the other side

a few years ago in california

When I took a walk this morning the air was balmy and calm, and there was a rainbow splitting the sky. By the end of the walk great gusts of wind blew in and started to slant rain sideways. I made it back home just in time, which is always a surefire path to exhilaration—the knowledge of some misfortune, minor or otherwise, so narrowly missed. It’s been an odd winter thus far. The light is as thin and wan as it should be and the days are frightfully short, but we haven’t been plunged into any real sort of chill. It’s not unlike winters in Oklahoma, which have the potential to be harsh but just as easily may simply be marked by the absence of color.

It’s been many years since I wintered in Oklahoma, but December still makes me think of it, particularly the December that happened seven years ago. I’d just returned from six months of living in Kenya and everything about me was a bit blurry—my sense of self, my sense of time, my sense of home. I was eighteen and had no idea what love was, though I suspected it was something wonderful. There was a boy, of course there was, whose communications over the past few months had escalated from postcards to texts to video calls to finally a visit in person. I was so naive to nearly everything about the world, but I knew he was someone I didn’t dare let go. 

After breakfast and a walk and more coffee during which we danced around the issue at hand, we were less than three minutes from my parents’ house and I (knowing it was uncouth but running out of time and unable to help myself) blurted, “so what are we…?” and he grinned and looked at me and said “I guess we’re dating!” and I felt I was in a dream and then we were home and my mom raised her eyebrows in a question and I nodded and she gasped in delight and that was that.

Now I’m as old as he was then, which doesn’t seem very old at all. We’re proper adults now and we’re figuring it all out; some times have been easier than others and sometimes I get so irritated at him I could scream—but then again, I’m irritating to him too and really all that matters is that we know a little bit more about life than we did back then, and in another seven years we’ll know some more and we’ll keep building on that bit by bit. 

I remember back then—seven years ago and a little while after that, when we fell properly in love—I was so in love I couldn’t think, sleep, eat. It was exhilarating and it was exhausting. Sometimes I miss it and wonder where that passion has gone. We still love each other desperately but it’s more of a quiet, steady love, which of course is the kind of love that’s necessary to sustain a relationship for years and years. But we have things now that we couldn’t fathom back then. We’ve traded infatuation for deep intimacy. We know what it’s like to fight for one another. No longer do we have to settle for stolen moments and brief weekends together; we come home to each other every night and our future is certain in the sense that we are a duo for life. Now I tally up the years and congratulate ourselves for how far we’ve come; I grasp the hands and kiss the lips that are as familiar as my own and marvel that there was once a time we didn’t know if we’d belong to each other in this way. Things are good here on the other side.

newly dating babies