A MEMORY OF FALL TO REPLACE THE DREAMS OF AUTUMN

                                  A Memory Of Fall To Replace Dreams Of Autumn




    "Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
                                                                        George Eliot



      I picked her up In the truck early in the morning.  The sun had barely begun to turn the sky from the deep blue black of twilight into the veiled indigo that faintly illuminated only the highest thin and wispy gossamer clouds.

     We had planned today much like anything else we have done in quite a while; on short notice and expecting only what would come  by chance.  Chance, however, had always seen fit to shine upon us more when opportunity became scarce.

     I slowed the truck to the front of her house just as she pulled the front door closed.  She was dressed in her warm jacket and a small head band to pull back her lose hair.  No matter what she wears, her body always looks as though her clothing would not do her justice, but a pair of blue jeans approximated the closest to perfection.  She shouldered her small knapsack and smiled shyly as she walked to the truck.

     For a woman I have learned to love as openly as I have in her, we have always made the same playful small talk when we first meet.  A small "hi" and a shuffling of bags and a quick recap of the morning, but all it ever takes to drop the cordial amenities is a kiss that says that we are both here with who we need more than anyone else and exactly in the place that we want to be.

     She removed her red knitted gloves I had bought her last year and held my hand as we drove to the first place we could find that had good coffee.  It is the small unfolding of the morning with her that brings me so much happiness.  First things first, to anyone's morning, is to get that which we need the most.  With her in the truck and on our way to coffee, it is only her near me that makes the bleary-eyed drive to the shop seemed almost trivial now.

     We talked quietly about what it was that we wanted to do today.  Fall was not coming to any more than our Summer had, nor the Spring we spent alone believing we could be less to each other by our decisions to stay away.  As though simply by the doing of it would in any way change what we always knew was there either way.

     Today was a day to reconnect in the way we had in the beginning.  By accident, and with absolutely no expectations as to what we thought would come of it.  Our love started in a way that no one could understand because it came at a time when we weren't looking for, and became all the more important because of it.  With no demands and no critical criteria to stop us from doing so, love came at us on tiny soft feet and turned into something so much more amazing because of it.  The excuse that love found while looking for it somehow cheapens it, does the exact opposite when it is found when you aren't looking.  It elevates it to a point of unbelievable proportions simply in its unfolding for what it truly is, rather than what we think or make it what we want.  Most people define their wants and then conform who they find to fit the model they design.  Sadly, the expectations of perfection are far too critical in its demands to make love possible at all.  It is a force feeding of wants to be catered to until failure is all that can be wrought from it.  Either by the one who realizes the futility of expecting a new  person to live up to grandiose demands,or by the one who fails in achieving it continuously.  but with no model, it simply is what we found, and changed us in the having of it.  It opened itself for what it was and allowed us to walk into it to see how love for one changes the perception of the other.  With no demands, it was ours to build in what we found in each other.  New, and clean, and free from anything except what we allowed to fill inside of us.  And it filled the parts that no one else ever knew existed.  Not even ourselves.

     But Fall was not coming.  It wasn't here yet. We had felt what Autumn was inside of us with the other near, but situations would make for us to miss yet another.  We would not be able to feel the magic of Fall as it is seen in the eyes of the other, and we were not about to allow our environment to dictate to us what our hearts needed.  We would chase Fall back to to its beginning;  to where it had already started and take for ourselves the unfolding of Fall as much as we took from the unfolding of my love for her, so long ago.  If Fall will not come to us, we will go to Fall.
    
     A small latte' cradled in her hands, we drove north on the highway as fast as we could.  What we saved in an hour of driving through the end of Summer would be made up for being able to feel all of Fall when we got there.  I drove the truck East, to Vermont.
     While we drove, we began the reconnecting that always seems to take half the time we expected it to.  As though by our absence we had expected damage to be repaired before more growing could be had.  But it is always such a comforting peace to me to know that this woman never loses any of her spark or fire in my heart, and the time we thought would be spent on the repair is suddenly what springboards us into deeper love.  It always grows, and never lessens, and my love for her is more and more assured with each passing moment.

     We read the newspaper and playfully joked with each other.  Small jabs in nothing but adoration that lend to a deeper comfort of ourselves in the eyes  other rather than an undoing.  We sang to the radio, and then I sang to her, and then she reminded me that she is so much more enamored by my desire to sing to her, than my ability to do it well.
    
