Martin Luther King Day

This blog post refers to Martin Luther King Day and not the man, Dr. King.  Most businesses do not close on Martin Luther King Day but it is a nice holiday to have off because it falls a few weeks after Christmas and is usually a restful cold day that makes for a nice long weekend.  And so it was for me a few years ago.

My boss had asked me to hire an assistant to help us through winter when our accounts became busy.  No one applied for the job save a young man.  He seemed right because he had a car for errands and was truly interested in helping.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to my new assistant and only saw him when I dropped off more files.  He seemed eager to learn and soon became indispensable to our busy department.  He was always agreeable and worked well with our clients.  For the most part, I left him alone to his work.

But one day he told me he liked my socks.  He seemed to really mean it and it was a simple as that.  Another day near Christmas when it had snowed hard, he asked me if I would drive him to his car in the outer parking area.  Next he took me to dinner and we began emailing each other after work during the holiday season.

I discovered he was a musician and a poet and his email missives charmed me. There were musical notes between each word and he wove melodies into my life again.  He made me a CD of his favorite songs and I sang with it in the car on the way to work.  We laughed, we confided, we shared.  I was falling in love – something that hadn’t happened since I had met my husband, twenty years before…

When my daughter was a baby and after her father had moved out, not wanting much to do with either of us, I made a heartfelt promise that I would not date or look for a new husband – I would just be the best mother I could.  And that’s exactly what I did until my daughter was grown.  And whole.  And until the man who noticed my socks came into my life, I just hadn’t been interested anymore.

After Christmas, on Martin Luther King Day, he asked me to spend the day with him.  It was a grey, blustery winter one and I wore a romantic black felt hat with a thin silk ribbon around the brim.  The air promised snow as we drove to the North Shore of Massachusetts towards the sea.  He wanted to show me where he grew up, where his mother raised him after his father died, and where he first learned to play the guitar.  On the way, we stopped at a lovely little spot for lunch which overlooked barren marshes with lonely swaying grasses.  If I had longed for romance all those years raising my daughter alone, I had it now.  We were the only diners at the little shingled inn and were lucky to have a grandmotherly waitress who seemed to sense our status as new lovers.  Maybe our clasped hands across the table told her.  Or maybe it was the frivolous hat I chose to wear that day.  She kindly lit the small candle on our table.

Just before dusk, when the smell of ice was in the air, we took one parting drive down a snow-touched sandy road leading to the beach.  After parking, we gazed out onto the steel-grey water and watched the shadows from the darkening sky.  I tried to imagine what it must be like in summer warmth with beachgoers and colorful fluttering towels, and the sun scattering diamonds on the grains of sand.  Inside the car I shivered into his warm arms and this thrilling new world which seemed as bright-hued as the scene I had just envisioned.  And as I told him about my revery, he smiled and nodded into my into my eyes.  But I wondered how long this relationship could last and just where it would end up.  It was intense and exciting but like most all-consuming things, there was a touch of agony in the “us”.

Despite our romance, no one knew and I was still his boss.  He also had a young child.  And if that didn’t make it complicated, he was gone most weekend nights, traveling to play his music.  As well, I was a bit older and had my own issues –  my daughter still needed me and I couldn’t travel with him.

Soon the work he was hired to do dried up and we couldn’t keep him.  This didn’t cause a rift but I did feel things shifting and changing.  I think we both knew we were not meant to be forever.  In early spring, he told me he was moving to Florida to play with a new band and be closer to his ex and their little boy.  Inwardly I cried.  Our differences, although not glaring, where not the ingredients for a realistic mid-life relationship.

Our last time together was oh so bittersweet.  He cut his hair for me to see what he looked like without his short ponytail as I had asked him once.  His dark hair was smooth and shiny and looked blacker and sleeker than it had before.  I stroked it sadly as he rested his head in my lap.  He kissed my fingertips as I willed the lump in my throat to go away.  Our last moments, although not tragic and wrenching, were sentimental and sweet.  And I don’t think I imagined it…I know he felt it too.  As he held me in his arms that last time – and this sounds terribly corny and for that I’m sorry –  he sang/whispered in a faint voice, “Oh Donna…I had a girl”.

I was sad for about a day.  Mostly I was just so glad I had the chance to love again and that someone had thought me lovely (as he often said).  He had opened me up like a flower and made me dream again and for that I was truly grateful.  His memory lingered on as a promise of other wonderful and more lasting things to come.

Today I have no idea where he is although I did hear from him once more – he sent a touching postcard with a picture of a beach.  It was the sunny one from my dream.  He wrote that he hoped I was well and that he still thought of me now and again. And I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I realized the card had come on Martin Luther King Day.