High

My Dear,

I must confess. I never told you, but I got high once. And once before that.

The first time was the day I met you. In that old bookstore we touched fingers among the fiction shelves reaching for a Joyce. An awkward moment made majestic when you laughed. I knew right then and there. This girl is outside my comfort zone. Then you took my hand. As you led me through the aisles, I ran my fingers across the books and prayed inwardly for osmosis to give me the right words to say.

And we were off. We took turns riding the rolling ladder across the biography shelves. We encouraged an Asian boy in the self-help aisle.  We asked the clerk, "Where in the dickens is Dickens!" He rolled his eyes. So we tipped him. We recited Hemingway for the war history buffs and Geisel for everyone else. We laughed at an old lady, blushing and shivering, leafing through the romance novels. And when she heard us, we blew her kisses. Peas and carrots. Hair and hipsters. You and I.

Afterwards, in the parking lot you kissed me right on the lips, though you almost missed, and walked away. You were so weird and I think you knew it. I about-faced to go my own way, but I must confess that I did turn around for a moment to see you walk away. As I walked home, I drummed my fingers across the fence slats to accompany the rhythm of my step. In the first steps up the driveway my hand fell and I withered with the realization that we had parted ways with no words. In feeling I knew you so perfectly I forgot I didn't know you at all. Not even your name.

All the above you already know. But this you do not. That evening, with a joint from my father's sock drawer, I found a bench at the end of the plaza on Autumn Drive. And I lit up. You had played a cruel trick. And it was a big city with many bookstores. I felt so deflated; I guess I just hoped the smoke would fill me up again. On that bench I convinced myself that 'meant to be' is simply how the lucky ones blindly describe the amorphous and mysterious matter that brought them together. And so I convinced myself that 'meant to be' isn't real. I was over you. Moved on on as the seasons do. Moved on on as a man is supposed to be able to do.

This you also do not know. On that bench I watched with weary eyes the approach of an old man and his antediluvian consort. They ambled along with a silent credence between them. I remember thinking it was impressively unremarkable. Then it happened. As the path split, their fingers withdrew with a sort of perfunctory practice and they parted ways. It was unnatural to see something so obviously one become two. And an immense astonishment washed over me.

However, as is usually the case, the ebb followed the flow of confusion. And a wry smile came across me. I realized, as Coehlo would explain many years later, the universe was conspiring with me. For each, the old man and his wife, at their own time without the awareness of the other, turned around to watch the other walk away. I thought to myself, "Even after countless years together, they still want to see the other one last time just like they probably did the first time they..." In that instant an epiphany reverberated within me. I knew I was meant to find you again. And I knew how to do it.

With the many rotations of this earth since, we have grown old. And you have remained always at the center of my world. We have earned our wrinkles and the memories tucked under the folds of each one. The ink has mostly faded, but do you remember how clever we thought ourselves to be? We got matching tattoos of nautical stars, so we would be star-crossed lovers when I held you in my arms. We were so weird. And we knew it. And we loved it.

I have never just loved you. I have needed you.

It is time for my next confession. My Dear, forgive me. I have written this to you under pretense. I did not write this solely for you. You know too well all that I have written here -- there has never been an ellipsis in the words between us. We have always been honest to ourselves and to each other. I have written this for our only and beloved grandson. That by reading this he might glimpse what it really looks like, so that he might find his own center of the world someday. So he might know that 'meant to be' is real.

I intend to leave this letter with the first letter I ever wrote you. The letter with which I found you again. The letter which I left in that old bookstore, after realizing neither of us took it that day, protruding out of James Joyce's Ulysses.

P.S. Remember that tonight is the night that we have long planned. I will be meeting with the young man who has agreed to sell to us this evening. I have asked him to have it rolled and bagged. When I return, we will go directly to the plaza. When it has burned out. And when we have had enough gazing and wondering which star is ours. We will walk down the path, part ways, and do as we have rehearsed. With any luck, we will have done for another what that old couple did for me. I will meet you at the car, but we will walk home.

P.P.S. Joseph, I hope you'll not think your grandmother and I to be addicts of any kind. I got high only once. And once before that.