Anything in the world
For a few years after we met, the Happy Best-Friend and I used to spend quite a bit of time together. We would sit together in church, meet for lunch on most weekdays, go bowling between classes at the University of Texas student union, spend Friday nights with a group of friends, then see movies on Saturdays with a different group of friends. In between those regular activities, we would manufacture any excuse to be in each other's presence. Anything would do:
- I'm making spaghetti for dinner and I always make too much so do you want to come over and have some?
- I'm trying to make a birthday card for my mother but I don't know how to draw a squirrel, so could you come over and help me with that?
- I'm so bored being in my apartment so I'm going to McDonald's but I always feel like a loser sitting in public alone so do you want to come with me?
Of course, my roommate at the time would say things like "I like spaghetti" or "I can show you how to draw a squirrel" or "McDonald's sounds good" and I would have to shoot him with a rubber band.
One evening the Happy Best-Friend came up with the excuse that she felt like taking a walk through San Gabriel Park. It's a nice park: scenic, quiet, well-kept, and built around a river so wherever you are in the park you can hear the beautiful sound of flowing water. It provides swings, slides, trees, park benches, a hiking trail, open fields, and lots of opportunity for laughing, talking, and having fun. That particular evening we made use of the trail and the swings, then settled down on a bench facing the river. We sat there and talked until well after dark, until she began nodding off against her will.
I told her we'd both better get home. We had school the next day and I had missed too many classes already. She slumped where she was sitting and said, "Oh, I'm so tired." By that point in our relationship I loved her with all my heart, even if I didn't realize it. So I bent over, put my right arm behind her knees and my left arm behind her back, then picked her up and carried her to the car.
Mrs. Happy majored in studio art in college, and it happened that she had a watercolor class the day after we went to the park. That day, she painted a picture of a man carrying a woman in his arms and titled it Anything because she came to realize I would do anything for her (click on it to see the full image).
She came across that picture yesterday while going through some old work. She found all sorts of things wrong with it: "It's too faint, and I'm barefoot. Why am I barefoot? I was wearing shoes. And you never had a shirt that color. And I made you too tall and my arm is unnaturally long. Ugh."
I see something else in it, though. I see a picture revealing two people on the cusp of adulthood looking onto an indistinct world where even a tree, normally a symbol of firmness and stability, fades out of sight. I see her stretching her arm out to hold on to a man who will accompany her into that world, bearing her burdens when she can't carry them herself, when she's not "wearing shoes." I see that man (or a slightly enhanced vision of him) slowly coming into focus, not yet solid but much more than a shadow. I see how the future looked to us in 1995, as envisioned by a Happy Best-Friend who still signed with her maiden name. I remember how I felt about that future myself—unsure, overwhelmed, slightly terrified—and now I look back on it with fondness and thankfulness that we were able to meet it together.
