talonkarrde

My first memory of him is at our youth group on a Sunday night, when we are in a circle, talking about how we can apply the day’s lessons to our lives. It was like most youth groups, I’ve come to realize — there more to establish our circle of teenagers as part of the community than to inspire God’s spirit within us, though there was no shortage of that. I had said something very boring about living humbly and abstaining from all manner of vices, and the youth leader — a curly blonde named John — cuts in on my explanation to remonstrate this boy named Peter, who has been fidgeting endlessly throughout the conversation.

“Why?” Peter asks. “The only things that don’t move at all are dead, and God isn’t dead.”

I was amazed then that he was able to render our youth leader speechless; I am amazed now that he said something so insightful, even as a boy.

We see each other every day over the following fourteen years, but always as two ships passing in the night. He has his soccer buddies, and I have my lacrosse friends, and by and large, our circles have little intersection. Even when they do intersect, especially in high school, where most female social circles overlap fairly heavily with most male ones, we still flit around the edges, flirt with others, but never concede that there’s anything more than a childhood friendship between us.

Something keeps us apart, even as it keeps us together.

“Why me?” he says, only ever once, a few years later, once our orbits have finally pulled each other into a stable binary star arrangement, no longer wandering the galaxy at large. We are looking at the stars, as it happens, and I am detailing the path of the planet Mars when he asks.

“Because of how you move,” I say, drawing a lazy, smooth sideways figure eight in the air, the symbol for the infinite. “You weave, and duck, and dodge, and float, on the field, between classes, in your arguments, wherever.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I take it to study his face, the curly brown hair that always falls into his eyes when he doesn’t get it cut, the faintest hint of laugh lines that will eventually suffuse his face, and the line of his chin, which I reach out to trace.

“It’s how I feel closest,” he says, the quietest that he’s ever been. “There’s a feeling of weightlessness when I’ve just pushed off of one foot, a moment where everything’s suspended, and I feel...close. And everything I do is to try and feel that; there’s a moment of that suspension, of that moment, in everything.”

Even now, he’s moving, his hand playing with my hair in lazy circles, his leg bouncing slowly, but not distractingly. And as I open my mouth again, he continues.

“There’s the same spirit in you,” he says, and kisses my fingers, one at a time, before finally meeting my eyes. “The spirit in what you do, in your exploration, your fierce curiosity, your need to explain the word and fit the facts into a theory. You’ve spoken in class, to me, and something just feels right about it, something rings for a second and I can feel that it’s right, you know?”

I do, but now I know that he knows, and that makes a difference.

I am pushing as the contractions come, and it hurts more than anything that I've ever felt, and I need more drugs now, now to the point where I'm not sure the words are in my head or being screamed from my throat, the constant where is it, damnit, it hurts, and then through the pain he's there, speaking very urgently to the nurse and not letting go of my hand and finally, finally the burn of another dose comes and the pain recedes to the distance, to the corner of the room. It's not gone, no, but it's manageable and I whisper a thank you to him with a parched throat, and he brings me water without even asking.

And even here, even now when there’s so much movement, I focus on him and how he’s moving still, still never letting go of my hand, but regularly weaving, tapping his feet, watching me with care, and in this moment of moments and I see him clearly, wonderfully, the spirit rising in him that I have always loved and I push and the baby comes out, easily, smoothly, as if she were waiting for me to come to this realization.

And then she is ours and I look up at him, wordless, and down at her, and it is a miracle.