Love in Lavender

"Two stars in all the heavens, having some business elsewhere, did entreat her eyes to sparkle in their stead. Her eyes shone so bright that had there been birds there they would have sung, thinking that it were not night. Her voice arose through the darkness, echoing in my ears, stroking with heavenly harmonies the very strings of my soul. And if it was only a night spent in her presence, it was a jewel of brilliance streaming through the airy regions of my memory bright and strong."

I put this poem deep in the filing cabinet in the corner of my cubicle. It had been two days since I met her, two days of anguish, spent shifting through accounting paperwork while I tried to quiet the heartache for her. But I couldn`t and it was slowly eroding my waking life. The affairs of the office now seemed so trivial, everything muted to a dull buzz next to the memory roaring in my head. Sam comes by to talk shop but its all I can do to just keep a professional face and I hear nothing of his questions. Jill, the secretary, who flirts with subtle undertones dropped by to say hi but all I see is the face of that lovely, mysterious girl. What do you do when love finds you unexpectedly and strikes with the passion of old? Love born not from a conscious choosing, a conscious desire of any collection of traits but romance, full of heart-searing endearment. What do you do when you find her......and lose her in the space of a night?

It was among a field of lavender and a backdrop of a burning sunset that we first met. A flier for the summer lavender festival over on the Olympic Peninsula had caught my eye and I was soon on a ferry bound for the far shore. I arrived on a sunny Saturday afternoon with butterflies and ladybugs aflutter in the air. The festival was setup around a large field of lavender overlooking the Pugent Sound with a dense, green forest surrounding. Food vendors and local artists had set up booths on the outskirts of the field and there was a large stage set smack in the middle of the blowing flowers. It was a beautiful setting and it took my mind off the dreary work I had waiting for me on Monday. So I spent the comfortable hours of a summer afternoon wondering among wares and attempting to catch the flowers in some resemblance of an artistic photograph.

The day progressed; shadows grew long; light becoming golden and setting a yellow halo behind every small stem of lavender that still blew faintly in the summer evening. In line with the general atmosphere and character of the people, a beautiful melody began to emanate from the clearing in the field. A trio of musicians stood tall, caressing from the strings of their violins a light but curiously deep rhythm. I was content there, to listen to the floating sounds and feel the summer night approaching. And at that moment the world as I knew it was sane and predictable and demanded nothing from me other than certain compromises. I saw my life then stretching out into perpetuity: step by step to the end. It was to change with the sip of apple cider.

I stood on the edge of the field, the hot beverage at my lips when I saw her. My heart aches even now when I think of her sitting there on a bench, hands folded in her lap watching the coming sunset. I was drawn over by the child-like intensity that she seemed to regard everything with. My second impression was of listening to her own music; something lost to others, a true individual melody. So it was that I had to repeat my offer of some cider before she lifted her eyes to mine. Ah, they were so pure and clear, free of any weight of the world. Her smile when she said yes was so plain and full of enjoyment I felt we had known each other for many a year. Her voice was soft like velvet and during the first few moments of shy conversation I felt a growing fondness for this young girl whose eyes glowed with an almost maniac energy. It felt like love and yet it was not, like a great pain but with no source.

I barely got her name before she laughed and suggested walking off into the field to view the sunset. So we stood there, the fragrance of lavender blending with the smell of earth and nature on the wind. I can`t remember what we talked about nor when I acted but I found myself listening to the drifting melody of a solo violin and holding her hand in a soft embrace. In my memory now there stands the two of us: waist deep among the flowers in a easy silence of understanding. Black silhouetted against a sky filled with an explosion of orange radiating from a brilliant globe of fire. Even as the world turned and the color faded, it did so just as passionately- leaving pale arcs of dying embers in the far off clouds. The stars came out in all their magnificence and filled the night with awe and wonder. We sat down on the cut stalks of sold flowers then and talked of philosophy, day-dreams and our secret hopes, things that seem so irrelevant in the light of day yet fuel the fire of life in the black darkness of night.

Not once did we talk of where we lived, what we did or even consider meeting again. Was that fate? To find love so strongly that it must exist only for a night or else burn out those involved? I don`t know and it drives me crazy; for we left the festival separately, each saying goodbye and our hands pulling apart reluctantly; the fingertips lingering together in a silent message of how much we wanted to say.

The four walls of a cubicle surround me now, pop music plays from a neighbors radio and I drown in paperwork every minute. But it fades and I think of her and feel a blazing heat of sadness and melancholy immediately supplanted by the desire to search the world for her. That feeling does not fade. I lean back against my computer chair and think of the days to come, days of her occupying my thoughts and dreams, long days of heart-numbing work and empty nights alone. My friends say "Time will heal the pang, memories will fade. Just give it time." In the midst of all this pain of thinking and dreading I can no longer see the future clearly and its as if a bell has rung my head clear. I don`t want the pain to go away and I don`t want the memories to fade because it her in my mind and they are all I have. And if the future is unclear and no longer a straight path to a dreary end then I have a choice.

It is another day and the bright morning sunshine fills me with an amazing strength and standing in the waving fields of lavender I feel hope that from this beginning, this choice, I will find her.