     I will simply never be able to explain, both to you, and to her, what her face does to me when I look at it.  She is so many women to me, all rolled into one.  She is, and always be now, my very best friend.  That is the face that could have been anyone for what she is inside to me.  But she is the comfort of my Mother for her ability to hold me safe and protected.  She is the playfulness and wonder of a little girl that makes me always want to find another thing or place that causes that sparkle and joy in her face.  She is the face of my most cherished heroes and when I see what I admire in them, it is her face I put to it.  She is the face that illicites passion and lust and arousal.  I have a painting in my room that I have always seen as the most beautiful and proud. I had it painted from a small picture I found in a magazine nearly twenty years ago.  I looked at that picture and realized that she has so many features that I found so attractive to me.  The same  curve to the tip of her nose.  Same angle of her cheek.  The same one eyebrow that can convey so much of her feelings.  But most of all, it is her eyes that I have been completely lost inside of.  Eyes that can twinkle and  shimmer in happiness, and then suddenly deepen into a mix of darkness and desire.  Eyes that no one truly understands the depth of.  Not even people who have looked into them for years.  I look into those brown eyes, and I can see from the edge of her lashes...to the very end of my life.


"Oh, stop there".

     She tapped the inside of the glass with the tip of her fingernail making a small click that brought me out of my very pleasurable distraction.  Her feet were pulled up against her chest and she looked out to the side of the road as though she pointed through the glass at a display in a museum.  A curiosity that she was more than accustomed to have pass by her life as simply as a want or a dream unattained.  One more look on her face that I have never stopped enjoying is the sudden realization that her dreams are enough for me to shift what she looks at from the side, to be the very thing that I will drive straight toward and let her feel and touch.  Her dreams are important to me, but only as the impetus to make them a reality for her.  Dreams unrealized or unfulfilled are a complete and total waste if there is not a person who would do anything to make them a reality and give yet more space for more dreams.  If there is nothing I like more than to hear her dreams, it is to make them true.

     A small gravel turn off led through an opening in a split rail fence to store front. We stopped the truck and she stepped out into the gravel and thought to herself how many times that sound has been described in one story or another to her.  Perhaps because it caused in him the same feeling she felt now as it worked beneath her shoe.  That the small crinkle and fold of hard stones sought   the best displacement against the weight of her shoe when she kissed him.
      An antique store with a large front porch bristled with every conceivable trinket; A wooden  sea chest with a great arched lid, a carved chair, rolled rugs, and even an ornate hall tree carved with  two loons on the surface of a quiet lake above the mirror.  She smiled warmly again as she ran her fingertips over the wood, and felt the echo run through her. No dreams. Memories.  Her smile didn't go unnoticed by him nor did the sound of it. Even through the breeze that rustled the trees above the porch.
     We stepped into the antique store hearing a small bell attached to the top of the door.   It jangled and danced on its spring as she stepped through the doorway onto the wood floor.  The smell of furniture polish and of old newspaper; of lives and history, all held within, waiting to whisper their secrets to those who would stand close enough to listen.
    We walked among the pieces of furniture and held each other close.  Just far enough apart to reach and touch the things we found of interest, but close enough to share what we thought only with each other.

 A small quiet woman said hello from behind the counter and we both said a cheerfull "Hello".  She has always been such a polite woman, but in the presence of both a stranger and myself, she wears two hats at once, so well. One that implies that she would never do anything outside the limits of good manners with regards to a stranger, but never so much that she doesn't imply exactly who she is with and how much he is cared about.  It is a quiet pride in herself that I am who she loves, but not in a way that only but the most aware would see.  And maybe that is another one of those things I see in her that many do not.  That she can imply such  a deep affection for me without making the need to show it so apparent.  And those who do notice it, are that much more impressed with a woman who can do that so well.

     We finally walked through every room and said our 'thank you's' to the woman, and then we stepped outside to walk to the coffee shop.  The same happy jangle as we entered the door revealing an identical bell attached to the door.  From behind the counter, the very same woman appeared.  We all laughed at the obvious frequency with which she must have pulled this little stunt. She obviously owned both stores and it was but a few steps to exit one store and enter the other through the hallway between the two.
     The similarities with both stores, however, ended there.  This room had the same floor boards but it's smells were completely different.  The coffee sat in  jars behind the counter pouring out a variety of scents to mix together, but all unmistakably coffee.  A wide glass front display cabinet blossomed with bread and pastry.  It came as a surprise that this woman could find the time to bake as much as she had, and made us wonder who could buy it all to make it worth it.  As if almost reading our mind, she replied that the majority of people come in on their way home but that the middle of the day is very quiet.  Again she answered an unspoken question before we said it by adding that we had it all to ourselves.
     I ordered a cup of coffee and she ordered a cup of tea and a small pastry while leaning her head against my shoulder.  Her  hand holding mine and curled to her chest as she explained what she wanted from the display case.  She handed both to us and explained that there were tables outside if we wished to take in the last of the warmth that would be had for awhile.  Knowing that warmth, both from her and the last edges of Summer were what I wanted most, I pulled the door handle and used the bell above as my only answer.

