He came back to suggest a seat switch so that they could be together for the five-hour flight.  Carol's eyes met his and she was aware of just this: she had married an angel.  

 

He was also a man with misperceptions and perceived shortcomings. To be angelic among all of our messes, she thought, was a worthy achievement. 

The airline had overbooked, and, otherwise a minor inconvenience, the fact that they were separated in flight seemed like one more little death.  

There had been so many reminders of death lately:  Grandmothers, dear pets,  Buddhist monks, principled students; chunks of insecurity, illusions of friendship, the red walls if that old bedroom. Besides the pain, all of these brought a special let down, each holding some proportion of relief and weight.  Resolution and grounding.

Her 38 years had led her to  believe the lie that she'd botched her life, ruined her chances for normalcy, children, actual fulfillment, or at least peace, often by going out of her way to demonstrate her own eccentricity.   She had separated herself from the people introduced her to by Fate and her own intentions, trusting neither. 

But his voice was soft and his eyes warm.    

It was an immediately ecstatic, maybe ill-advised romance.

All romance is ill advised. 

The union was not so careless, despite that to enter it required stepping over an abyss.  

The marriage was not so careless because to enter it required stepping over an abyss.  To enter it required intent:  scaling walls,  rappelling, the right equipment.  Spanning differences. 

She spent the hours apart reflecting. She always spent most of her hours reflecting.  

When writing, which she once promised herself that she would practice like brushing her teeth, she tended to default to poetry. This was as much due to a finely-tuned desire to dwell within the essence of things as to impatience laced with laziness. She had the desire to get to the point without the intermediate messiness, without so much explanation. 

Recently, it was becoming clear that she was going to have to get dirty. Life is dirty.  If you're not filthy, you're not living. 

As a kid, she enjoyed worms and anthills.   Daydreaming about the lives of ants became a summer pastime.   The Italian neighbor kid taught her how to make mud pies. Then to play soccer and, later, the thrill of getting thrown about under water by a boy on hot August days. 

Four years her senior, Catholic, and a private school boy, he was always on some shelf a few rungs above hers.  She let it be so, but not without some degree of longing.  But there was no energy for as much grasping as it would take to make her desire known.  Besides, explaining the situation would be too messy. So went off to school and, in a few more years, she did too, in the another direction. 

(as usual, to be continued)