When you talk to your childhood friends, do you exchange updates on so-and-so who used to go to school with you?
My best friend from high school and I have these types of gossip sessions every so often, so when she called me the other day and said, "Guess what?", I thought, hey, maybe she found out that someone else just got engaged (since engagements are all the rage these days). As it turns out, the news was something quite different than your run-of-the-mill proposal:
My friend told me that she was reading the local paper and found an article about this guy who is the older brother of a girl who went to junior high with us (he was a year older and as we remember it, was pretty cute). No big deal, right? It's a local paper - it's not like they have so much news that they can't squeeze something in about someone you know...
Anyway, my friend tells me that he is now a Hell's Angel. Then she goes on to say that he's being charged for 31 counts of pretty serious bad behaviour - she didn't know the specifics, only that the major charge was for shooting a woman at Yorkdale Mall, resulting in permenant paralysis.
When I hear about these types of things, there is the initial shock and the sadness I suddenly feel for the innocent people affected. Then it's not such a big deal anymore because it's still pretty removed from my life. It's not like I knew the guy well, and it's not unimaginable that someone I knew in my past could end up being a criminal.
The only thing that's different about this story is that this guy's family lives two houses away from mine! His parents are still at that house - they just finished some major renovations and they still have a few old clunker boat cars, same as when we were kids. Not that I'm afraid (though I know my parents would be majorly disturbed if I told them about this), I just think about my own path in life and how lucky I've been. I never really even had a chance to stray, to fall into a destructive trap like the one he's in. I grew up in such close proximity to this guy, in seemingly similar surroundings, but obviously very different circumstances.
It feels so weird. I wonder what it's like in that house, I wonder how his family feels, how he feels - but what I really wonder about is what made him choose that dark road he's on right now.
After coming home from Khiem's on Tuesday, I was thinking about the early phase of a relationship between two people, the "honeymoon" phase when everything feels new, when everything feels so magical. I was thinking about this because we've passed the seeming perfection of this phase, and I guess I sometimes want to be back there, when things seemed less...I don't know...less
cluttered. By clutter I mean that after that first wonderful stage in our relationship when we seemed to exist only for each other, other obligations in life piled up around us again - work, family, friends, chores, our own individual hobbies - so much so that it overwhelms me and I sometimes become fatalistic, fearing that even though we've built a solid, loving relationship, it may all unravel somehow, and that the only way to keep it all together is to try and return to the "honeymoon" phase.
I wanted to get to work on Wednesday, get the day over with and tell him my fears. As a distraction, I pulled out a new book to read on the subway. When I read the inside jacket at the store, I was drawn to the book because it (
Gift from the Sea) is about a remarkable woman's (
Anne Morrow Lindbergh) meditations about life while on vacation by the sea. The book's locale sounded so sunny and relaxing that I wanted to be transported there myself.
Well, it must have been serendipity or something close to it, because a few chapters in, the author speaks to exactly what I was thinking the night before, and provides the insight that I was seeking but so far had not found:
It is true, of course, the original relationship is very beautiful. It's self-enclosed perfection wears the freshness of a spring morning. Forgetting about the summer to come, one often feels one would like to prolong the spring...One resents change, even though one knows that transformation is natural and part of the process of life and its evolution...there is also a dead weight of accumulation, a coating of false values, habits and burdens which blights life. It is this smothering coat that needs constantly to be stripped off, in life as well as in relationships.Life goes on, and you can't return to the past. However, "one-and-only moments" as Lindbergh calls them, such as going on vacation together, or just setting aside some time once in awhile to have dinner or take a walk with each other (with no one else and no other obligations to bog you down) is a great way to return briefly to that pleasurable two-person world again. The important thing to note is that these
are "one-and-only moments" - they are not permanent, and to want them to be is to be selfish, to limit yourself, your relationship with your partner and others:
...not only do we insist on believing romantically in the "one-and-only" - the one-and-only love...we wish the "one-and-only" to be permanent, ever-present and continuous..."there is no one-and-only," as a friend of mine once said in a similar discussion, "there are just one-and-only moments"...One comes in the end to realize that there is no permanent pure-relationship and there should not be. It is not even something to be desired. The pure relationship is limited, in space and in time. In its essence it implies exclusion. It excludes the rest of life...it excludes growth.After I read this, I wanted to tell Khiem right away, but it so happened that we didn't get to see or really talk to each other that day. Somehow though, without even knowing my thoughts, fears or revelations of the previous two days, he created one of those "one-and-only moments" when he arrived with daffodils and a movie at my house last night. For me, this was a moment (and how interesting that he wrote about "moments" only a few days ago) because I know that he is not one of those guys who buys flowers for a girl because she expects them, or because he knows he's done something wrong, or even for Valentine's or her birthday. He only buys them when he feels like it, and my heart was overflowing because I knew that during his busy day, he saw those flowers and thought of me.
And what about the movie? Well, after he presented me with those lovely flowers, he tricked me into thinking that he selfishly rented a movie for himself to watch (which I would have to suffer through) rather than a movie for us to share together.
In actual fact, he rented a movie that
he suffered through: halfway in, boredom led him to fall asleep on my shoulder, while I sat watching Bridget Jones make a fool of herself. I pulled a blanket over him to keep him warm and snuggled into our two-person world. I relished the nearness of his company and I basked in the moment, knowing that it would end, but this time knowing that it would end without fear.
