He’s sitting silently next to me.
That silence in itself is something that would have once surprised me; could he ever stop telling jokes or asking me out or hexing people? Yet he manages to sit beside me not saying a word, listening to the crickets singing and the quiet dancing of dark green leaves above us. And if neither of us moves for long enough, perhaps we can join the tree we sit under; like Baucis and Philemon we can grow intertwining to the sky, living this moment for forever.
His hand is warm in mine; I cannot imagine that my palm could fit in any other’s. Our fingers intertwine like oak and linden, leaf and branch, as tomorrow our lives will do.
Tomorrow.
That should be a startling thought; I should feel nervous, jittery, anxious. But his hair sticking up at the back of his head, that silent smile at the corners of his mouth, the way he’s looking at me right now with so much love in his eyes, puts me at ease. So I smile back, knowing the only way I can show him how much I love him is to spend my life with him, and maybe hold his hand a little tighter while I stare into his eyes, willing him to understand what I know I can’t describe.
His eyes light and I know he feels the same way, this feeling neither of us can explain. But I’m in love with him; knowing that is enough.
Maybe when I turn 70 I’ll know how to tell him exactly how beautiful he is, how I love his hazel eyes and raven hair…though by then I suppose it will be gray, and maybe his eyes won’t be able to see what they used to. He won’t be able to walk with long strides and springing steps or climb up a tree before I know what he’s doing.
But of course the way he looks is only the beginning of why I love him; when the raven turns to dove and tan muscle to age, I will love him still. They say young people never look ahead to their futures, but I am; what I see is him. After all, it’s hard to imagine the battles that will come, the fight that must come, as good seeks to triumph over evil. It’s hard to imagine that the fight continues now, even as we sit here together, time pausing for us under this tree in the warm, sweet air. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything at all, not while the present is so perfect, not while this moment is so full of its own thoughts and sounds and beauty.
I don’t have to imagine anything, not when he’s sitting silently beside me, a contented smile on his lips.
A contented smile, one that I know would give way to a laugh as soon as to words, the joy that is as ready in him as speaking itself. I love his laugh, that loud chuckle that presents itself whenever anything remotely funny occurs, that helps me see the joy in life, the joy I find when he’s there, the joy his friends find, his admirers find, strangers find, the people on the street he always has time to greet and laugh with.
And I love that he loves me.
I love that he loves me enough to make pleasant conversation with my sister when she won’t even talk to me, a testament to his gift as a conversationalist. I love that he loves me enough to read Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen and Robert Frost; I love that he quotes them now at all the wrong times. I love that his hand looks callused and rough but is softer than any other hand I’ve ever held. I love that he’s sitting next to me right now as night falls. He puts his arm around me; my head falls onto his shoulder. The breeze is cool in the warm air. It rustles the green above us, the green beside us, but it cannot shake my eyes from his.
The air is sweeter for his breathing it, the sky clearer for him beneath it, love purer for his feeling it. Everything Darkness touches, it worsens; everything he touches lives. I live.
I’m a better person for knowing him. I laugh more, I learn more, I have more tolerance for black-haired rule-breakers. And in the case of one in particular, I tolerate him enough to love him.
Maybe later I’ll be too busy to sit under trees and watch the sky change from blue to gold to lavender to velvety darkness; maybe I won’t have time to appreciate the beauty of the bark I’m leaning on, the grass I’m sitting on, the man my head rests on. But heaven forbid I ever forget how I love these things, how I love the intertwining of our hands and the way time has paused while we rest here before our lives take off and we stand to meet the world together. If I live to the day this tree dies I will never forget how we sat beneath it and listened to summer sounds in between soft breaths of wind and our quiet breathing. Sometimes happiness is loud and raucous, but now it’s the calm chirp of crickets and the call of a lone owl that speak for me: I am in love and I cannot express how happy I am because of it, because of him.
He tips his head next to mine, and whispers in my ear, perhaps not wanting to end the silence.
“Let’s get married.”
“How does tomorrow sound?” I whisper back.
He tilts his head back and laughs, breaking the serenity of silence. This moment is unfrozen; Baucis and Philemon will not join the trees today. His rolling voice will surely wake the grasshoppers whose chirping has only just faded, but we are through with silence for now. Time suspended in the night air moves again as we stand.
Pause by Nymphea
Story Notes:
The Greek Myth of Baucis and Philemon: As a reward for their hospitality, the gods grant Baucis and Philemon (wife and husband) one wish. They wish that when they die, it will be together. When the time comes, instead of having them die together, Zeus turns them into an oak tree and a linden tree, side by side, their branches intertwining.