Day 141

Beautiful clematis, as large as a hand.

A kiss to build a dream on.

She goes to drop off her tall handsome son at his date's elegant house.  He is off to a prom, a senior high school dance.  He looks very beautiful with his light blue eyes like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him. His elongation constantly astonishes her, his long legs clad in their black suit pants, which she just finished lengthening this morning.  When she walks with either of her sons she has to run or skip every second step to keep up with the stretch of their stride.

The house is very close to her husband's work and she has a sudden desire to see him, to be happy, to tell him important things.  She calls and they arrange to meet at a coffee place nearby.

When she arrives he is already there, and she walks in, aware of him watching her, a bit shy, even after all these years.  He reaches for her and pulls her in, a big public smooch, a huge long hug.

There is a big difference between a kiss in the open and a kiss in private.  Kissing before an audience is a statement of intent - this is my choice, this is my person, my spouse, this is my beautiful lover.

She climbs up on to the high chair and her flip-flops fall to the floor. Comfortably barefoot, she looks into his kind eyes, notes his greying hair, his aging face, just like hers, the soft crows' feet.  She launches into the important things, the way they need to worry less, the happy occasion of the weekend, what they will do together.

He says that he wants to weed the driveway and she says "good luck with that".  He tells her she can sit with him while he does it and she says she has no desire whatsoever to pull the weeds out of the gravelly driveway.  She feels very positively about weeds. He smiles broadly and tells her that she is getting weirder with age, that they are weeds, and weeds do not belong.  She asks him if he will stay with her if she gets any stranger than she is already.  She identifies with weeds, and the bees love the weeds, which all have flowers and are beautiful, and are doing no one any harm, are they, just living among the pebbles.  He laughs and tells her that yes, he will stay with her, but there are limits, like if she goes completely barmy.

That is fair enough, and she will never go completely barmy, she hopes.

When they get home they go for a long walk through the meadows, through the tall grass, through the lilting birdsong, through the sky with its glowing gibbous moon (she explains to him what a gibbous moon is), through the field with its ancient apple trees which have lost the will to bear apples, through the gangly fiddlehead ferns at the pond, through the oak and the birch and the white pines, and the sixteen different kinds of maple trees, through the falling light, through their myriad kisses, through their dreams.