Above It All

©Above It All

The fire was dying down to flickering embers, and the sudden coolness of a clear night slowly burrowed into my slender frame. My body shivered with its knowledge of my stupidity in coming this far up the slope…

Damn, I don’t know how far up I am. Why is it the man is always the one who gets pissed and stomps out of the house? Well, anyhow, I wouldn’t have let her leave with daylight almost gone. But that woman sure knows how to push all the buttons to get me so riled I could almost get mean and physical with her, but, dang it, that’s not the way I’m made. She just keeps on going over everything I’ve said, putting her own spin on my words, until I leave before my words won’t be enough to satisfy my anger. A long hard walk usually calmed the soul and made ‘making up’ a wonderful experience.

The house looked so small from this distance, the lights adding some sense of size and building style Lara and I spent countless fun hours designing, adding extra rooms for her sewing and quilting, adding a room for my pool table and a most stylish ‘Man-Cave’.

Here it comes…

Here comes the guilt…it was all my fault, with the wise cracks, while she was being serious and pleasant. When would I learn to keep my clever little ‘bon mots’ to myself? She is trying to make her serious points, and I’m being cute. She stressed several times the importance of the conversation, asked me to be serious, but, no, I had to show off my distracting attempts at humor for far too long.

Until…until she looked at me, nay, glared at me with lips tightly pursed and eyes dispensing tiny daggers of disgust and a scary cloud of vitriolic displeasure that swept over me, frightened me, and made me feel suddenly all alone. In fact, Lara walked away from me with unmistakable disgust, and I felt like something very special had left our marriage.

Standing mutely alone there in my ‘Man-Cave’, I encountered waves of uncertainty, a sudden panic that scared me, an urge to quickly go to Lara and ask forgiveness for my glib behavior in front of something so important to her. Then, that thought gave way to some inane ‘macho’ nonsense of male superiority thoughts…

I started for the kitchen and Lara, but I quickly made a sharp left-turn to the front door, pulled it open, walked out, and slammed it in a brutish display of petulance. The walking path up to ‘Monk’s Peak’ was just steps away, and I would show her…I would go AWOL for a while. Maybe that would teach her a lesson on how to deal with her husband. But…

But, sitting there for two hours, my mind did some ‘mind-jerks’ that surprised me. Darkness all around me, save for the cloudless night sky with its beautiful void filled with planets, stars, galaxies that had firmly fixed themselves for countless Millenia to guide those of our world who might have navigational needs, I suddenly grasped what fools before me must grasp, life is temporary, ephemeral, where, at the end one wonders where did all the years go – one life, a grain of sand on Millenia’s beach. Of course, came the word likely most despised in the world languages, ‘mortality’… Did a life end when the last breath was drawn? Were all the emotions felt for a lifetime, all the dreams fulfilled by the lovers, dreamers, movers, shakers of the world. Love given, taken – did it with death all just, go poof? Or, did a Continuum exist to usher us back in different forms, on and on, until we ‘get’ it and become one with the Supreme Host?

Sitting there on a hard rock above my home, my wife, my future, this all came to me – and, I cried, smiling like a fool, tasting tears that held in some miraculous way a validation.

I started to rise from the rock, eager to get back down that walking path and convey my love and thoughts to the dearest woman in my world, my precious Lara.

Then, I saw a light coming up the trail I had not noticed in my moments of serious thought. The light came closer until…until my eyes again clouded over and emitted their tears.

Lara rushed into my arms, and never has my heart filled so overflowingly with love.

“People in love can do some silly things. Here, put on your jacket and let’s go home. I made you a special dessert…Oh, and I love you.”

Lara grabbed my hand.

We kissed long with a soft, unhurried, promise.

©BR Chitwood

Flash Fiction by: BR Chitwood –October 10, 2019

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