Trust in Excess-Lovers Quarrel

 

            Carefully, she tucked the white garment bag into her suitcase, slipping her hand around all the corners to ensure nothing could catch on the zipper. She could feel the thick satin between her fingers as she pressed and held the dress she had spent weeks finding, every movement of her creamy hands a smooth and measured dance.  

            Zippers crashed through the still air and she picked up her bags. Boarding pass in hand, she smiled, only eight hours now and she would be in his arms once more. It would be a long flight, but somehow, he always made it worth it.  Nathaniel was working in Sacramento, where she met him. This was the third time she had planned a trip from her hometown in southern Minnesota, calling him excitedly at ten pm on a Tuesday when she found a great deal on airfare she couldn’t pass up.

“Sure darling, you can come down.”

“Well, is it ok, does it work for your schedule, do you want me to? Because it’s a great deal, and it would give us so much time together, longer than the last trip, and I think I can get it all off work, and it would be so great to see you again!”

“It always works baby, of course I want you to come down.”

“Are you sure, is there a better time for me to come? If not, I’ll book the tickets tonight.”

“Whatever you want to do.”

She laughs. “But that is what you always say!”

“And it is always true, my love. Come down if you want to, it’ll be fun. There is a company party that weekend, we can go together.”

And so here she was, walking through the chilly April night between the airport and the shuttle station, rolling a bag with her new dress in it, something to impress him and help him miss her, remember her.

They went to the company party and danced just one time. She looked up at his handsome face and his eyes, which were lost somewhere on the horizon. He had that look all weekend, and she decided it was romantic, for him to be so consumed in thought.  

“Nathaniel, isn’t it wonderful to dance together? Just like when we first met, can you believe that was only last year?” She rested her head on his lapel, trying to capture every second and slice about being with him, her heart speaking loudly enough for the both of them.

He stayed in her hotel that night, a getaway for the both of them, he said. She giggled as he opened the door, his arms around her waist, backing her slowly into the room.  His arms which had hair darker than hers, and graying; it gave him that “classic” look. She had spent many lunch hours with her girlfriends raving about “her very own George Clooney”.   

In their hungry race to the bed, she left clothes strewn across the floor. Something made a small, sharp sound as it hit the carpet, but she spent only a second deciding it was his expensive leather belt.

The midmorning sun came in through the sheer curtains, and she surveyed the room, thinking to herself how it looked very much like a movie set.  She was the gorgeous leading lady and Nathaniel was the handsome older man, head over heels in love with her, of course. They were ready to start their lives together, she was sure of it. It would be just like in the movies.

She rolled away from the window to wrap herself around him. He stirred slightly in his sleep, and she closed her eyes once more. And between the window and her naked shoulders, a worn gold ring sat on the floor, a few feet from the pocket of his suit where it had hidden all night, the sun playing off its edges, just like in the movies. 

Black and White

Grow up, we sang, a foot or two until I’m grown. And when I’m grown I’ll go. When I’ve grown a foot or two, I’ll go, I hope. We sang for years those words, no tears. The tears come now, the words still echoing in the air around us, the air around those extra feet we grew. Not real feet, not like octopi, not like we thought when we were younger. But height feet, normal feet, we are adults now.

But we aren’t. We are teenagers, barely graduated from high school. We know nothing about the world. Nothing about the world which we are called to change, nothing about the world which we know will fight against us every single time we open our mouths. We know nothing about the fight they will fight. We know nothing about how to fight back. We won’t fight back. We don’t fight.

This is about love and life, they say. This is about caring and sharing, like in elementary school. This is about showing the world that you are not of it. This is about showing everyone in the world that they don’t have to be either. This is about an escape route. An escape route from the darkness. A door to let in the sun, and an umbrella to keep you dry, even when you are drowning in all the rain of the world.  This is about families and eternity and remembering and saving everything that is important on earth.

So we go. We call our doctors and our dentists and our bishop. We make appointments and appointments and we fill out forms so many forms so many times our names so many pictures in a suit and tie so many teeth next to us after all our wisdom is gone.  We work, and we don’t take our girlfriends on lots of dates because they know we are saving up for our mission. But we spend time together, lots of time, because we know we are saving up for our mission. 

Saving up for two years without newspapers or facebook or phone calls or skypes or dates or after school Sonic runs. So we spend time together. Lots of time. Trying to engrave on our minds the way that everything is so that when we are gone, we can remember and return, though we know we will never be the same.  

But we work so we can go. And we are happy to go. But where will we go? We don’t know, but He does. And we ask Him; we send papers and files and pictures to Salt Lake and they send us back a letter. A big white letter in a big white envelope. The letter is black words on a page, but it feels like gold. It is heavy in our hands and we open it slowly. Our family screams. We cry. We are going, going, going somewhere we have never been before.  Going somewhere we can’t find on a map yet, we need to get the bigger map. The letter tells us to report to the training center on March Twenty Sixth, and we scream.

We scream with excitement and they scream with excitement and now all anyone ever says to me is about excitement, or encouragement, or commitment, or not paying rent, or not going to college yet, or not marrying my girlfriend of two years because I promised myself I would do this first.

And she waits.

And everything is all about black now. Black socks to match my pants. Black suits to meet the dress code. Black ties for looking nice. Black bags for carrying my life in. Black pens for writing home with.

And blue books to teach from. Blue books to give away with a prayer and a promise.

And everything is black now, except my white shirt. And my white name on the black tag. The black tag I clip to my white shirt after everything has been done. The black space between me and my mother disappears as I hug her for the last time. The last time for two years. And the whites of her eyes disappear as I walk through the airport. And the white of my smile stays.

I readjust my name tag.