have about her, and they all seem so close, just on the other side of the transparent now, as close as her on the other side of the glass that night in the rain. i want to believe it'll happen again, that maybe the future is somehow foretold in those dreams of mary coming to me, all mercy and grace and love, forgiving me, looking into my eyes, smiling at me, and offering me, returning to me, the greatest peace i've ever known. i hope you've found the same. happy anniversary.
Posted by Rob at March 9, 2005 12:01 AM
Comments
Drive-by visit...Beautiful post Rob.
Posted by: ty at March 14, 2005 10:09 PM