It was a unique place of commonness and culture, poverty and wealth; wealth wrought of a simple plan, by a simple man, who after gaining unfathomable paper money never left the simplicity and metaphysical truth of simple home and simple means.
As is the way of most great wealths, it was the heirs that spent and showed it off. New money—wanting to belong and be welcomed into old—lived and spent in a lavishness in signaling to old never knowing how fast money truly changes hands and how much of the old, spent lavishly the same, was mostly gone and only image; but for now, the money was real.
Spending, they brought culture to the commonness, galleries and exhibits of modernity and old amidst hills that, generation before, held sheds and slats and hollows where men still walked from the wilds and on occasion appeared on streets of the town. Life and times changed fast, and the family was a large reason why.
Still, there was benefit to the wealth and opulence and spending and showcasing of higher culture. Their galleries and exhibits were one: a new artistic network that also brought money, visitors, and settlers of different backstories to the town, valley, and surrounding hills that shone ever more in homes and less in wooded forest.
Time is ever-changing.
In a gallery of the town, they walked slow in admiring and enjoyment together. While she focused on the art, he was as content to leave his focus fixed to her: both held beauty, curiosity and invitations to unknowns and self-formed perceptions. A difference, what he did not know, he could ask to her; while her wonderings on the art remained unanswered—the artists gone, absent to aid in define and understanding.
She dressed in way emblematic of place: in both a commonness and chic that would discordant but somehow worked.
Boots that held mud from the hills, melt of snow softening and making surface mess of the trails. Black jeans without a belt, a simple top under simple coat of organic and earth tone hues; and on a hat she wore a hat belonging to her father.
When she wore it, she felt him near, and such was a blessing and treasure to soul. In her peace, in her love of bond that would never die, a serenity shone through.
She crossed her arms in assess of a frame. Open zip of coat, and hue of shirt shown forward in shape of her breasts on arm-braced shelf. Common, plain—a way of everyday—as some of the greatest sights and beauties are: like loving eyes, sunrise hues in moment’s break of gold; leaves in autumn, blooms in spring—beauty that leads spirits to sing.
He did not know her history beyond what she wished to share.
Sometimes, he asked. Sometimes, she answered. When she didn’t, he asked no more. We all deserve our histories that live and die with us. What is shared is gift, the rest is self; and whether or not is ever revealed resides in trust to whom it’s told, compassion, affinity, and depth of love. All is choice of the giver, and it is wrong to request what is not shared free.
He didn’t need to know. He loved what of her he did; and such was enough. It was needing, seeking, always wanting and desiring more that ruined simple goods.
He was happy in the simple, as was most of the town and valley in blend of opulence and plain.
To see her in hat, to see her in love-serenity in wear and sharing of a treasure; he thought of his own father. It was his birthday. He had yet to call. Remembering, on leave of gallery, he would.
He would speak to his father of memories he loved, times lived just he and him that he was blessed still to speak and share and revival of the memories; living-treasure he still had.
There would come a day, when material treasures and memories were all he’d hold: hats and shirts, pictures in frames—other greater and smaller objects—that talismans to a love that lived into beyond; when he worked through the hurt of loss and grief, pain and time-depression of the coping before, as night, through darkness: peace of reconcile shone in rise and warmth of after-side.
He called his father. He spoke his love, sharing memories of fishing trips and days in woods, and summers spent on baseball fields and farm pond banks. His father blessed him with a beautiful growing up. He told and let his father know as he’d done a thousand times and would do again until he lost the chance to share.
Hand in hand, they walked the streets. Winter was erasing, and sun shone bright and warm. She was beautiful in her serenity, in company of her father’s spirit. He told and let her know; spirit raised and made more radiant.
He wanted nothing more, to see, be present, wanted beside her was enough.
Along the walk, from store to store, they stopped where attention drew; and when they’d seen enough, mud still on her upper line of cleated sole, they left the town, her in lead, again into the wilds where it was their love held root.