Spaghetti on a Friday Night
The smell of the sauce on the stove was worth just standing and breathing in, a drug, a road sign on the path to creation, a promise of sensation to come, a warm reminder that this was home.
I felt your arm snake around my waist, and your cheek against my back. If there was anything that would distract me from the creation, it had always been you, even before I knew that you existed. There had always been that arm, I just never knew what name was attached to it, I always looked, always expected, always hoped for, but never found, until this moment, when the arm was there. I knew that feeling, I knew that cheek.
It fit.
A simple statement to a very complex emotion. I closed my eyes. I was trying to stop time. I was trying to hold on to the feeling of that arm around me, that cheek against me, that time of perfection.
The fragrance of the spaghetti sauce filled the air, and my mind came alive, storing memories, sensations, happiness, glory…. More emotions than a man should have at one time.
To this day, I do not know if the arm was just for a second, or for eternity. I did stop time and reveled in the feelings.
I reached behind and pulled your back in towards me. It made you no tighter against me, but made me feel as if I were adding to the moment, letting you know how important this was to me, how it filled my soul.
There are other sensations that, I believe, you think are more important to me, but it is the dancing to the music, the arm by the stove, the kiss in the dining room, the warm body under the fur throw that are important, fulfilling, manufacturers of smiles and contentment. You have probably felt that contentment in your life… watching a son grow up, hearing a grandson was born, feeling that son in your arms for the first time, making up with a daughter for the thousandth. These feelings exist in me as well. They are a moment of perfection, a moment when time stands still, a moment when you press the pause button on life and let the feeling pour in like a flood in spring. I do not know how else to explain it, but it was all here in a pot of sauce and a loving arm.
There are moments when life is crystal clear, when the meaning becomes apparent, the philosophers bow in awe at the perception, the tides of the economy, and war, patriotism and hatred are pushed aside and told to wait. These moments are sometimes passed without recognition, and that is a pity, for these are the moments that life is meant for. This is why we are given the gift, this is why we are born. I think that, if an afterlife is a fact, that these are the moments that we will be judged on. The universe will ask if we appreciated the present, if we knew the gift, if we saw eternity in a second.
I made a stirring motion in the pot, but it was my heart that was stirring. I turned for a kiss, but you moved to the left and came around front. No half kiss for you….. for you had realized the moment.
By the time the pots came out of the lower cupboard to be filled, one by one, the sauce was a collection of memories that could be taken out and tasted. You are the spices that fill the senses and enhance the taste of a memory.
You are here, the arm around my waist, the thought in my head for the millionth time in the last minute, the feeling that will give the sauce an appetite.
Thank you… on a Friday night… With your arm around me, even though you are miles away.