Twenty-Six and Counting
Twenty-six years ago this very day, the world became a little bigger, and a little brighter. Into its confused but well-meaning arms came a baby girl whose potential for wit, charm, and beauty no one would have a clue. She would make it through a relatively stable, if predictably troubled, childhood with only those scars which remind you of lessons long ago learned. She would make it through an early adulthood marked by Russian thugs and puckish Christian boys, and have learned to question her hard-fought beliefs. She would make it through traumas no mother should face only to see faces no mother should ever miss. She would find herself, today, twenty-six and counting.
Danielle walked into a corner office on the fourth floor of the building in which I’d worked for two-and-a-half years looking for a paycheck and a change. She sat across from me wearing an altogether too conservative suit set and a hair length that had me adding five or ten to her twenty-three. She answered each question evenly, perhaps disinterested, perhaps uneasy. She made no attempts to pander to an obviously inexperienced interviewer who’d only moments before cobbled together some questions to ask. She made no attempts to cultivate the image of ladder-climbing capitalist others had and would. She feigned nothing, quite amusingly obviously.
We worked together from that November until not even a year later, slogging through the pricing requests of a sales force comprised of what appeared to be ambitious extras from a Romero shoot. We became fast…well, not friends, necessarily, but fast more-than-acquaintances who never talked outside the office. She maintained a consistency of spirit I’m not sure I’ve witnessed before. She never was and never will be perfect, and she embraced that; but she didn’t levy admonishment nor offer praise unless she felt it warranted. And almost always, she was right.
A little over a year ago, we entered into something more than friendship, each of us having found comfort in the acceptance and appreciation of the other. The year since has been long, and we’ve had our share of tense silence and calamity, but far more than our share of love and laughter. The easiest way I’ve found to make it through it is to watch her, listen to her, sleeping and breathing or talking or laughing—especially laughing. When she laughs, the world holds back to listen and remember that it’s not supposed to be so tough. When she laughs, small things are small and big things are big. When she laughs, her eyes radiate, her smile incites. When she laughs, you’d be hard pressed not to laugh, too.
Then, of course, there’s the kiss; but that’s not a story for you. It’s not a story for words. It’s a story to live.
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