     We walked to a small table with an umbrella and scooted two large Adirondack chairs a little closer together.  As we sat sipping my coffee and her tea, with conspired quietly together as we always have, she ran her hands over the wood and down to hook her hands at the edge of the arm rests.  The warm Fall air giving way to an occasional crisp breeze.  The sky had become that deep bright blue that seems to go on and up forever in only the way a Fall sky can.  The light that would normally make a summer bright shifted slightly south that made shadows a bit longer and colors softer.  I have always been in love with her eyes, but in Autumn, the sun seems to see fit to allow me to see the warm brown color of her eyes rather than the radiance of them in Summer.  They hold me to her with more deep affection and true love than the excitement of any other season.  Her eyes in the fall are the closest to what she holds inside, and if I were to tell someone when to see her for who she is the most, I would have them meet her in October.

    Talking with her as my equal is something that I have come to adore.  She can look at me without having to wonder what I  really think or do not say.  She knows that what I say to her is plain and un fettered by fear of judgment, and only tempered with restraint in how I present it to be honest and polite as well as truthful.  She can touch me with affection without it being sexual.  She can feel and express comfort and happiness in a way that says that she truly knows what she means to me.  Maybe the best way to explain what it is like to be with her, is to get someone to understand that I do not see her as another person at all.  She is simply a better, more refined and beautiful  expression of myself.  Not to make light of that at all, she adds to me the other half that can not be opened by anyone else.  When I am with her, I feel like a whole person loved for every part of me, and not just one part or another; wanted, but only  in its own time and place and always to someone elses expectations of use and not as a total person. She knows all of me and Loves what I am, and I know all of her and love what she is.  Try and expect something like that as a preconcieved expectation of a relationship and you will spent a lifetime in unresolved misery.  But find that in a person like this woman, and you will understand why I simply have no desire to ever look anywhere else in my life except to a person who loves all of me and lets me love all of her.

     She sat quietly listening to and feeling everything that she could of the moment.  Slowly tearing away a dream and replacing it with a hard fast memory.  She slid her back lower into the chair and rested her feet on the edge of mine.  As if to say that she had absorbed everything of the experience, she replied a very simple statement that, as do most things in her small reflective voice, implies far more than  what she says.
  
  "I like these chairs.  These are the kind I want. Just like these."

     I stood up and kissed her forehead through her hair.
     Someday, I will buy you a set of chairs just like these."

     I went back inside after her first cup of tea to refill her cup.  I watched her looking out over the woods and all of the colors that she needed to feel of a Fall.  The stubborn green of Summer holding in stark contrast to the reds of Maple trees that ran from crimson down through subtle shades of ruddy purple, and to peach . Yellows and golds that bled and faded in every hue through orange, and then on to browns of hazelnut and then finally to chocolate.
   
    I love to watch her when she thinks I am not; the reflection on the window hiding me from her view.  She crossed her legs and spread her legs out across the length of my chair and let Autumn cover her.  Fall is so very often associated with the end of things.  But to me, and I hope to here, it is always going to be a beginning.  It was when I first met her, and then it was when I had said I would love her forever, and then when I decided that I would endure both the ice of winters and the cold shielding she would need in other places in her life.  To me, Autumn is the time of reflecting on all that she has become to me, and the promise that there is simply nothing that can occur during a 'Winter of Discontent" that would not bloom again at the dawning of a Spring or the awakening of myself to her at the asking for it.  Autumn is when I would ask her to marry me. It will always be Autumn that I feel her the most for all that she is to me.
     The lady at the counter pulled me again from my thoughts of her.
    "Does your girlfriend need anything else?"
 
     The automatic assumption threw me off guard and I quickly attempted to back peddle before I even spoke a word.

     "Oh she's not my girlfriend. ... But she's my best friend.  Well so I guess she's a girlfriend but not the... I mean I'm not saying I wouldn't but..."

     It frustrated that she had caught me between what I truly feel for this beautiful woman through the glass and what I am so accustomed to pretending in the face of others.  Truth be told, she is so much more than anything I could ascribe to her as a title.  Because for everything that she could be to me, she has surpassed the criteria for every single one.  And any name I give it, would do nothing to explain what it is she has done to completely dash the usual definitions with what she has become to my life.
    
     She looked at me with a very knowing smile.  It twinkled out of the side of her face and erupted into a 'Mona Lisa' smile as she turned to pour hot water into her cup.

     "It isn't what you say, sweetie, that made me guess she is  your girlfriend.  It's how the two of you go about doing it, that goes so much farther than anything you could say.  I've been watching the two of you through the glass just like you look at her now.  And I've watched hundreds of pairs of people come and go in this little shop... but I see very few couples.  Couples aren't just two people.  Couples are people just like you and her, who wouldn't be anything close to what they by themselves as what they are when they are together."
     "Is it that obvious?"

     She set the tea on the counter and added,

     "When a woman looks like that with you at her side, the way she did when you came into the antique store next door, I had no doubt in my mind what you were to her.  When I saw the two of you outside and they way you compliment each other, I knew you could make it look like to others what they thought you  felt inside.  But when you came in here... and looked at her without her knowing it..., I wouldn't doubt it in a million years that she isn't exactly what you think she is."

