long way home

They always say to follow your own path, but what does it mean if I prefer the one already laid out here, tramped down by millions of other feet, seen by millions of other eyes? I like that it’s lined with magnolias just coming into blossom, standing like gypsy sentries, murmuring to each other through the entwined fingers they stretch underground, out of our hearing. I like that the path is dirt and gravel, not concrete, but so cleverly built that even on the rainy days you can expect a firm, strong foothold. It reminds me of that scene from the book I love, where he looks out the window to the New York City skyline and thinks: My god, who are the men who built this? and then remembered that he, an architect, had been one of them. The builders of this path must feel that way when it rains. They must have proud footsteps.

If you were here, I’d ask what you would do if there were no path here, and you’d pause, glancing slightly upwards and to the left in that way of yours when you think. I miss your face as you’re thinking; the expression of amusement and solemnity as one, the expression of someone who sees life as both the lightest whim and the most serious burden; but at once, as a whole. You said a long time ago that you were going to ride the highs and lows of the human experience, and I asked why you would possibly want the lows. I didn’t understand much back then, certainly not enough to hold you.

Then why not, Ada, make our own? I’m safe here, I’m alright, you can go ahead. And I’d watch you walk away, because I can’t bear the thought of not finding my way back. If love means giving up fear, has anyone in all of history ever achieved it? 

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, and so it’s right that I should be on this path tonight. It’s fitting that the word spring means to act and move, decisively, suddenly; it’s fitting because there is no word in the world that befits me worse; this path, to me, is the path of my life. I trust my feet on this path, not taken for granted, but such that I am intensely aware and intensely happy, both, that no harm and no surprise will come with that footfall. Of all the elements I am earth: steady, slow to change, slow to be affected, content with what I've found and what I’ve always had. Like these magnolias along the side of the path, guarding my way back home. My only danger on this path is that you might be here.

They’ve planted a new row of gardenias along the edge of the open field where dogs and children shriek and tumble together, and it’s so beautiful I can’t imagine it not being there, can’t imagine that scene not existing. If our futures are truly predetermined, it must be unbearable to the gods that the beings in the present will never know the life of the future. They must have to bite their tongue, every time they talk to a priest or a sinner, seeing in their omnipresent mind’s eye the solution to that poor earthly soul’s problem, only it won’t come for another fifty, hundred, five hundred years. Do they apologize for bringing forth life into a world less ready for it than the ones that will come? I haven’t believed in a god since childhood; still, if I were watching from above, I’d be glad that the time has come for that row of gardenias to be planted. 

The breeze is blowing the wrong way, but if I turn around such that it catches my back rather than my face, I’ll have to take the long way home, around the rose garden grove where lovers trade secrets and thorns, around the small lake, which usually houses at least one honking gander, and then across Main Street down that dirty alley to my back door. Do you remember the night of our third anniversary, when the concert rained out, and our favorite restaurant closed unexpectedly early, and I could not find the card I’d spent hours making for you? While I languished in a stew of disappointment, it was as though each setback brought you new life, a new spring. I will always be grateful that you didn’t fault me for it: the fact that I could not find spring on my own.

It’s much more comfortable with the wind at my back, and I’m walking faster too, pushed gently along by the benevolent mother’s guiding hand. Groundskeepers are liberal with the grass along this less crowded path and it grows joyously unchecked, snaking around clovers and dandelions, unusual for the rigidly perfect beauty of the South. Times, you know, are changing. They always have been, but I’ve willfully ignored the world around me; one of my many sins, perhaps the gravest. Maybe tomorrow will be the day I start to get over you. 

Just one more turn around the lake before the park ends and we’ll spill into the reality of Main Street - and in the next instant I know my hands are at my face, covering my mouth in shock, because it’s you but can’t be, not when I was just thinking of you, just thinking of you and this path and this life, and your face is just like I remember it because I still see you at twenty-six, looking quizzically at the sky as you think. You’re farther ahead on the path, walking away from me. How many years between now and then, and suddenly you’re not a memory any longer. My feet, no longer sure, frozen to the ground as if I’ve been planted - do I shout your name, catch up, wrap you in my arms? Do I slide backwards into the shadow of my magnolia, and let this be nothing but a dream? I need you to make this decision for me. I want to run forward, ask what you’d like me to do, then fall back in time so I can do it. 

There’s a woman at your side, her hand resting protectively or possessively on the crook of your elbow. She’s guiding you forward, slowly, perhaps speaking or perhaps just watching. Is she kind to you? Do you speak to her? I can’t imagine your time - your time! - spent with someone you don’t talk to, but there’s a lot that this life has changed. Do you tell her where you want to go? Did you choose this path, today, thinking of me? 

What would you do if there were no path here? Forty-one years ago, I hesitated on the verge of stepping off the path, then placed my foot back down on solid ground. If I had taken your hand, my life may have turned out differently. But I didn’t. I stayed, and kept walking. How many times since had I nearly reached out, then deleted the message? The problem had always been that I didn’t want to change. I liked - like - where I was walking, and that I could see my feet. But you’re here, and I can’t let it go by. I step forward, and don’t look down. 

I don’t see the spots, I don’t see the lines. I don’t notice the curve of your back or the tremor of your hands. Your eyes meet mine with the same open curiosity with which you watched the world at twenty-six, and I know that neither the years nor the silence stands between us and the living reality of that feeling. I can think of nothing to say except hello, in a voice so unlike my own I close my mouth immediately. You don’t seem surprised, don’t take your eyes off mine. We’re twenty-six again and the spring breeze is blowing open every door. I open my mouth to make this right but you beat me to it, and all the years vanish.

Ada, you say. I like this path.