February 14, 2013: The Valentine's Day reunion with D

“... as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her beloved,
her arms around him pressed as though forever...”

It's been eleven happy years; I wouldn't trade them. Now: reunion, nostos, odysseys end with journeys' meeting. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; present mirth hath present laughter. What's to come is still unsure.

We met in Washington as the midway point. He's come from Honolulu via six weeks in Los Angeles and Raleigh, gathering our belongings in both places. The LA household has been shipped to Washington, where we're picking up a load of my furniture and childhood belongings. After a week of sorting, tossing, and packing, we'll clamor into our UHaul and begin the long road north.

For the Valentine's Day Reunion, I celebrated perversely by wearing my 80s-style, off-the-shoulder t-shirt with Darcy's first proposal to Eliza Bennet scrawled across it, unattributed: ‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.'

Dan looked at it thoughtfully and finally spoke: "Is that an old-timey version of 'Call Me Maybe'?".

Surf's up

The bride is faceless for your projecting pleasure.

Things I've found while sorting through my childhood belongings.

Also, a board game called 'By Jove!' about ancient mythology, some dozen novels I began and abandoned before the age of fifteen, and an M.C. Escher puzzle with no lid (to show you the entire image), and possibly only some of its pieces. In other words, the portal to madness.

The groom is a part of the outfit, of course, rather than having independent personhood. #VictorianAccessorizing.

Childhood excavations continued: soliloquizing pillowcase.

Yes, I wore this as a child. Yes, my grandmother got it for me (in Kashmir, where they were staying on a houseboat made of teak). And yes, it's coming to Farfara.

My mother: "In the course of packing up for Nova Scotia, Sycorax has just relived her entire childhood. Unfortunately for D, he had to relive it as well."