     I smiled sheepishly and looked back out through the window at her as I replied, "Well, okay I admit you're right and  she is my girlfriend.  In every sense of the word, she is."

"Oh, no, I was so wrong about the two of you."  Like I said, I've seen people come and go in here for years and years. A man who would come in here and answer, plain and simple what I asked, would have been a boyfriend.  What you two have there...is way more."  You see, a boyfriend can answer anything anyone puts to them about their girlfriends.  Something so much bigger can't.  Someone you can't define has to be explained by what they are, in something else entirely. Something like glass front store windows like me to see what you can't say."

    She pointed at the window towards the most beautiful woman I have ever seen or felt in my whole life. I softly admitted that for a person who seemed to know exactly what I felt about her, that I was utterly at a loss for words when it came to getting someone else to understand it.

"Never stop loving a woman who puts you at a complete loss for words, son.  And I always walked away from the ones who felt they could.  The best ones to keep...are the ones you stumble around on your words for like your in a room of marbles."

     I thanked her again and had a hard time with two hot cups as my  eyes tried to see through wet eyes from knowing that finally another person had seen what I so desperately wanted the world to know and knew how badly I loved this woman; how so much of what I felt about her could be seen by how we are together, and not what just I could say or explain. And most importantly, not by me or by her.  By someone who knew us no more deeply than could be learned in ten minutes.

     I returned with her tea and sat down  when she replied that she liked her tea "Just like this".  Again those three words, and this time I resolved to make this part of our trip be more than she expected.  I made the excuse that I forgot my keys on the counter while I had been talking with the woman inside.  The truth being that they were still in the truck ignition, but it gave me time to go in and purchase something I had seen in the antique store.

     I re entered the store and quickly explained what I needed from the display case in the other room.  She left and quickly came back with an iron hat pin with a ladybug on it.  She had missed seeing it tucked up in the corner while we held hands in front of the display case, and I had planned on getting it for her before we left, but it suddenly had a new purpose.  At one time I am sure it was  very shiny and bright, but age had rusted the flat iron of the pin.  I paid for the pin and then made an additional purchase of permission before I came back outside.
     She still sat in the sun in the same position as she had been before.  I gave her the small pin and explained where it was in the case.  As always, it is the small things that hold the most weight to her.  I explained that in addition to the pin, I purchased a special permission along with it from the woman inside.  As if on que, the woman came out with a small candle on a tiny dish.  She smiled a too warm smile that let her know that more than simple small talk had passed between me and the woman.
     I took the long end of the hat pin and held it over the small flame in the candle.  The metal immediately turned black with soot, but there was no mistaking that it was too hot to even consider touching.  As it heated in the candle, I slowly twirled it back and forth until the heat was even all over its flat surface.
    
     " I wanted to have another special way to have you know that I will always remember you right here exactly the way you are.  Slide off the chair and hand me that rock, love."
    
       She had a look of total confusion on her face wondering what the heck I was up to, but without question got up off the chair and stepped over to the flat palm sized rock at the edge of the patio.
    
     I paid for the permission to put a special mark on this char for you."

     Suddenly realizing that I was not crazy nor willing to purposely deface someone's property, she stood next to me and waited until I asked for the rock.  When it was sufficiently hot, I reached for the rock and slid the iron ladybug onto the top of the rock and pressed it hard against the under side of the armrest on her chair.  A quick hiss as the metal burned in past the laquer and then deep into the wood as I slowly rolled the rock back and forth to get the whole impression burned into the wood.  Smoke curled around the edges of the armrest and gave the faint scent of a fireplace before being carried off into the woods.
    
     When I was done, I set the pin onto the ground and she knelt down to look under the armrest  at my handiwork.  Burned into the underside, was a perfect ladybug.  Its black spots perfectly smooth circles against the raw pine of the boards.  As if to assure her that everything was okay, I waved through the glass at the unseen woman inside. I knew without seeing that she knew I could not see her, but she would wave back anyway.

     We finished our drinks and she went inside quickly to drop off our cups before leaving as I went to start the car.  When she returned, her eyes were slightly wet and I asked her if everything was okay.  She smiled and laughed and replied in the only way that I know to be true under any situation.  "Perfect" she said. "Everything is just perfect".  There are so many ways that this woman can tell me one thing and have me know that things are not that good, but 'perfect' is a sacred word to me when it is spoken by her.  It is a word that has no double meanings, no hidden innuendo.  It is perfect, and nothing more.

     We drove in through the woods and watched the piles of leaves scuttle in the street in front of us blown by the breeze, and then billow out behind us in wake of yellows and reds,  Past fields of pumpkins turning a deep orange and along the edges of cornfields already picked of their harvest but left to dry still in the fields.  We travelled through one small town after another weaving in and around one small hill after another until we came to our first covered bridge.

