I have a daydream. It involves a little, indiscreet house, somewhere on a tree-lined street in Portland, probably east, maybe a little north. You are there, or at least a version of you- a version of you that compliments a version of me. A version of me that is better about recycling, isn’t afraid to ride a bike, eats gluten and has much shorter hair. Life in this house still has struggles, but together, these versions of us work. The struggles seem bearable.
This house could have a garden, slightly overgrown with high fenced walls and tall trees, perhaps we have a chicken, but probably not. This house has an aging dog, tawny, with floppy ears. He is calm. Maybe there's another dog. Younger, white, fluffy, and very very large. There are two cats, black and white and almost identical. They mostly stay outside due to one of my many “intolerance's”. An aging widow down the street now feeds the versions of these cats more frequently than we do. She is lonely. She misunderstands their disobedience, exclaiming that they are simply, “spirited”. Not once complaining when one of them knocks over and breaks a picture frame containing an image of her and her husband years before on a Caribbean Cruise. In this house, there is a lot of fur. Its everywhere. The cleaning lady who comes on Tuesdays does what she can, but helps very little. We secretly wish she was Hispanic and call her Consuela behind her back. We wonder how long we will tolerate that she brings her daughter to work to save money on daycare. It hinders her job performance. I hope these new versions of us don't mind. I hope we show her the compassion that our parents wouldn’t have had.
A room off of the kitchen has a desk we built from the salvaged wood of a torn down church. The walls are lined with books - many you wish I would read, most I wont. Even this version of me cannot keep up with the amount you read. There will always be a stack of books on the table of my side of bed, books you think Ill love, with thoughtful inscriptions. A growing tower residing beside a handful of postcards bound in twine and a bible with gilded gold pages. You sorta wish I would read more, you sorta don't care. You write in this room off of the kitchen. You write on a silver laptop that sits next to a vintage typewriter on the desk made from the wood of a torn down church.
When the weather warms, you take the typewriter and place it on a table in the overgrown garden. The table is iron, perhaps we found it at a flea market. Its painted white but the northwest rain creates areas of creeping brown rust. I brought up the idea to paint it once but you said it wouldn’t be as authentic. I agreed. You make coffee and drink it without cream or sugar and type your thoughts and they come out as inky black poetry. You will sit in this place, with your coffee, and your typewriter, and your poetic thoughts and you will find peace, and you will find God. And you will only stop occasionally to really consider the slightly predictable setting you have created for yourself, and the thought will be fleeting and you will take another sip of the coffee that’s almost cold and you will write me a poem about us. A poem about sharks, and you will relate it to a time when we apart, and its beautiful, even though it’s a slight plagiarism of yourself. The other version of me loves the poems you write and keeps them in the pages of the books in the stack on my side of our bed.
And this is what love feels like. A house that is unremarkable to most but, overflowing with happiness and conversation and laughter and moments.
And this is our house, and our lives till this point, and its not always perfect, but in this version, in this daydream, its perfect for us. For now, it works for the other me and for the other you.
It just a house, its nothing fancy. Its just rooms, and walls and a white tiled kitchen with wood beams we call “rustic” but are most likely rotting and termite infested, its a toilet down the hall that always runs, its a bedroom filled with hope and laughter and connection and reading while falling asleep in each others arms, its a bedroom bathed in bright morning light that inspires kissing and touching and holding each other. Its a bedroom where this version of me holds so tightly to the other version of you that its unclear where you begin and I end and with absolutely no space between us, the room around us is filled with Gods love and spirit.
Its just a house with old plaster walls sprinkled with mismatched frames, filled with pictures of us, with all the people we have known and all the places we have been. From Iceland to Argentina and the entire world in between. And these versions dream of seeing everything the world can offer us, side by side. They dream of places we cannot. Places we have never dreamed of going together. We cant. We aren’t these versions. They don't yet exist.
But, in my daydream they do. And they are happy. Though they have their problems, they are happy. Sometimes these versions forget how to communicate, they might fall into moments of selfishness. The new me might forget how to balance work and life, might become aloof or distant, might forget to show affection or compliment, and the new you might forget to give me the benefit of the doubt, might mistake my playful teasing for genuine insults, might forget how much I care about you, we momentarily might forget how much we love each other, we momentarily might forget that we are on each others side. But in this new version, our love is enough. Our love is real. Sometimes hard, but always real.
And the house, and the versions of us, and the life they have built will change, and evolve, and grow. And perhaps a version of new life will be created, or adopted. And perhaps this new life will change the versions that we had become- and you may no longer write in the garden, and I may come to terms that the stack of books may never get read, but life is full and we will encourage this new life and this new challenge with all our faith and all our strength, never putting it down, and always making sure this new existence will be true to its own heart- whether fat, skinny, too tall, too short, gay, straight, republican, we will love it wholly- we will love it and protect it from the possible and probable judgment of grandparents.
I’m sitting outside of the café where we first shared coffee and conversation on a rainy late November day. It seems like a lifetime away, but in actuality it’s been less than a year. It’s September. It’s sunny. Kids are playing tag. A gay man is talking loudly on his cell phone and ignoring his coffee date. People are walking dogs. A man has a cat on a leash –I think of you and smile. They all have their own lives, their own joy and their own pain and their own daydreams. My daydream flows easily. Thoughts we never considered. Thoughts I never considered. Who knew they were just under the surface. I wonder what versions of us we will become? I wonder if we will ever be the versions in my daydream? I am letting go. Slowly. But it’s happening. For now my daydream is saturated with you- your face, your ideals, your faith your sense of humor. Everyday that goes by it becomes more clear that these versions will probably never come to exist. That your face will fade from the garden, from the bedroom, from the room off of the kitchen, from the daydream entirely. Perhaps to be replaced with the face of another. Hopefully someone with equally good taste in music, and movies and books. Hopefully someone with as strong of faith in God, a faith that challenges and helps others grow. Helps me grow. Hopefully someone with a heart as kind and open and big as yours.
Its starting. You’re fading. The daydreamed house is no longer about you. Its more about me. A me that I have not yet become. The typewriter in the garden might change- perhaps to a guitar, perhaps some paint and a canvas, perhaps by nothing, or maybe I sit in the garden, drinking coffee, reading my bible and writing in my journal. Maybe there is no garden, maybe there never will be.
Sometimes you love, and you learn, and then you let go and move on. And that’s okay.
But somewhere, maybe there are versions of us that are right for each other- versions where we fight for our love- through pain and insecurity and apathy and resentment, we fight because we know it’s worth it.
We know that our version of love is enough.
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