Post Valentines Levitation

The day my husband forgot to bring over hooks for the hats in my closet, I started to levitate.

We were supposed to be doing something responsible, like discussing wills or how pizza is a better choice than kale, but instead we wandered through a lawn that looked like it had been painted by someone who’d never seen grass or who took drugs while they mowed their own lawn.

The houses in the distance, also lawn-green, leaned at tipsy angles, as if they’d all drunk a little too much varnish the night before. A picnic cloth lay on the ground in front of us, patterned like a confused table runner that had gotten into modernism. Overall, the inebriated essence was in line with what I needed.

Somewhere between “I forgot to make a reservation for Valentines Day” and “Why are those houses shaped like drunk geometry?” my husband reached for my hand and I discovered that the sky had been underutilized.

I took two steps and I was no longer participating in the earthbound gravity thing. I rose, not with the grace of a swan or even a competent balloon, but more like a startled kite who is reluctant to obey the laws of aerodynamics.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” he asked, in a tone that means “I’m both entertained and concerned because of the issue you have with your Achille’s heel upon landing .” His coat flapped gently in the breeze, proud of itself for remaining loyal to the gravity.

“I think it happens in post-menopause,” I said. “Or joy. They have similar symptoms.”

He tightened his grip, because he is practical that way. He will forget we have a play to go to, but if I begin unexpectedly ascending, he is right there, anchoring me like the solid rock of a person he is.

From up there, I could see the quilt of the meadow, all chopped into confident little shapes of green, like someone had tried to organize nature into files.

The village sat beyond it, houses stacked at slightly impossible angles, arguing with physics and clearly winning.

A pink building in the distance looked like it was trying out for the role of “a whimsical church” in a children’s book and was probably going to get it.

“You’re very far away,” he called up.

“It’s all relative,” I said. “I’m closer than the moon, yet like her, I’m susceptible to phases—some bright, some dark.”

He nodded, because he has seen my phases: moods like little cubist houses, leaning but never quite falling, the half-finished ideas, the flocks of metaphors colliding with requests to be driven to Trader Joes and Petco.

Below me, the picnic patiently waited: bottle of wine, decorative cloth, and the promise of something simple like cheese. Life insists on sandwiching bliss between stains and snacks. One moment you’re weightless with love, the next you’re trying to get mustard out of your white blouse.

“Come down,” he said, gently, like you’d speak to a cat who has climbed into the part of the closet where the hat hooks are supposed to go.

“I don’t know how,” I admitted, because that seemed to be the theme of our lives: neither of us knowing how to do any of this, improvising wildly, and somehow making it look intentional from a distance. I err on the side of doubt so once performing what’s expected, the deed seems more remarkable. Don't tell anyone.

He leaned back, braced his feet, and gave a small tug. Not the tug of someone dragging you back to reality, but the tug of someone rearranging reality so it includes you, even when you insist on rising.

I like to be included. He likes his back scratched. I dipped, then hovered, then descended in slow, reluctant centimeters, like a thought that doesn’t completely want to be understood yet will be if it must.

When my shoes finally met the uneven ground, I had that small, quiet sadness you get when a really good dream ends and you remember there are still emails, taxes (which I'm supposed to be doing now but am writing instead),…and the news.

The uneven geometry of reality is sometimes a trapezoid.

Later, as we walked home, I promised to stay on the ground for dinner, though I told him, the idea of sautéing onions while hovering seemed a good way to cure crying.

He laughed in that way that means both I love you and you’re exhausting. And perhaps those two sentiments, intertwined like our fingers, are the real art of two souls perpetually negotiating altitude.

He kissed my knuckles as if this were an ordinary walk and not a minor miracle. “Next time,” he said, “warn me before you float away.”

“I married you,” I said. “I’ll never float far and this is another way to insure you have a reason to hold my hand.”

We gathered the picnic, straightened the red blanket, and headed back toward the tilting houses. He’s an architect, so he was in disbelief that they could acquire permits at that angle.

I did my best to stay on the ground, but inside, some part of me was still up there: a woman in a slightly impractical dress, fluttering like a flag of almost unwavering optimism, tethered to a man who doesn’t always understand what I’m doing but holds the string anyway, trusting that this, too, is one of the ways a marriage stays afloat .

Happy Belated Valentines Day, to my husband

Painting: The Promenade by Marc Chagall 1918