Present imperfect

I would like to say that it was a perfect day, but Dawn and I had already bickered, idling at the gas station before we left Lawrence. After nearly thirty years, my wife is still too quick and I am still too slow.

But the sun was coming out to bright blue skies after days of clouds, even though it was rising low over bare branches to the south, the winter solstice – our anniversary – only a week away.

Dawn had informed me that we were going to see an exhibit of Michelangelo and I had very readily agreed. And then, when we were approaching only a few short blocks from Union Station in Kansas City, I saw a billboard announcing the exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci. One renaissance man is much like another, we more or less agreed. And so we touched and didn’t touch the models of DaVinci’s brilliant vision according to the little placards. There were wooden pulleys that pulled and flying contraptions that wouldn’t. The reproductions of his paintings appeared  cracked and crumbling just like the originals we couldn’t actually see. And Michelangelo hadn’t painted the ceiling at Union Station. Yet it was still magnificent so very high above our heads.

But one barista is not like another and Kristina would be working at the Chez Elle, a creperie and coffee shop in the Crossroads. We took Broadway Street only to turn around to take Broadway Boulevard, instead. We found her more than an hour after lunch time. I would have liked to have hugged her but the counter got in the way. We smiled and spoke warmly. There were sugar cookies that she had baked under the glass – green and red sprinkles on cream cheese frosting.

And I would have liked to have just looked at her longer and I would have liked to have talked with her longer - even about nothing very much - but she was working. I had gotten to know her at Aimee’s coffee shop in Lawrence and meeting each other in passing has been as close to perfection that we will get.

The asparagus tips and the Black Forest ham wrapped in a savory crepe with some creamy sauce were some bites too few and yet more than enough. The coffee was good - and not because Kristina made it. She had, of course, but I had the iced tea.

Dawn and I sat and ate by a window, talking of nothing much. The Paris skyline was on the wall. An arm’s length away, I watched my longtime love catch first one wire of one earring – and then the other - in her scarf wrapped around her neck. Folds of colored threads in a fabric of loose loops, catching.

Her scarf reminded me a lot of Kristina’s colored skirt wrapped around her hips – her younger body and legs sheathed in black. I hadn’t noticed her earrings, or if she wore any - yet somehow I remember the loops on the laces of her boots. We got our chance for hugs before we left, Kristina’s  voice so unmistakably hers in my ear for a moment.

But the perfect day was still awaiting.

Dawn and I wandered into the afternoon, warm for December, but maybe not for Kansas. But we were now over the line. We looked at old and magnificent houses, stories on the hill, modern styles mixed with the old. Dawn took my picture with the Performing Arts Building in the background and she remembered that we had forgotten to get a photo with Kristina.

But it wasn’t the photo that I was lamenting. Once again – once upon a time - it was that the time itself had moved too quickly. Thirty years and a day have turned out to be so far from perfect and yet so close to more than I would ever have been able to dream of when we set out.

The sun was lowering and Dawn and I got into our car and we turned north on Summit when we should have turned south – and then we drove many blocks south so that we could go north on 35. And then so soon curving onto I-70 west.

So many moments I would have held longer.

Leftover chicken-beer stew over rice a little too old by candlelight at home. So savory. Plastic greenery over archways hung with Christmas ornaments as old as our marriage. A little cheer.

Even the moment hours later when Dawn blocked my way coming out of the bathroom after I had brushed my teeth, the look so warm in her eye, the sound of her voice, soft. They are still close in my mind, not faded. To think, if she hadn’t been too quick to say ‘yes,’ we would never have made it this far. And, no, we never had kids. But we have come as close as we can come so many times.  And we reach for them a year or a day at a time.

And now, today’s another day. I won’t remember every moment of time lingering longer or shorter. I hope never to forget the looks and sounds of imperfect love. There simply seems to be a lot of catching in life, but not so very much caught.