     I slowed the truck and let her climb out as I fished into the glovebox for my camera.  I closed the door and heard the soft echo of her voice as it echoed down and then back off the wood of the bridge.  She stopped to lean over the railing and looked down into the cold dark water beneath her.  I snapped one picture of her with her elbows resting on the railing, and another of her raising her foot back behind her as she looked out across the valley.
      I do not get very many opportunities to take her picture, but of those that I do, when she knows it is me who takes them, she is always happy.  Sometimes quiet, or pensive, but always happy.  And not happy in the way that others are so very good at pretending when they are anything but or required to 'make nice'.  My pictures of her  show joy as a part of her face that simply can not be separated from her happiness.  She often fusses about her hair or how she looks when I take pictures of her, and is more shy with me than she is with others, but I always hope that it is because she truly understands that when I take pictures of her it is because she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and it is not her shyness at taking a picture that she shows to me.  It is the shyness that she knows what  I think of her whether it is with a picture or not.
     We stood against the railing and leaned in close to each other.  She hooked her arm around mine and then the length of her leg to wrap around me by my foot.  She looked at me and her face softened.  She never has to ask me to kiss her.  Her voice never really saying quite fast enough what her body can show to me.  I leaned in to kiss her and felt, for the first time that day, a kiss that defines so much more than a simple hello or goodbye.  These are the kisses I dream of at night.  The ones that start as small and warm, soft against my own lips, and then suddenly melt and relax into a total acceptance of the two of us together.  These are the kisses that build within us so much more than a simple act.  They are the kind of kisses that turn my soul over to her and remind me that I feel so much more of her from the inside.  They are hot and passionate and they scare me with the power that comes out of her from them.  Were it not for her hand on my face to give me a direction I could recognize, my feet would come out from underneath me.  I sometimes wonder, when she asks me if she is worth all that we go through to be in love with each other, if she truly knows how close she is to bringing me to my very knees simply by her kissing me.  If there is anything that brings me to this place in my heart, it is her lips in the Fall.  It is Fall that reminds me of exactly what I have done for this woman. Fall. Just fall.  And keep falling, because there never has been nor will there ever be the sudden stop. I just keep falling...and falling...and falling.

     As if to let me know that she heard every word I thought, she looked into my eyes and said, "This is the Fall I needed.  So far it is exactly what I wanted without having anything be what we planned.  I just needed Fall with you again."

     I nuzzled the soft skin of her neck as I hugged her tight against me feeling her entire body fit into the other half of me.  I didn't say anything more, but thought as loudly as I could and hoped she could hear me.

"Fall for you, all over again. To fall for you...all over again."

      She peeled away from me and led me by the hand out and away from the railing.  I picked up the camera and asked her quickly to do something do something sexy.  She cocked her hip to one side and threw her head back like a runway model with one hand on her hip and the other held in front of her. Perfect.

     "Now do something funny or unexpected"

     She twirled around once and then stopped facing me and lifted her shirt exposing her bare rounded breasts to me.  In the brief second that I saw her through the camera lens, she melted my heart with the incredible sexuality this woman can display in the blink of an eye.  Simple and gentle, and then suddenly exploding with a sexuality that I still can not geasp.  I thought to myself that this is a picture I will love forever.  Beautiful and proud, sensual and sexy, carefree and impulsive.  Everything that this woman is to me captured in an instant.  I was so stunned I forgot to take the picture.

     We drove on through the small towns and across rivers and streams.  Every moment etched into our lives forever and becoming more and more of what we always knew was there within the other to be felt in ourselves.  If today began as a way to save what we thought we could lose, it only went farther to show that there simply was no end to all that built within us.  The sun began to dip low into the sky, and I began to worry about whether I should ask if she wanted to return.  I had no desire to take her back at all, but I was too afraid to ask.  I let the minutes pass by one after another.  The truck continued along with the two of us in our own little world, and I wanted nothing more than to drive for the rest of my life with her.

     Around one corner, we drove into  a town that must have been pulled from a postcard.   A number of brick shops clustered around  the center of town and a long wide park with a gazebo and a bandstand attached to it; its walkways manicured but covered in a thin layer of  crisp leaves.  Without a word from her, I knew that this is where she wanted to stop.  I pulled the truck to the side of the road and quickly found a parking spot to leave our car.
 
     A small cafe on the corner square reminded me that I had not fed this woman since this afternoon.  We went inside and into a small dining area with only four tables.  None of them occupied by anyone else.  A deep rich red carpet covered the floor and each table was made to sit only four people tightly.  For two of us however, it was perfect.

     We talked between the two of us and watched the leaves blow around outside the windows.  Occasionally people would bustle on by outside  from one place to another.  We ordered to glasses of wine and became so involved in what we had to say to each other that we hadn't even picked up the menus.  The waitress left a loaf of bread and between the two of us and satisfied ourselves with the warm bread and wine to such a degree that dinner seemed almost unnecessary.  We did manage to order a salad and split it between the two of us and two bowls of soup, but it was readily apparent that we were having too much fun being ourselves to need anything more.  It should come as little surprise that all we wanted was more time together in a place that at least gave a minimum of food to share between the two of us.  We whispered quietly and sipped our wine and the waitress even seemed pleased that she rarely had to bother with us at all.

