The first time I saw your face your cheeks were red with rivers of tears. The salty stream trailed down your chin into a puddle before your feet. You had been waiting on the side of this lonely road for hours into the night without a single passerby to stop and assist.
I pulled up behind your dark blue sedan as I saw you seated against the trunk, face buried into your palms. As I approached you barely peeked an eye completely embarrassed to explain what had happened to leave you stranded so.
"May I help you?" I had asked gently so as to not startle.
Slowly you lowered your hands to the ground as you lifted yourself to full height, a mere two inches shorter than me. Attempting to stifle the continued sobbing, you reached out a hand and stuttered the words, "thank you" as you attempted to hold your gaze forward.
"I... I... My car won't start and I'm not even sure where I am," you said as you shook your head in disappointment.
"I haven't seen a single car pass by for an hour... or two. I'm not entirely sure how long I've been out here," you said with a mix of happiness and confusion swirling in your voice.
As I turned to point to my car and ask if you needed a lift you had already run toward me and wrapped your arms around me with sincere acknowledgement of your "savior" as you would later call me. To this day I don't believe I was anything close to a savior of any sort and simply a person that had been at the right place and time to help someone who would later pay it forward and do great things from halfway across the world.
When you peeled your cheek away from the shoulder of my hoodie I could feel the sadness in every drop soaked through stringing back to a time long before this very night.
After a brief inconsequential conversation we had entered my car and headed toward the closest bit of civilization in this rural location. I could feel her eyes reading me as she remained in silence, still embarrassed over the situation. "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol had been playing on the radio when she gently whispered to stop followed by a much louder version of the command.
Nothing much in sight but a field of flowers glistening with moonlight off the light dew collected upon thousands of petals, I had pulled off to the side of the road with an inquisitive look coloring my face. She simply smiled and jumped out the door as she walked toward the field of petals dancing as her legs swept across. Unsure what inspiration overcame her spirit, I paused for a few moments and watched before quickly pacing toward her to inquire about her motivations.
As I approached her position, frozen still and staring into the clear sky at the brightly lit moon she quickly turned and wrapper her arms around me. Holding her gaze, eyes glistening with what looked like the beginning of new tears she asked me to just "stay here a while."
Unable to deny her sweet face still slightly reddened from the sadness that kissed her cheeks not long before, I obliged with a smile.
She let go of the embrace to take my hand and skipped a few feet further into to the flowers where there appeared to be a slight clearing with ample room to nestle between the seemingly unending quantity of stems surrounding us. I had almost tripped at the first jerk of my arm as she began to giggle in a way that dried up the collective tears on my shoulder that had previously soaked through my shirt. She yanked my arm downward as she lowered herself into a spot and watched every movement of mine as I followed suit.
"Lay with me. Forget the world," she requested, "if even for this brief moment in our lives."
Unable to respond, she broke the silence with a philosophical comment about stars, space, and our existence. Connecting the beauty of the unknown to the space between the moments we define as truly living, she pointed to a single star among the dozens, maybe hundreds, that covered us like a blanket of night lights.
"Most people see the stars and think all of them are still alive when we're seeing their light reach our planet, but some of the stars have long burnt out and we're only just experiencing them for the first time. Just like us, sometimes no one notices us until it's too late, yet still we can resound for decades beyond our final moments. There's so much life that happens during the time we think we're truly living because we're kissing a girl, eating our favorite food, partying with friends, or simply doing something, but the truth is that it's the little moments and actions between those activities. It's the thoughts and emotions that continue beyond our actions and express ourselves fully that make us truly alive," she stated as if she was about to begin a motivational speech.
I turned my head toward hers and awaited her eyes to connect, the moonlight reflecting the gentle warmth in her irises. She leaned in to kiss me, a literal stranger in the night that stopped at the right place during the right time to help someone that would forever influence his future, his ideals, his understanding of love and the life that exists in all of us.
Our lips remained in contact for what felt like an eternity as we, indeed, laid down and forgot the world for that moment in our lives. It was never about "kissing a girl" or even feeling the tickle of love deep inside my heart, but understanding the moment and feeling it with every cell in my body.
I still remember the day I saw your perfect face. Not the layers of skin or cute chin, the adorable ears peeking from behind your auburn colored hair, or even the beauty mark to the left of your soft lips you later informed me was one of your biggest embarrassing features to incite a lack of confidence when "chasing boys."
"Fall for you" played on the radio the other day and reminded me how fragile love is between two imperfect beings, yet between every crack is a glimpse of the light that resides deep within each of us. What we sometimes believe is a fault, an error in our existence, is actually our way of revealing the true beauty that lies beneath a layer we believe to be the deepest of all layers. Love is the reason we are here, but there lies a deeper unspoken structure to our being which allows us the greatest moment of our lives if we can accept fractures not as a sign of weakness or impurity, but of truth and strength.
The lyrics "tonight will be the night that I will fall for you over again," take me back to the moment we met and help me realize that moment didn't happen along a linear timeline, but is instead a revelation that continues to happen within every moment between.
*The story is based on as much truth as it is on a dream that happened long ago. Two songs that have meant the world to me from the moment they first played to this very day inspired much of what I believe in and/or how I came to conceive my beliefs.
Whether you've heard the songs a hundred times before or have never once heard a single lyric, I will share them with you now as I close out this blog.
@rambo @missy
