“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.
They were both very shy, and they knew each other slowly, tentatively; they came close and drew apart, they touched and withdrew, neither wishing to impose upon the other more than might be welcomed. Day by day the layers of reserve that protected them dropped away, so that at last they were like many who are extraordinarily shy, each open to the other, unprotected, perfectly and unselfconsciously at ease.”—John Williams, Stoner
There were still layers, and yet, between, an intimacy appeared. From stories, dreams and thought—shared and after mused—from a nothing, something became.
They sat quietly over table, drinking dark coffee in the gold of sky before dawn cresting of the sun.
From window gazing on to world around, black cattle grazed in undulant, open pastures whose green of verdure paled in emergence of heading stems that in dawn’s cool, bowed soft in weight of night’s dew in hairs of setting seed.
Past was the season of spring and its blossoms. Not yet was the strain of summer heat, and in the present, they—like world—lived, undecided, in season of transition; time of in between; falling away of youthful hopes, not yet to fruit of life full-lived; an active waiting, living in present without knowing of a future.
He sat with his book, and she with hers, each reading, drinking from their coffee, eyes rising from page to find and meet the others’ gazing back; a speaking in the solace of non-essential words left unsaid.
In his story and her presence, he lived a peace—an ease with self and state and place. Between her meeting eyes, he enjoyed viewing of her rest, the lines of her body, accents and definitions, way season’s light returned freckles to her sun-touched shoulders and bridge of nose that carried over cheeks, subtleties of change in strands of hair offset from the rest, lightened in days beneath strengthening sky; and, too, those that held their hue.
She liked the way sun tanned his skin, a naturalness that deepened; hid the blushings of his meekness and how, when they no longer shone on surface, she knew their presence, still, in knowing him; a sensing without seeing, an understanding of intimacy without need of further sign.
He loved her lips, the way they drew small together when she focused, thinned and stretched in spread and show of smile; their suppleness in kiss; soft press in gentle meet, affection and hold of power when they stayed.
She loved the touch of his hands, light callouses on palms that scratched and left a sensing as they moved and held upon her; a coarseness in delicate, foretelling strength through beginning gentleness—whether strength shone or suppressed, she knew, resided in her own signs and telling spirit: the way he read without needing said, as he read then beside her, attention to detail in stories and souls—so easily missed—but are meaning for it all.
She brushed her hair, blush showing beneath, accenting greater, season freckles of unmade face; and she warmed, knowing reciprocal blush of him that did not show on skin but told in unguarded eyes.
“I found a passage,” he told, leaving book open to page as he guided it to her across table and space between.
She read it, affected in its message, timeliness and alignment to her own unspoken thought in living moment. She always found it strange, the way messages find, arrive, and speak in resonance to living sense in quiet and guarded hearts.
“I thought that was beautiful,” he said, speaking verse aloud, “…love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another…Isn’t that the aim of it all?”
A layer was removed, a new degree of ease, an openness like prairie and pastures beyond as sun crested, gold catching in heads of the grasses waving light in morning wind, in sheen on backs of cattle, and refracting to painted details of thin-wisp clouds in sky above.
He rose, taking coffee from her hands, and filled both their mugs again. Returning, he placed the mug beside her as she thought further on the words.
He returned to his own chair, silent and smiling on her from over table. As he drank the warmth and richness from filled mug, she stared on the hold and cradle of his hands around the smooth skin of mug warmed from within.
She wanted his hold; and, for it, she rose. His eyes discerned, fixing on length and shape of legs in quiet stride until stand near beside.
He rose to meet and coffees cooled on table top that ceased as space between.
*****
“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and intelligence of the heart.”
Moment by moment, day by day: together, they became.