     We made a limit of two glasses of wine no matter what we ate, but nursed the second ones slowly as we plotted and schemed on wish after another.  None of them beyond the realm of possibility just so long as we both wanted them.  Her foot curved around my leg in that spot that means as much to me as her kisses do.  Her fingers alternating from the rim of her glass and then back to the table to let me hold her hand as we sat and listened to each other and the soft music playing in the background.  The only other food we ordered being cheesecake that we also shared between us.

     We walked from the cafe and out onto the small brick lined sidewalks out toward the park.  We stared in through the windows of the closed shops and held each others hand.  a walk with her has always been a pleasure because it always gave me an excuse to talk with her, but when a walk with her comes in a place where I don't need the excuse of walking, we become the lovers we always knew we were to each other.  The moon slowly peeked out over the trees like a giant opal and shone  frosty white against the tops of the trees against the deep blue of the night.

    We talked about everything and of nothing.  Of things we knew were important only to each other.  Each word becoming so much more than simple sentences linked together.  It was a way of showing that what the other was to us was something new and different every day.  And all of it loved.  But there has always been something new.
   
     She smiled at me as we slowed to stand before each other.  She put her arms around me and held me close to her face and asked me something I had never really heard her say.

     "Show me something new.  Everything you do you for me is a new way to see the world.  I want that right now.  I am going to give you ten minutes to invent something to show me something in a way we have never done it before.  Show me something in a way I have never seen it.  I have to go do something, but I will be back in ten minutes."

     She kissed me once and spun off into the night.  I worried about her for a moment, but she had something set in her mind, and talking about it would not change that.

     "Ten minutes" she yelled from across the park.

     "Ten minutes?" I mumbled to myself. It's amazing how effortless it seems to bring a happiness and a wonder to her on a whim, but ten minutes on the spur of the moment is going to make the gift of ten minutes seem like the blink of an eye.  My mind reeled.  What on earth do I have to work with here? Christ I'd give her the universe if I could but...
     The Universe.
     Could I?
  
     Quickly I ran to the car and got in to drive it to the edge of the park.  I steeled myself for what I was about to do, but time was running out.  Is the woman worth the universe as I want to show it to her?  The answer was instantaneous as I shut the lights off and nudged the gas pedal to ride up over the curb and drove into the center of the park.  Finding the most wide open spot in the park with the largest view of the sky, I parked the truck and pulled a blanket onto the top of the truck.  I dug through the center console until I found my MP3 player and quickly scanned through for the piece of music I wanted her to hear.   I had started doing this once a week as soon as I had left her; when winter began and the constellation Orion was still high in the sky. On a small hill top in the middle of a small village thousands of miles away, I listened to nothing else when I thought of her.  The entire breadth of the sky open to see, and me, alone underneath every star.  Not just the hundreds we see, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Cold and dark, I watched Orion and thought of him as the time keeper.  night after night until winter had ended and he slipped over the horizon to be replaced by the Big Dipper.  It began its slow climb into the sky that reminded me I was coming home to her as soon as it was high above me.

 I ran back to where she left me and waited for her to return.

     She returned in exactly ten minutes.  I smiled at her and let her know that although she may not totally understand what I had decided to give her in ten minutes, that I hoped she would like it.  As I walked along with her toward the car I hoped that we would have enough time to do this before the town policeman arrested us both. Small price to pay, though.
     I led her up onto the top of the car and instructed her to look into the sky.  To forget that we are looking up, and instead see herself as being in any position she chooses.  That it is gravity alone that holds us to the earth, and that we may as well think of ourselves as suspended beneath as much as we are stable at the top.  But either way, I wanted her to be able to see the universe as her own.  Because who can lay claim to something so wide?  And if that is true, then who is there to tell me I can not offer it to the woman I love?
     I turned the music on and laid down next to her and held her hand.  And let her listen to the music as I gave her the universe.  Too large to put in her pocket, so we will leave it in the only place large enough to hold it.  But as it was given to her, it is hers to call her own. I only offer it to her to play beneath and hold my hand.
     For so many people, this is supposed to be a sad piece of music. But when I hear it, I see and feel everything that I am so far beneath. Small and insignificant in the face of things so far above and beyond me except for the comprehension of them.  It has always reminded me of her when I am alone without her. More than any other song that reminds me of being with her, it is this one that reminds me of the complexity in things so simple to understand them if you see them as a point of awe rather than as something to be harnessed and controlled.
     As I sat holding her hand and letting a sky she had seen a thousand times before unfold as something completely new, I was reminded at the one thing I find I love in her more than anything else.  It is simply awe.  An awakening of a perception rather than something new to learn or see.  To view it from my eyes and share it in a way that she can hear and see and touch no matter how far away it is.  It is this sky that held me to her.  It is The Big Dipper with its great handle stretching thousands of light years across and now dipping into winter that told me seasons far more than a calendar.  It is Orion that now rises from the opposite side of the sky to track across the heavens that are now hers.  The full moon that reminds me of warm nights spent in her arms and counts each month I yearn for her, and even the stars that I have wished on every night.
  
