cheesy, melted love
“It smells weird in here” I tell Matt as I swing into the front seat of his jeep. I was ABOUT to tell him the smell wasn’t necessarily bad - just weird - but he handed me the smelly culprit before I could explain my olfactory experience.
In my defense, Matt should have thrown it away before it started to smell.
In Matt’s defense, it’s lame to leave a cheese stick in someone’s car in the middle of July.
It’s probably hard to be patient with your 29-year-old girlfriend when you find the stinky remains of her snack left in your drink holder. Is this love?
Speaking of big questions like what love means, I’ve been doing some identity exploration this week.
How am I simultaneously the girl who left the cheese stick in the cup holder of her boyfriend’s jeep, and the girl who worked with and for abused and neglected kids today, on the eighth day of my second year of my first choice job? Where did the first year go? Was I there? When do I grow up and stop leaving cheese sticks in cars? Did the last year even happen?
“When we get home, I need to toss this cheese stick” I think. But then we were home. I guess I had so much fun, right there in that moment, that I forgot.
So maybe if we’re lucky, we never stop leaving toddler snacks in cars. We keep staying present, keep staying young, linking moments together until it all comes to an end.
This must be love. Cheesy, melted love.
“I wonder why?” he half smiles and rolls his eyes and passes me the remains of a melted congealed cheese stick. I left it in the gearshift pocket of his car three days ago. Whoops.
I know it did. I have the pictures, memories, and scars. still, the last 365 days feel like a story; the intern chapter filled with 52 long weeks visiting the margins and limits of the human experience. Volumes of exhaustion, reward, anger, fear, and joy; one foot in front of the other. I survived by linking moment after moment together, until the year came to an end.
And now, one moment comes back to me. There’s a cheese stick in the cup holder on the most perfect Sunday morning. We find a magic parking spot on south pearl, the farmers market in full swing. I jump out in excitement, abandoning my morning mozzarella. The line for Stella’s coffee is short and Tokyo Premium Bakery isn’t out of peach pastries yet.
I buy a hanging strawberry plant for the porch. We play cards across from the sushi place Matt likes while I sip my iced mocha. The moment drips with sweat and blessings. We get back to the car in the magic spot, sleepy from the sun, drunk on love.
