Wednesday, August 4, 2010

beecroft

Somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, between the time I awoke from my little 5-6a snooze and the time the kids were allowed to wake up (7a), it suddenly hit me. I sat up, turned to Joel and proudly declared, "Beecroft." With eyes still fixed upon the road in front of him, he slowly nodded his head and agreed, "That's it."

I turned and settled back into my seat, gazing at the open expanse of country around us. We said no more on the subject, and I relished in the satisfaction of coming up with the last name of a family we had been talking about and couldn't remember their name. What makes this event somewhat remarkable is that the couldn't-recall-their-last-name conversation had taken place approximately three weeks previous. No mention of it since. And yet, there we were in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and the answer suddenly released itself from the grip of my long-term memory to come trickling down. Even better, I only had to utter the name and Joel knew exactly to what I was referring.

I sat there savoring the victory of the memory, his nod and the 2-word reply as if the conversation was current, and I felt this weird tidal wave of love for Joel. I considered just how amusing we're going to get as we age. We'll be 82 and have a bazillion unfinished conversations. We'll be sitting at the mall just shouting out seeming nonsensical phrases and passers-by will be convinced we're senile, but we'll both be nodding, understanding what the other one is saying, comfortable with the partnership we've built. I like that.

Thank you, Wyoming.

2 comments:

Kellie Knapp said...

adorable.

Lisa said...

I love it :) I've definitely had moments like that. I have this bad habit of only saying half of a sentence, because the other half is in my head--i.e. "...because it'll just be too cold, you know?" And my favorite thing about John is that he almost always knows what I'm talking about. Love it :)