     long thin skittering clouds raced across the upper edges of the sky and across the moon; like a silk scarf paying off the edge of a woman's neck as the breeze blew the leaves across the grass beneath us.  And off into the sky the millions of stars suddenly stopped looking as though they were on the flat cobalt canvas.  small hillocks and valleys of stars, billions of miles across, now for us to see as though we were merely holding hands in front in front of a landscape instead of ever space between ourselves and the edge of creation.  The great cloudy arc of the Milky Way showing us our own tiny patch of the universe beyond our comprehension.

     "I don't know if this is what you meant..." I said as I leaned over to kiss her "...but the universe is all I could think of on such short notice"
   
     She kissed me back and whispered, "Come and make love to me."

     "Here?" I asked, wondering if she really did intent for me to make love to her on the top of a car underneath her own universe.

     She smiled and laughed quietly.  "No. I went to the Bed and Breakfast down the road and got us a room.  I don't want today to end.  I haven't felt all that Fall has always been to us.  I want all of it.  I want all of you."

     I kissed her once as my way of saying "Yes. Always Yes." and slid off the truck to help her down and into the truck.

     We drove back out of the park and turned the lights back on as we bumped out over the curb again and then down the street to the large white Victorian  Bed and Breakfast.  She tossed me the key as I reminded her that we didn't bring anything at all to spend the night.  She walked over to me and kissed me gently and said, "And since when have we ever spent a night together that we needed anything but each other?"

     I had to agree with her and followed her into the inn and up the curved staircase to the top floor of the house.  I turned the key to the lock in the door an opened the door for her to step in before I followed her.

     It was a rather large room with an equally large bed covered with a fluffy down comforter.  A gas fireplace had been lit on the opposite wall surrounded by a large mantle.  Only one small lamp by the windows illuminated the room.  The rest was only dimly lit.  A large Persian rug spread out in all directions from the front of the fireplace and went all the way to the edge of the bed.

     She stood by the side of the bed and waited for me to join her.  We said nothing but she leaned in to kiss me quietly.  Just like before, I could feel the world tilt to one side as her lips touched mine.  She nuzzled my neck and then stood away from me silently.  No small talk or nervous conversation this time.  She simply looked at me as she knelt to untie her shoes and then stood again as she kicked them off her feet.  With absolutely no shyness in her face, she reached down to the bottom of her sweater and pulled it up over her head.  She walked back to me and unbuttoned the top of my shirt to kiss the skin at the edge of my collarbone.  My hands slowly wrapping around her waist and then up her back to unclasp her bra and expose her breasts to my bare chest.
     I knelt before her and felt the warmth of her hands against the back of my head and shoulders as I opened the button and zipper to her pants and slid them off her shapely hips and down off her legs.  She stepped out of them as I neared her ankles and then rose again as I kissed her thighs coming back up.
     It is a very rare thing to have her head so close to my waist, and I prefer her to never feel that I have any desire to have her there against her wishes.  But she did the same to my pants standing and allowed her hand to circle my waist before sliding her hand down across my ass to push my pants down far enough that I could step out of them as well.
   
