nowhere i’d rather be

by bam

dispatch from 06510…

need i say a word? i’m pretty much at the crosshairs of latitude and longitude that most makes my heart zing — the seventh-floor aerie of the law student i love. made myself a promise that grew into a dream i’d not let go of, that pushed me to click the button that bought the ticket for the plane and the little green van that got me to here, 765 miles from the dot on the map that most often is mine.

“can we have a day?,” he’d long ago asked me, a question that became a code to live by. “can we have a day?” to love and to savor? to dilly and dally and do as we please, no rules, no time clocks, no prescribed agendas?

unless the agenda, of course, is the joy of being side-by-side. unscripted. bound only by unbridled, unscripted love and delight. delight in calling across a room — because you’ve just had a thought. or whispering as you walk down the sidewalk. seeing the same sight at the same time and reveling in that one simple joy — because it’s so very rare, the gift of your footsteps in echo.

so why oh why have i awoken with quite a few spots, not of the bug-bite variety? oh, lordy. can i not take an adventure without heaping on a twist and a turn? can a grownup get measles or pox? might i be allergic to new haven air? my plan is as old as the movies: take two aspirin, and dial the doc. whatever this is, i cannot leave it behind. no remnants allowed in the virus department. maybe it’s nothing other than an invisible mosquito, or a rash that can’t connect its own dots.

for now, while those little white aspirin get to work, i intend to live every ounce of our promise: to live this day and the next and the next and the next as if there’s no holier hour than this one that is fully and finally upon us.

if you could just have a day with whom would it be, and how would you spend it?