Two lads – one younger, one older…
Two lads – one shorter, one taller…
Two lads – one light-haired, one dark-haired…
These two lads sat beneath an oak tree centuries ago – an oak tree that must have been in close proximity to a stream or brook or some bit of babbling water that made for easy conversation or none at all. It was so long ago that lads and oak tree are again part of the soft earth that once gave slight way beneath their collective weight on this beautiful spring day. The moss was cool and soft, and nearby a patch of trilliums was in full ephemeral bloom.
Some love survives centuries, cropping up generations later in the petals of a trillium. The tender spot of mossy ground where they once sat together, taking their lunch and laughing, resting from the high heat of the day, shifts and alters under the great bearing wall of time. Watching their ease and intimacy from a distant vantage point of modern-day existence still feels obscene – like we are intruding, even if they cannot see us, even if they are already gone.
What brings two young men to such a point? What connects one human being to another in a way that stills time? Maybe it was as simple as a shared lunch. Maybe it was as easy as the spring day. Maybe it was just that he was he, and he was he.
Who knows every single intricate step it took to reach the state in which they slip into each other’s thoughts so nimbly and easily, the seconds and minutes and hours spent learning and observing, or the specific cadence of expanding affection that led them to this late spring lunch they’re sharing with the trillium?
Love – true love – doesn’t operate or appear by design or planning, nor is it mere destiny or luck. It’s a confoundingly complex series of the smallest moments that eventually coalesce into something more – sometimes friendship, sometimes respect, sometimes basic tolerance – and sometimes, when the world decides to grant us awful humans a momentary reprieve of kindness – sometimes… love.
