Essay 5

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name." says Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Dr. Watson in the book "A Scandal in Bohemia." I hadn't grasped the fullness of that expression until I met her. Cascades of chestnut brown perfection rolled over her shoulders. She casually cast a glance to the back of the bus and those brown eyes, the brown eyes I would never again be able to forget, pierced me like sunlight through darkening skies. I was only thirteen but I thought that I knew everything I ever needed to know in that moment. It took me six months to finally get to the front of the bus to talk to her, but I did it. She became the source of something simultaneously great and terrible. I fell in an instant and didn't land until almost a decade later. She became the White Whale and I chased her through all weather. I was given closure and release from this obsession only by what eventually became my family.

I first spoke to her under the most obviously false pretenses. It was charming in its befuddlement if nothing else. I spoke to her briefly but would spend almost every waking moment from then on thinking of her. It was not her beauty or charm. It was the opposite, it was her awkwardness. She had a way of smiling nervously and listening when she should have been talking. She was the most sublime creature, perfect in form... she had perfect lines that were not simply beautfiul to me. She was the uncatchable quarry, all the boys tried but she would giggle and turn away. It takes the courage of David to approach even a terrestrial, common female, much less an angel. If you suspect only a glimmer of mockery you might completely lose your nerve and she laughed at most. I was the exception. I approached her with guile, and respect. I had to wait hours, days, sometimes weeks until I could find a convienent excuse to see her again. I had to engineer brilliantly choreographed cooincidences. Sometimes I traded a week for an hour of conversation and laughed slightly for cheating the universe.

Our lives progressed in opposite directions for a time. I moved to Pennsylvania and her constant struggle with her mother resulted in her commitment to a mental health facility. I wrote letters to her and she to me, but she put a veil over anything in her life she didn't want me to see. Looking back I realize that she was hiding things from me as a declaration of affection. She hated herself. She felt corrupted and soiled, she had finally begun to buy into the horrible things said about her at home. She thought that she had to hide her true self to make me like her. During our coorespondence she always used scented, pink paper to write the longest, absurd letters about nothing. They were three pages of pretty small-talk with a sentence of true feeling at the end. I remember the day that I recieved the shortest of them, it was the last that I recieved before my family moved back and she was let out of the institution. The letter was three paragraphs explaining how hard it is to say I love you and the words, "I love you."

We became teenagers in love very quickly. She and I shared untold intimacy in our body, mind and spirit. We shared ideas, philosophies, curiosity, and silent moments. Sadly, things this good can only last for a short time. Our relationship reached its critical mass when I turned eighteen. We had grown distant over the intervening years. I had begun to take her for granted. I was pompous and arrogant even when she remained patient and hopeful for our love. When it became too much for her to bear and I was too full of myself she severed contact suddenly and I fell like a meteor from the sky. All life lost it's lustre and I was adrift in the world I had so long delayed joining, the angel had let me fall to Earth. I denied, got angry, bargained, was depressed and then finally completely failed to accept the death of our relationship. It could not die, it was a flame burning eternally in my heart. I chased for years flying halfway around the world when she call and want to see me. One man had let her go or another had frightened her so she needed someone safe. I was always at beck and call. We drifted apart in the intervening years, she found others and began to treat me callously. She found a man she thought she might marry. I cursed his very existence.

I walked away, destiny forked a bit to the right and I haven't seen her in many, many years. I am going to be thirty three in May. The living room is my usual haunt and life is simple. My nice blue chair is torn to shreds, that grey cat she loves so much sharpens his claws on it every chance he gets. She is sitting next to me watching T.V. and Matthew is playing on the floor. He screams and runs away from the cat then chases it with a yellow plastic hammer. I have gotten fat and learned to laugh at myself, what does it matter, I'm married? She's a furnace underneath that blanket and I am freezing, I think I might join her. I don't recall all the details from the day we met, in fact there is a lot I don't remember about our relationship. It seems neither of us really cares since we know tomorrow could be our anniversary and we would celebrate it the same way. I would sit on this chair, she would sit on that couch underneath her blanket. Matty would play on the floor. There are no more brown eyes but hers, and the whale can go chase itself. I am satisfied and I don't wonder, wander or worry anymore, my wife has got my back. We put Matty down for a nap and climb onto the couch together. Falling asleep with my wife on a sunny afternoon is better than spaghettios with parmesan cheese.