LETTERS FROM HOME: WAITING FOR THE DINOSAURS

December 2, 1993

Dear DC,

I hear a jet far overhead in the middle of the night and remember you're back in California again. I measure the distance not in miles but in the time we're losing.

One of the poems in Louisa's gift reads:

"Go lovely rose

Tell her that wastes her time and me

that now she knows when I resemble her to thee

How sweet and fair she seems to be

...Then die that she

the common fate of all things rare

may read in thee how small a part of time they share,

that are so wondrous sweet and fair."

The white rose you pinned on my lapel fell off in the congratulatory hugging. I don't look for signs as much as you do, but how's that for robustly embracing the future?

Of course, there were some things the smiling relatives and friends didn't see. Us down in the church's pre-school bathroom moussing our hair beforehand. You asking me if yours was too wild. Is there a man who thinks his woman is too wild?, I wondered.

Driving to the church with a log on the back seat of the borrowed Mercedes, just in case the fire I insisted on having in the church sanctuary hadn't been started.

Yes, DC, you called me by the ex-boyfriend's name, and only an hour before the ceremony. In more ways than just physically, you are there and I am here. We still fumble with each other, and the Great Divide makes such rashes and burns difficult to soothe.

My married friends all have similar stories of slights still held against their partners. They live with them and bring them out and dust them off when needed. Bet on it.

Reading the love poem to me helped. "Come live with me and be my love." Too bad I know it's a favorite of cads bent on seduction. But keep trying.

What I will remember most from our latest days together are the quavering in our voices saying those marrying words again, seeing my father's tears, and the feeling of rightness.

I didn't hear it, but Kim kept pestering her mother through the ceremony, asking, "When are they going to get married?" She was waiting for an act, a word, a gesture of finality.

Maybe it doesn't work that way.

Do you know those Holusion posters, the ones with dinosaurs or Statues of Liberty hidden in the design? People at malls stand before them for long periods, staring mightily and crooking their necks to see the mystery.

Many walk away thinking something must be wrong with their powers of perception, or that they've been conned.

They don't know there is a way of seeing the dinosaurs that requires both specific knowledge and patience.

Maybe that's true for you and me as well. Knowledge of each other, and the patience to let our eyes adjust to the other. Proximity. Then the dinosaurs will appear.

Love, Sam