Mistake

Posted: June 14th, 2012 | Author: kristen from motherload | Filed under: Books, City Livin', Discoveries, Firsts, Friends and Strangers, Milestones, Writing | 3 Comments »

The woman with the skinny ass from my writing class called me a liar the other night. Well, not in so many words, but she did point out that I made a mistake.

It turns out she reads my blog. (God love her.) And she said the writing exercise I posted a couple weeks back—about Sundays with my dad—wasn’t the one she’d suggested I publish.

She was actually very nice about it. And it turns out that She of Slight Booty is quite the writer herself. I’m nearly finished with her book, Family Plots, which is a total page-turner, and set right here in Oakland. What’s more, she pulled a hilarious media stunt to promote it.

Anyway, welcome to the first ever correction on *motherload*.

Here’s the piece she originally liked. The prompt the teacher gave us that day was simply, “I love you.” This is pretty raw—the product of 30 minutes of in-class writing. And names have been changed to protect those who were in love.

Hope you like it as much as Tiny Tush did.

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I Love You

Maybe some women have an entire shoebox packed with love letters. Letters from lovers, from admirers, from husbands who’ve been off at war, or sea, or hell, grad school.

Me? I’ve got one. Maybe two such letters.

It’s in my basement, stacked somewhere amidst other papers and ephemera from that time. It had to have been 15 years ago. Probably more.

I had a boyfriend at the time. A serious relationship I’d been in for a year or more. Were we in love? Hard to say. But we were together. Every night. Most certainly a couple. Undoubtedly monogamous. I was not up for grabs.

He worked long hours and I was doing some internship or other. My time was more open and flexible. And so it started that some Sunday afternoons I would go off with my friend Jake to the movies. He’d been traveling in India for months and came back brimming with stories and wearing bright pants with drawstring waists. He had an appetite for tea, and preferred walking everywhere, even when it took hours.

And aside from wanting to tap into his travel energy, it was our love of foreign films that brought us together for outings. Obscure and high-minded movies. The kinds of films that required a few cups of coffee and some rock-hard biscotti afterward to process.

Movie-going wasn’t something my boyfriend enjoyed. He had programming to do. He could sit at his computer for hours, even on sunny weekend days. So Jake was the perfect companion to indulge in filmic field trips.

Did it sometimes feel like we were on a date? Well, sure, I guess. We enjoyed each other’s company unabashedly. We made each other laugh. We wowed each other with intellectual deconstructions of plot, theme, cinematography.

I think I knew that he had a little crush on me. I think my boyfriend knew too. But we were smugly confident about our status as a couple. Whatever crush Jake had was mild and sweet and likely to stay under wraps.

Until the receptionist called me one day at work. Someone had come to drop something off for me. And I was thrilled by the prospect of an unexpected element in my day. I was a fact-checker at a magazine, calling sources all day to verify spellings and ensure the veracity of quotes. Whatever was at the front desk blessedly peeled me away from the next pediatrician on my list, whom I had to interrogate about something like the management of cradle cap in infants.

At the desk there were two long-stemmed roses wrapped in cellophane, and a small ivory envelope with my name printed across it in blue ball point, the letters leaving deep furrows in the paper.

I don’t remember if I knew at the time, before even opening it, that it was from Jake. Something about the setting—work, daytime, a weekday even—it wasn’t the context in which he was usually present in my life. Jake and I had a Sunday afternoon thing.

But it was from him.

The wording, the sum total of it is lost to me now. But I do remember it started simply, “Kristen, I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time now.”

I was stunned. Impressed by the bravado of his proclamation. Flattered. Saddened that I was on the receiving end of this vulnerable, beautiful declaration. And concerned that I didn’t feel the same way.

There was one part of my brain that telescoped into the future. That knew this was some rite of passage. Even though I wasn’t going to say ‘I love you’ too; even though I knew, sadly, that our Sunday movies had come to an end; even though our friendship would take a huge toll from this declaration—with all those other thoughts swirling in my head, there was part of me that thought this is a letter that I will always hold onto. This is the beginning of what may be an entire shoebox full of letters. Or maybe just one or two.

Do you have any love letters tucked away somewhere? Do tell!

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