I don’t have dates for everything, but let’s just say I was kissing her in the middle of Wal-Mart in such a way that made our friends Shawn, Amy, Amy and Gwen say “get a room!” I had never had anyone who felt this way about me! If there were never another, I was glad this time meant so much to me. I go back to it again and again like it was yesterday.
We had just gotten our blood tests done at the health department a couple of days before, and this must have been about the time we found our rings in the pawn shop, too. You were working so much, baby, but I could count on you to come visit me after lunch, and another set of panties were due to be lost in the little room on Juniper Street.
What did it all mean, to find that kind of passion for the first time in our lives, and leap straight in with the surety we would remain there for each other? It’s not so hard to recall being that age, mostly because those sorts of feelings arise each day alive and well.
I gave up some of my happiness for the sake of honor lately, but never did I stop my affection for you, and it’s for you that I will keep that happiness alive and well! So many things I only wished I could be back then, years later, I can arise and resume with fervor nowadays. I was so anxious back then to become something, so convinced of my dreams based on little more than some potential and a few glimmers of promise in my barely-sustained efforts. However late my bloom, it’s safe to say you nurtured me, and the sustenance of what we became could be found in our beginning!
The list of what I recall from those days involves mostly screwing, a couple of tortured encounters with my sister, some fun we all had together that I see in photos of us goofing off on Juniper Street, lots of walks in downtown Rome, and asking you again and again to marry me, because I couldn’t resist the sweeping feeling of passion! You said “yes” every time, and I kept the bloom of love fresh with every way I could think of to give us that floaty feeling that starts as so many hormones and so much longing for togetherness in this world, while ultimately we must learn to live with our own selves, and grow from within.
The feeling of your hugs takes me right back to the beginning: this person LOVES me, wants me, accepts me, admires me—and she is so darling, so truthful, so dedicated, with so much fascinating potential, and so much affection! I wanted to nurture you with all my being.
It was about this time I told Uncle Roger one day that any woman who ever came along to try to take me away from you was out of luck---I’d tell her to fuck off! LOL He really couldn’t understand it. But I look at two of us, and how much I’ve enjoyed your company. I’m sorry for the many times I worried so damn much out loud…I couldn’t be more happy to have a laptop, because I used to work up so many notes just to get a few hundred words of fiction squeezed out, and now I can and have learned to type as freely as I might speak. I used to feel almost all the time like I was about to scream, except that I could turn to you saying sweet words, and see the love in your eyes, and linger on the way your voice carries your own words, which took so long to coach from you in copious amounts! It’s true, a lot of it’s so mundane, we have little reason to say it…I can’t for the life of me understand when I acquired the need to tell you when I was taking a shit and how that all went, like some old person…but I’m not nearly so hard on the standard of what we write, what we say…so much more comfortable with just being. From that comfort, from that silence of being, the possibility to be truly creative flourishes. All the while, we kept trying to add to the quality of what we had to say together, what we had to think, and I believe we are just hitting a new stride. Not even a woman we loved so much together need come between us---she never did, just her frustrating mysteries and absence---and I still look forward to your company most of all, and have high hopes the fun side of us will truly flourish once more!
I am glad I took the time to focus on you and me this morning. I have lots more to write, and am finding my way gradually to other possibilities, but I needed to say something to the girl I sat with in the Ferguson, “my little friend” as those sweet cafeteria workers used to say, the one who has gone on most all my walks with me, the person with whom I’ll play guitar later today, the dear heart I’ll take to dinner at Michel’s…the love who’s shared so many of my inner thoughts without barriers, the person I just had to hold close to me this morning before I wrote a single word.
I can’t wait to see where your curiosity will take us next. I can hardly wait to hear your lovely singing voice---that was always a treat from our early days, too, the Indigo Girls songs and even Gospel tunes and rock classics you would share out of your own happiness---we barely spent any time in front of a television in those days, and never drove anywhere, it seems, without more of your songs. Now, we have songs we’ve written together, too…your drawings have moved my heart…your poems always brighten my day…your enjoyment of a simple bowl of Ramen just makes me glad to be alive, and worried for not a thing.
I love you, my Angela Dawn…my Angela Zora…my own little Bowman…my very own Disharoon. <3
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