Our connection was immediate, and intense. My breath caught as I staggered with the visceral impact of recognition. In the quiet diffused light our eyes meet. My watery blue diluted, dispersed and lost into the vast amber liquid of her brown almond eyes. It was then, in that moment we briefly became one again. Reunited? I thought, but did she recognize me as well? I was unable to speak, or even breathe, fearing our tranquil connection of spirits would be disrupted and forever lost.
Dawn pushed its rough ruddy shoulders one by one farther into day as we silently parted. Our separate paths distinct. With muscular, long, slow, eloquent steps she lead her dappled fawns across the meadow. From the stop-sign I slowly slipped the clutch of
my old BMW motorcycle and left the intersection of farm and pasture roads.
Early farm house light strained from kitchen windows to reach out as far as the wooden gate and galvanized mailbox. The farm house at dawn was a vastly different world than ours. A world of flannel, radio and pancakes, alien to us both. A world she and I, in our separate isolations, would never share.
From the meadow, through the pasture, beyond the marshes, and up past the young pines, deeper into the mature hardwood growth she followed old trails. Taking her young to hidden shelter, to sleep during the heat of midday. By noon I wanted to be a hundred miles east, on the Atlantic’s unsheltered windy shores. There was no compelling need to rush. I needed time. Time to think through what had happened (could it really have been her?). I knew my growing disquiet would lead me to the truth.
State-Line Diner is timeless. Unchanged in my lifetime at least, the small worn store-front still offers coffee and fresh Portuguese rolls at all hours. I was quiet at the counter, warming my hands on my cup, the waitress spoke, I didn’t hear but looked up and her heavily mascaraed eyes asked “how could she be so long lost, and you didn’t know?” Finishing my coffee, I heading out, the one armed heavy-set cashier raised weary eyes from his newspaper, they said “you were gone so long you became lost, and some how you came to forget.”
I headed to the shore, taking the old roads I knew by heart from years ago. Children still walk to school in these small shore towns. I stopped, the Crossing Guard’s back was to me. Her hands were raised, in protective benediction. A few kids openly stared at me, others shyly glanced my way as they jostled like ducklings through the cross-walk, I meet their young eyes, and answered their rapid flood of questions as best I could. “Yes she is my sister, and yes she is my lover too, yes we have always been linked, companions since the first days, and yes, we are two halves, like two halves of the same creature – one incomplete without the other.” By now the Guard had turned around, her tired eyes bluntly asked, “but how could you ever forget?” I pulled over up the block to loosen my worn leather jacket and tighten my old gloves.
A elderly frail woman sat in her wheel chair across from me, fading away on the porch of a small paint peeling house. She was quiet and still in her worn floral house-coat. There was bird-song nearby and I could smell the sea. We regarded each other for some time, sharing a common respect. Through her cataracts she passionately demanded “ now that you remember, now that you found her after so so long, why did you leave?” I just shook my head and shrugged. I couldn’t reply. Trust the blind to see things true, they say. I can ride hard and be back to the meadow by sundown. When we meet at dusk, I will solemnly request of her eyes “ May I join with you now for all time?”.