Five Years of FIRE!
Announcement:
Today, May 1st, is the five year anniversary of Christian & Laura.
Five years ago today, I saw Laura perform in a crappy college play that Adam dragged me to. The first thing I noticed about her was her laugh, expansive as light itself, joyful and unapologetic but with a secret in the center, the dove call of clarinets and the shadows of folded cloth: a deep blue laugh. Since then, I have always been able to hear her laughter above the crowd in any room, like a lantern in a forest. Improbably, she was playing Federico Garcia Lorca, one of my favorite poets, and when the actor playing Franco put an imaginary gun to her head and pulled the trigger, I almost yelled out. She noticed me in the back, and during the next play she turned around and gave me a smile like a slice of light. We've told this story many times, and don't disagree much on the details, but I'll always say that it was an uncharacteristically bold decision on my part to follow her out after the play that got us together, and she'll always insist she was luring me outside with her wiles the whole time.
Whichever it was, I then proceeded to talk her ear off for two weeks. I talk when I'm nervous.
Five years, three states, and who knows how many jobs later, we're still together and in love. If you are not impressed by this, you don't know us very well. We are over-passionate, hotheaded, stubborn, and, frankly, dangerous people. We fight. We break up for an hour sometimes. But the love we've got just won't quit, because she'll always be the beautiful poet girl I took on walks along the Connecticut River beneath the orioles dancing with the air, and I'll always be the babbling romantic standing in the drizzling rain on the library steps, three inches from kissing her but holding the moment in a fermata. We are more practical now; we are partners as well. We have an apartment together in a still-strange city, and bills to share, and no money, and plenty to worry about. The work never ends. We love the work of love. Through each other, we've learned how to compromise, and share, and apologize, and draw boundaries, and give, and I've almost got a handle on this whole domestic housework thing. But even as we grow into adults with each other, the heart fingerpaints. She'll always be my plum-colored twilight, my lily and my oak forest. Even as we struggle with the outside world, this house we've made is earthquake-proof; we've earned enough room to love however we wish.
Today, May 1st, is the five year anniversary of Christian & Laura.
Five years ago today, I saw Laura perform in a crappy college play that Adam dragged me to. The first thing I noticed about her was her laugh, expansive as light itself, joyful and unapologetic but with a secret in the center, the dove call of clarinets and the shadows of folded cloth: a deep blue laugh. Since then, I have always been able to hear her laughter above the crowd in any room, like a lantern in a forest. Improbably, she was playing Federico Garcia Lorca, one of my favorite poets, and when the actor playing Franco put an imaginary gun to her head and pulled the trigger, I almost yelled out. She noticed me in the back, and during the next play she turned around and gave me a smile like a slice of light. We've told this story many times, and don't disagree much on the details, but I'll always say that it was an uncharacteristically bold decision on my part to follow her out after the play that got us together, and she'll always insist she was luring me outside with her wiles the whole time.
Whichever it was, I then proceeded to talk her ear off for two weeks. I talk when I'm nervous.
Five years, three states, and who knows how many jobs later, we're still together and in love. If you are not impressed by this, you don't know us very well. We are over-passionate, hotheaded, stubborn, and, frankly, dangerous people. We fight. We break up for an hour sometimes. But the love we've got just won't quit, because she'll always be the beautiful poet girl I took on walks along the Connecticut River beneath the orioles dancing with the air, and I'll always be the babbling romantic standing in the drizzling rain on the library steps, three inches from kissing her but holding the moment in a fermata. We are more practical now; we are partners as well. We have an apartment together in a still-strange city, and bills to share, and no money, and plenty to worry about. The work never ends. We love the work of love. Through each other, we've learned how to compromise, and share, and apologize, and draw boundaries, and give, and I've almost got a handle on this whole domestic housework thing. But even as we grow into adults with each other, the heart fingerpaints. She'll always be my plum-colored twilight, my lily and my oak forest. Even as we struggle with the outside world, this house we've made is earthquake-proof; we've earned enough room to love however we wish.