She had asked me several times before about my thoughts on our relationship. About the moments when I first realized I loved her and wanted to marry her. And I would dutifully answer her, each time getting uncomfortable and slightly annoyed that the question had been taken up again. I guess it was her way of reaffirming our relationship but I always felt it was a little bit like a cross examination. As if she were trying to split hairs and catch a discrepancy in my recollection. There was never any slip ups as I recall, though each time I spoke it became more of litany of facts void of the emotion that makes for good story telling. I was getting tired of retelling it fearing that our little moment of sparked romance would become forever a cliché. Besides, most of our family and friends knew the story by now as it has been retold time and again on many occasions including at our wedding where it was broadcast to the congregation.
Everyone knows we met at college in the campus chapel during Ash Wednesday mass. Everyone knows I gave her my seat and, as the same campus Chaplin who celebrated that mass proclaimed five years later at our wedding, 'He gave her his seat and then gave her his heart.' Like they say, the rest is history. History -- a litany of facts, void of emotion, memorized for recollection at a later point like a quiz where your only reason for knowing it is to receive a passing grade. I think I passed every quiz I was given on our history. I was always good at history. And everyone knew our history, yet nobody understands the story.
It was an Ash Wednesday mass in the basement of a modular house on the tiniest corner of the campus far removed from the rest of the college -- A very tangible reminder of the separation of Church and State. It was an ugly structure. It really wasn't anything more than a double-wide mobile home anchored on an eight-foot high foundation. In the basement was a makeshift chapel, cluttered with Catholic articles of faith, homage and veneration. The pews were nothing more than folding chairs wedged in between support pillars and bookcases. Every Sunday evening this place was overrun with usually hung over college students, many often needing to stand against the walls while breaking fire codes on occupancy. This particular midday Ash Wednesday mass was no exception. If anything it was even more crowded.
When I arrived, five minutes prior to the start, I remember pushing through a few girls to stake claim on an end seat; one of the last seats available. Mass had started and students were still filing in with their eyes scanning frantically for a seat. Most ended up looking rejected as they were pushed to the corners of the room to stand. The opening prayers were said and we sat for the first reading. I remember thinking this is going to be a long mass and thought about taking off my coat because I could feel myself heating up. I opted not to do it, because it would have been too disruptive. Besides if I left it one I would be prepared to leave right after I received my ashes. I remember feeling a bit agitated about this religious disruption in my otherwise pleasant day. I looked down at my feet and drifted off from the reading.
The door was popped open as if it broke a vacuum seal on the room pulling air out and drawing my attention at its direction. That is when I first saw my future wife. The cold air of February was rushing in behind her and it was truly a breath of fresh air in the stagnant room. Immediately I was struck by her unassuming beauty. Her face, like the air, was fresh. It was unlike the many female faces I was used to seeing in this chapel week after week. She wore little make up and no hair spray.
I know, I know, you are thinking fireworks, music, soft back lighting and gentle breezes combining to make an ethereal image of the girl of my dreams. Well, it didn't quite happen that way.
She stood in the doorway, enveloped by her hooded overcoat, looking much like everyone else rushing in late. However, she was different. As I watched her big brown eyes frantically scan the room for a seat, I began to follow the gracious curves of her round face, the cascading shimmers of jet black hair, the amorously filled motions of a red sweater that draped over a straight black mini shirt which covered black stockings tucked into flat black shoes with silver side buckles. And even though in church, I instinctively gave her a very approving once over. She was very attractive, anyone would have agreed.
Again, you are thinking, an instant attraction. He gave his seat to a beautiful women with some subconscious ulterior motive of getting to her later in a more appropriate setting. Not so.
Before I could look any further something in her arms broke my gaze. She was carrying a young girl, no more than 2, who bore an uncanny resemblance to her. It turned out to be her niece but, being a product of my unconventional times, I thought it was her daughter. And this is where my world collapsed around me.
In the instant it took for me to see this child, I began to think, 'how wonderful that this women no more than 20 years old, not only kept an unplanned pregnancy, but she had the pride and confidence to bring her to a place that might not look too kindly on her.' And it was more than that, too. The image of mother and child, like the classic paintings by the masters - the Madonna and Child inspired portraits through the ages - captured the essence of tenderness, selflessness, and womanhood itself. As I looked at her and the child, something deep in my soul stirred. Something so pleasant and settling that it seeped through my veins until an internal voice broke my daze. "This is the mother of my children."
