Shade of Avocado - Part 39
Realization (Piper)
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When Avery and I emerged from our shared experience under the avocado tree, we found ourselves together in the bed in the back of the van.
“Avery, do you realize what I just realized?” I asked.
“Our first kiss, Piper,” Avery replied. “It was a wedding kiss.”
“Yes, it was the marriage of Pyx and Alfi. They…we…were returning from the wars with the Giants, the Plowers, and the Purple Wasp Swarm. On the way home to Pyx’s Realm we stopped in a mountain meadow. They pledged their lifelong devotion before nature and the heavens.”
“Yes, Piper,” he added. “We were creating a story. It was only a couple, three days before you moved. We were under the avocado tree making up a tale the way we had for years. After the two of them almost ended up killed in the battles with those monsters, Pyx and Alfi knew how much in love they were and wanted to be together always.”
“It was going to be a happy ending for them,” I said. “Then the time mom and I were going to leave got closer.”
“I remember now, coming over to help you with packing. I wasn’t so happy about giving this help, but I wanted to support you and your mom. Each hour, you looked more and more sad, Piper.”
“I was losing my best friend.”
“Yes. Both of us were. And our first love.”
“The night before we were going to leave, my mom was exhausted from finishing the packing. She went to bed early. I made us dinner. Hot dogs, chips, and guacamole from the avocado tree. And we sat and ate it under the tree, Avery. One last time.”
“The moon was nearly full that evening,” Avery recalled. “The light under the crown of the tree was silvery and magical. A pleasantly warm summer night, like this one, wasn’t it?”
“Until we created the conclusion for the story,” I said in a slow, measured tone. “Pyx and Alfi came down from the mountains and looked to the valley, the home of Pyx’s Realm. All the stars from the sky were raining down on it, snuffing out the glow of all the fireflies. Alfi rushed forward magically toward it trying to save the Realm. She witnessed everything being consumed in a fiery flash. Pyx came to the place which once was, and she found Alfi no more. Pyx sat among the ashes. Night closed in, and without the glow of her fireflies, she is engulfed in darkness. Herself, as Queen of the Fireflies, to shine no longer.”
We remained in silence for minutes. We turned to hold our bodies close together. And together, we remembered that fourteen-year-old Piper and sixteen-year-old Avery also hugged and cried together. They promised to write often, remain connected, perhaps to reunite one day.
“No wonder we suppressed the memory, Piper,” he said. “The strife of the war adventure and the tragic ending. It was like our real life at the time. Like the End of the World.”
I nodded while a tear coursed down my cheek. “We only hung on to our kiss to express our love as all we had left together. The rest was too painful to remember all the time spent separated from each other. We hid away the kiss, too, until we found each other again.”
Now, all of those memories were back for both of us. The question was, what do we do with them? Now, Avery and I had fulfilled the promise of my formula for falling in love. The question was, could we stay that way?
I asked Avery a different question. “So, this is how it is with somebody who you love?”
Avery laughed softly. “It appears it is. You didn’t love your husband, at least at the beginning?”
“I thought I did,” I replied. “And he managed to say he loved me, too. But at our age then, I’m sure we didn’t know how.”
“Pyx and Alfi were even younger than that. Do you think they understood?’
“Only in part. It took them another thirty years to find out what they meant to each other.”
“Do you think we should write those stories down this time,” Avery asked. “Or do we let them remain unrecorded adolescent fantasies?”
“Of course, we should write them down, Avery. When we were kids, we didn’t have the sense God gave to two rocks.”
“You know, Piper. This…tonight…it almost didn’t happen. When I was at the reunion picnic, Brooke decided she needed to go home. I was about to take her to the airport, but she insisted on taking a cab. I was standing by my rental car ready to leave myself, but my flight wasn’t scheduled until much later. I hated sitting around for hours in an airport, so I went back into the park again. I found another old friend, and I learned the horrific news about the girl I took to the prom. I sat down on the grass, so miserable, until I heard your voice. I looked up to see who I thought was you as a teenager, next to you today. I thought I'd gone insane until you introduced your daughter, Erin.”
Piper smiled recollecting the reunion with me. “To be honest, I don’t know what made me decide to come to the picnic, Avery. I didn’t have any idea who I was expecting to reunite with. I could barely come up with three names of classmates, and none of them were there. I didn’t expect to see you. Erin and I almost decided to do something else, and we were about to leave when I saw you sitting on the grass. My heart nearly exploded, and I told Erin I found my old neighbor.”
“I can’t think of a crazier twist to a story than we had,” Avery remarked.
“Maybe we should consider rewriting the ending for Alfi and Pyx,” I suggested. “They should have a much happier ending than the first one we came up with. Now that we have some perspective on it, I don’t believe it has to be so tragic.”
“We should have managed to write down a lot of those stories we made up.”
“It is kind of a shame we didn’t. Although, if we had, we’d probably look at them now and think the writing was crap.” Our laughter was unanimous, knowing it was probably the truth.
“I’d prefer to think writing them would have only slowed down the stories which needed to remain dynamic and alive.”
“Hm. Ephemeral yarns, only to be lived in for their moment? You’re probably right, Avery.”
“Ephemeral, huh?” he said as he rolled toward me again in the camper bed. “Good word. You were a good English teacher, weren’t you?” He kissed me and his warmth blanketed me.
“The best,” I replied following our smooch. “I could teach you how to work ‘languid’ and ‘frolicsome’ into one sentence.”
I kissed Avery, once with tender affection, and forgot what it would look like to write such a sentence down. We had exhausted our minds and bodies, and the hour was late. I was in no shape to teach that lesson right now as his eyelids drifted shut. I followed his example, and we dropped off to sleep.
like the stories we tell as kids are somehow wiser than we give them credit for.