Fate, with all of its sticky seals and countless, contorted twists, is a mysterious thing. Destiny, with all of its ordered control and determined choices, is also a mysterious thing. And because all of it—every seeming coincidence and eerie deja vous—every free willing action and consequence—is mysterious, she believed that something entirely brilliant was going on. If it were all just accidental, meaningless, and easy to understand, something else altogether would be at play. Fate, being the grand and glamorous mistress that she is, certainly would not leave anything to chance (that’s the point, after all); she would ensure that, for those that question, that we remain curious into perpetuity. Perpetuity is grand and curiosity is quite glamorous. Just the thought of such brilliance caused her left cheek to draw ever so slightly, allowing the timid entrance of a tiny smile across her otherwise concentrated expression.
She was a very grown-up woman of forty-four years, whose own fate, sealed and then later twisted, was decided decades ago, before it all began. Beginnings are sometimes distinct and obvious like the beginnings of a new school year, a new book, or a new job. These types of beginnings have temporal precision and are at once both orderly and chaotic, orderly by severing the lingering before and chaotic by puncturing the pristine present. And sometimes, beginnings are hidden between the hurried, jam-packed middles and the perfunctory, fortified ends. These kinds of beginnings go unnoticed at the time, until much later, when beginnings such as these are finally leavened with perspective, and take their rightful place in history. But for her, this particular beginning, before it all began, was a most conspicuous and incontestable beginning.
Before she was forty-four, she was, at one time, just seventeen years old, with a ripening, rousing, and rambunctious young body, poised for countless sticky, contorted twists to be sure. And though she didn’t fully appreciate the adolescent trajectory that she was on, she did have a rather developed sense of all the divergent parts of herself and how the more fragile parts required protection. She seemed to know that her heart and mind drew their truth and strength from deep within her bosom, and that her new bosom, and all the attention that it attracted, threatened this. Seemingly overnight, she had gone from being a little girl to a voluptuous, young woman.
In this particular beginning, before it all began, she was singularly focused on figuring out how to look back into his eyes without giving herself away. For added punctuation, it was the beginning of a new school year, their senior years in high school, and it was her first day at this new school. The warm, Southern California, Santa Ana winds blew furiously between them, picking up the ends of her amaretto colored curls, and tossing them all about her narrow shoulders and bare neck. The sun was behind him, shining directly on her face and into her eyes. She was much smaller than he; she squinted as she looked up at his six foot, broad frame.
Because she was squinting, he didn’t notice that her left eye had a freckle in the lower part of its iris. This gave her left eye the illusion of having a second, much smaller pupil. He shifted to his left and leaned against the wall of lockers, blocking the blinding sun so that she could see him more clearly. She noticed his bustling complexion first. It was blemished, fair, and freckled all over with spots of burnt amber and caramel. Her eyes bounced all over his colorful face, absorbing the complexity of the intersecting and overlapping tones. She couldn’t seem to settle in on one feature, until her eyes met his.
His eyes were bright, translucent, and sea green in color, anchoring his full, gleaming smile, beckoning her aboard (and oh, mind you, she hopped aboard). Her own eyes were deep mahogany, nearly opaque in the shade he provided, and deep-set in her small, heart-shaped face. His eyes were reaching in, deep inside her, gently hoisting her up to him. She blinked and looked down at her chest. She was wearing a white cotton knit t-shirt, the white color contrasted well with her suntanned skin and the cotton knit accentuated her full, round breasts. His eyes followed hers and when she looked back up at him, he moved his gaze slowly from her chest back to her eyes, and his smile broadened.
The little girl inside her was squealing in delight, jumping up and down, dancing in circles all around the two of them. The young woman that she was felt goose bumps raise and race down her body—from the back of bare neck to her cotton knit covered breasts to the tips of her fingers. And it was at this point, that she began focusing on how to keep herself to herself. She closed her eyes for a split second; she needed to exit and reenter the moment, this time, hand-in-hand with the little girl inside her. She smiled back uncontrollably, exposing a mouthful of straight, white teeth. She was transfixed, for even then, when she was just seventeen years old, she knew that this was the beginning of something quite grand and glamorous. And with that, her fate was sealed, and they were off, setting sail towards a far-away horizon that that only he could see.
This is a (very) personal narrative essay written in the third person by Pamela Paige.
So much of what is ironic about my life of late culminated unceremoniously, though with much internal fanfare, one recent Saturday evening shortly after I logged into my LinkedIn account. Before I proceed, I must confess that I rarely use my LinkedIn account. I am not even sure why I have an account, but I do. I guess that it goes along with my matched set of social networking accounts (registered, though not at Bloomingdale’s): Facebook, Twitter, and my Google Bloggers.
