Olives & cherries
Now come, my dears, and I will show you a story of a young lady and a young man who met in the most inopportune way…
A girl thought it rather strange that she should travel to the tip-top of America, to a little town, to a cabin in the woods. Now, believe me this girl wasn’t your average city lady. There was dirt under her fingernails more often than not. So perhaps this was the very reason the short hair, baby-banged girl left the comforts of her midwestern cities and decided to take a chance in the mountains (with At&t, I should mention).
A young man thought it strange that he should move to a small town with middle-aged people being the youngest group. This man was young, hip, invested in community, and—like the woman—he very much enjoyed spending time with people who were willing to participate in the same activities he participated in. How strange that he should end up in Maine, yet the sense of the matter was there—he hadn’t had an established place to live in over a year. So even though Maine initially brought him to endless hotels and exhausted menu options where Sara, the waitress with pigtails, became his only daily interaction—he was grateful now for his home on a lake, his beautiful, naughty black lab, and a job that required more responsibility than, at times, he thought he could handle. Grateful, yes, he was grateful.
Let me tell you about the lady. Here’s a picture: the hourglass, bird necklace, worn-down chaco midwestern gal had the most appropriately retro clothing selection of anyone she’d met. Her dog was and always will be her best friend; don’t even try to separate the two of them, you will lose before any words come out of your mouth. The girl traveled with a packed car—not stuffed packed. Her plants were the last to gently slip into the backseat. This girl was a driver, a roadie, a sunshine soul, a tryer and a feeler, an embracer and a runner. This girl had a smile that lost her parents thousands, and one, people paid thousands for. She was witty yet sassy, intelligent but never proud, trusting—perhaps too much, sometimes—but never idiotic and never unkind. See the thing about this girl was she saw. And with everything she saw, she decided that to live is better than to not. This girl had small tattoos in places you wouldn’t expect, she blared “Benny and the Jets” on rainy days, and always cried outside, if she were to cry at all.
Two things the man and the woman had in common:
They lived in Maine and knew no one.
Neither expected what happened.
A man in a white van is simply bad news. They are the ones mothers in yellow cupcake dresses with pink lipstick tell their little girls who only play inside to watch out for. And of course, this is who the woman fell for. The resourceful, outdoorsy musician. It wasn’t supposed to happen but is that ever a consideration with these kinds of things? Do these kinds of things truly exist?
The man met the woman at a marketplace in yet another one of Maine’s famous small towns. The woman had no cell service, but that wasn’t unusual. As she walked across the parking lot to where his eyes were, arms stretched in a wave that came from a smile the style of sun—one that splits your eyes—tan little tummy, her best friend pulling in excitement: “Wow.”
She helped him pick out a cast iron skillet. “I’ve always wanted one of these.”
“Red hot dogs? Gross.”
“Trust me.”
She followed the man in the white van up, up, up on a bumpy road off the map, capsized on the edge of forest and cliff. They walked with the crickets down a dirt road bathed in deep yellow late summer light. They talked about nothing. They walked until they were too hungry. The woman made a fire, which impressed the man until it went out. Her camping bin, he loved. The way she looked in the firelight, he loved more. You see, both the man and the woman were beautiful, in so many ways; the fire exposed all of that and they both noticed. A guitar and a voice spoke to the stars until there were only crackles of coals and the woman’s hands on the man’s back. His muscles were warm and knotted. His ears cold from the too-soon fall air. “I love everything about this”. Neither remembers who said it. Perhaps it was both or perhaps a shared, unspoken thought. When the man touched the woman’s hips and gently tipped her head back towards the stars, she knew everything would be a before-and-after of this moment. And it was.
The man liked the sweet fake cherries and the woman liked the bitter olives. “It’s perfect.” The woman was a sassy sort of charm with the greenest, deepest eyes. The man was a dork, forever validating, and always thoughtful. The woman knew that nothing is perfect, could never be perfect, but this felt perfectly destructive. These two laughed under sheets and under stars. They ate like wolves and talked like teenagers. They sang in the kitchen, in the car, in the bathroom. They smiled, oh boy did they smile, especially when you’d catch the pair looking at each other—now that was really something.
But like the girl had said: this was perfectly destructive.
A cold, rainy Saturday finally came with a packed car, a best friend, and a baby-banged girl with a seatbelt.
I hate to end a story without an ending full of fireworks and smiles but the truth of this story is not that way. The truth of this story is: a woman and a man met at the tip-top of New England and it was wonderful. And now neither knows where the other is.