More Memoir!

Hey, all you story fans; Stand up and clap your hands! (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.)

Ridiculous; silly; sorry. (I just get in these moods....)

Today marked the return of Memoir Class, and as we did no timed writing, I think I'll type out the little bit I did for last class. This time around, we analyzed a Coke can in amazing detail. 25 minutes and 8 categories of categorization (sorry, silly mood strikes again). But back to last class -- we were prompted to write about "a first." Other people's firsts included scuba diving, a vacation with no parents, a pet, the first Christmas in memory. But I wrote something about my husband.



First Sight

We'd spoken once on the phone, so at least the voice was familiar when we met. I'd roamed my parents' asphalt driveway for the length of that obligitory call. Balancing a cordless phone and a never-used note pad, I was upbeat but vaguely unnerved, relieved but also loath to believe. So the household was coming together. But this reality-in-motion was actually... mine? Past the brown Chevrolet, to the curve in the asphalt and back again, I paced. I talked too loud, and every time I spoke I crossed my fingers that no family member would peek.

Later, he'd say I sounded like a cheerleader -- so very perky, and of course from Texas. I thought he sounded like the anchor of the evening news.

Still, I was predisposed to like him before the doorbell rang. Of my three chats with three very different roommates, our "audition" went the smoothest, our quips the quickest and our laughs the least forced. I told my mother he was my first prospect for a real friend. Two weeks later, I opened the door at 254 Spruce Street and watched something spark through the screen.

Straight nose. Polo glasses. Blue eyes. Blue Jays baseball cap.

"Mi casa es su casa," I said with a florish of my right hand and a sudden, brief laugh, left hand stuck fast to the knob I'd just twisted. The second, storm door hung between us for a moment or an age. My line, so cute and flip in practice, had escaped in some way not planned. He finally glanced down to pull the latch. I caught my breath. Becasue that's when it hit me, the weight of those words, and the knowledge that I really, truly meant them.