     We tumbled into bed amid soft kisses that quickly became heated with passion.  Everything about making love to her and being made love to by her is something that becomes something completely different no matter how or when we come together.  Sometimes it is quick and short with nothing but desire and want to feel love, and others it is slow and careful, but it is always with my desire to please her and her to please me than the other way around.  To feel her offer up her body to me and know that I will not be satisfied unless I can offer mine to hers in the same way is to truly know what it means to make love for what it is supposed to be.  To trust that this woman wants more from the experience by having me feel it from her being the very thing that fuels me to do anything but give to her before I allow myself to feel it from her.  It is a reflexive act between us that shows the both of us that for as wonderful as it is to be in a reckless abandon, that it is nothing unless we have carried the other with us to share in the release.
     We make love slowly at first.  Feeling the slow building of arousal by the simple closeness of one another.  To feel muscle and soft skin held in any position that lends its way to a deeper feeling of closeness.  Movement only needed to increase the sensitivity, but always requiring slight alterations to our bodies.  Movements that allow for the scissoring of long smooth legs and hips that undulate the most sensitive parts to brush against the other in delicious promise of a more heated embrace.
     Breathing increases and small light caresses that give way to a more pressured touch signalling the need to spread legs and to reposition willing bodies into an embrace that requires penetration to quench unbridled passion.
     Her soft smooth thighs parting to allow me to nestle between them and run the length of me hard and stiff against her warm wet lips.  The pleasurable nudge of pleasure that erupts from the friction of two bodies preparing to take one another to places that can only be had by the recieving of the other for all they can offer of themselves.
     Her lips open and unfold as the warm length of me gently spreads her open.  Up and down the length of her wet and heated opening to the inside of her body, my stiff dick probing her outer lips to feel the slick muscles writhing that will stretch around me and pull me up inside of her to that spot that touches us both.  My hands spread to grip her beautiful round  ass to me as she pulls me up inside of her.  Each ring of muscle rhythmically coaxing me up inside of her to be held against her cervix.
     Slow and careful she guides me in and out of her pussy. Kissing me and allowing both ends of her body to turn us into one tight sexual circle where there was no beginning to me, no end to her.
     This is not how a person makes love.  This is how two people feel love for exactly what it is they feel all day long, every day.  It is not the take of the other that defines the love.  It is the giving of ourselves to the other in the way that we do that makes what returns seem incomprehensible when it is described to anyone else.  They simply do not understand it.  They have never learned that when a man gives of himself what he can to the woman he loves for all that she is worth to him, the understanding of her own weight and value is assured. It is no longer a wondering if she has within her what it is to be loved as a woman. It is assured. To have a man slide the most erotic and sexual piece of his body inside of  the woman who touches him the way she does, is to truly know love the way it it was always expected to be, but so rarely found.  It is only when it is seen and felt for its true nature does a person understand what love, and being made love to was intended to be.  All the fairy tales and noble notions of undying love, suddenly become as real as anything else.  It is an opportunity to turn  dreams into  reality, Wishes into memories, and expectations into fullfilled promises.  Being driven to orgasm is no longer the goal as most people would think it.  It is a headlong pitch into the very soul of another person, and to think of it as anything else while this woman pulled me in and out of her body is to misunderstand what it is that arouses me about her in the first place.
     Passion always lends its way to more forceful embrace, and the desire to please always matches that which she feels within herself.  Hot  and wet with desire to feel me, and excited nerve endings firing one after another running the length of her smooth muscled walls drive me harder and deeper inside of her.
 
     She holds me to her and I have no other desire to hold her against me, her head cradled against me, as her body no longer holds anything in reserve and she erupts into pleasured bliss beneath me.  Her hips violently thrusting me in and out of her to feel me    cumming inside of her at the same time.
     This is why she is different.  This is why we are different.  Not because she has to do anything for me.  I want NOTHING from her except to be able to give  back to her again what I feel from her.  Not a single expectation except to be able to hold the one who holds me as well as she does.
     To me, an orgasm within her is not the end to an intimate act.  It is the beginning to a warming comfort  like a feeling I have never known.  That I am safe and loved for all that I am and that what I return to her is felt the same way.  She is the world to me, but when I am with her, there is nothing left of the world at all.  It is all gone except for what is against me.
      She falls asleep, her head cradled into the pocket of my shoulder, and drifts off into a dream that is nothing more than the plan to another memory.  She sleeps with her foot rubbing gently against the top of mine and reminds me that there has never been a moment where she didn't feel anything but love from me.  She will never wake in the middle of the night and wonder to herself, alone in the dark, if she loves me more than I love her.  She will never close her eyes with anger or resentment boiling inside her as long as I am the one beside her.  She will be held throughout the night for everything that she is to me, and feel that she has to earn anything of what she recieves.  To sleep in the arms of a lover who can truly love, is to understand the difference between what we have found in each other, and what can never be understood by people with lesser degrees of comfort.

    Two weeks later there was a ring at her door.  She got up off the couch, slightly irritated at the intrusion, and opened the door to be met with a delivery man.  She signed for the three large items now sitting on her porch.  A hall tree with loons  carved over the mirror and two Adirondack chairs.
     She had the delivery man move the hall tree into her house and take off the packing.  As he did, she put s tea on the stove and eagerly waited for him to leave.  She now had new plans for the next hour.   The truck trundled away and carrying her cup, slipped into the chair and let the smell of mint fill her nose.  as she sat alone, watching the Fall meet the house, she relived the day spent with him.  The day he let unfold, exactly the way she wished it to be. A dream that became a reality.  The understanding that for as much as this man hated her to live in dreams, that he was just as adamant about turning them into memories.  And memories are so much a different think than dreams.   Dreams are only what we wish, but memories are what are made of dreams.  She sat quietly listening to the rustle of leaves and feeling the crisp air that said fall was here.  Maybe not how she truly wanted it, but more than she would have expected.  She then ran the tips of her fingers across the flat smooth wood of the armrest to curl her fingers beneath the outer edge.  She set her cup on the left arm rest in surprise.  Beneath the rim, a small ladybug was burned into underside.  Unseen to anyone but her, but there. To remind her that she is never alone, always loved, missed dearly, and always the woman who will come to memories in happiness and joy more than he will ever let her dream alone.