And it was at that moment, that I unconsciously began to make that voice's statement my prime directive. I didn't realize just then I would fall in love with her. I didn't know just then that I would ever see her again, but I did know she did not just randomly wander into this chapel. She was there for a very monumental reason. She was sent to fulfill some preordained fate. My soul shivered as if it were brushed by the hand of God. And that, while a very comforting sensation, scared me to death. I couldn't help but look at her, stare at her really. All within those few moments, my heart begged her to come closer but my head began countering, "No way!" And, yet, I sat there motionless the whole time. I just sat there staring at her, unable to even to move my eyes away to break eye-contact in the event that we made any, which we did.
Well, the eye contact made was more attributed to her frantic scanning for seat than her destiny to meet me. (Like I had said I had already staked out my exit from this mass and my seat was positioned in the direct path to and from the door.) The eye contact at first was more of her general look in my direction as she instinctively followed the natural flow of the room. Yet as she moved forward the voice in my heart kept saying "This is the one" while the voice in my head that said, "Shit. You are going to loose your seat." I sat up uncomfortably straight as these two voices argued back and forth.
"Yes! come here!" "No! Go away!" "Alright, here she comes!" "Damn it! I am not standing up through this whole mass!"
On and on this went as she stepped closer. And that was when we really made eye contact. I sat stiff with that wide eyed intense gaze that probably told her “yeah, there are voices in my head that I can't control.” I tried to counter that look with a follow up look that said, “What? Is there a problem with dueling voices in my head?” But I think the whole thing was coming off like “he’s crazy!”
She later told me she remembered thinking as she walked passed, "What is this dork looking at?" So I was close in my evaluation of that moment.
She moved by me and I heard her position herself against the wall to my left. The voice in my head let out a big "Yes!" and I settled back in the seat chalking up another victory for selfishness. For that moment voice in my heart whispering that she was my destiny went silent.
At this point we were starting the second reading. As I complained to myself that there is no liturgical need nor a Papal mandate that there be two readings on Ash Wednesday I was cut off by the sound of her repositioning the girl on her hip - that sac of potatoes being tossed followed by a weight lifter's force of air kind of sound. That hit my conscience like a hammer and along came the destiny voice again fully rested and very smug in its confidence now. "Give her your seat, you selfish ass!"
Not content with its prior victory, the sit down voice quickly shot back, "Don't you dare move!"
"Get up now!" "She is fine. Don't move!" "You are worthless! You disgust me. She needs the seat. NOW!"
I jumped up almost instinctively at my heart’s command as the sit down voice went down for the count. For a brief second I stood still and then, like a really bad soap opera actor, I mechanically turned on my mark to face her. We made eye contact again. If I could have read her mind, no doubt it would have told me that at that moment she was fearing for her life.
I opened my mouth and stuttered out "Please. My seat. Here." I awkwardly gestured with my hand to the scratched folding chair. Again I sputtered, "Please take."
Realizing that I was not about to attack her, she quickly declined, "Oh, no. That's ok."
"No please, sit down. I feel terrible." I moved away from the chair and toward her.
"Its ok. I am fine." She said this time smiling at me.
"I feel terrible. Please." I already positioning myself in her spot forcing her to move toward the chair. She got the message and started to move in on the chair.
"Really. It is ok. I can stand." She said this as a mere formality now because she was in full motion to sit down. She continued to smile and then said thank you.
"I feel terrible." I muttered again. I think I may have said it one more time as I continued to gesture to the seat before I realized that the exchange was done, she was sitting down and most of the people around us were looking at me and most likely thinking, as my wife confessed, "dork!"
I leaned against the wall. That destiny voice hummed a happy tune and asked me if I saw that smile. And I did. I saw the beautiful, full, honest smile filled with both gratitude and surprise. It made me smile as well. A contentment filled me as I watched the last bit of her hair settle on to her coat as she settled herself and the child into the seat. I accepted in my head that I had done something very proper at that moment. I did not however at that moment accept that this woman was my future but that voice in my head was still too tired from losing the seat to start another battle with my heart. All it could muster was a disgusted groan as it went to sleep again.
The mass continued and I received my ashes and left as planned. I felt no lingering obligation to address, greet or further acknowledge this woman who had blown into my life and accepted my seat. In retrospect, that first encounter was all that was supposed to happen at that moment. That is not to say she didn’t occupy most of my thoughts for the rest of the day and most of the rest of that week. She was there, quietly working with my heart to finish off my head.
We did meet again and it was in a more appropriate setting to spark a friendship and kindle a relationship but that is a different story from this wonderful moment. And, as they say, the rest is history.
