Beautiful Lives

It was the package that began it all.

I had meant to wait until I could get home and close my bedroom door, but the cool gloss of the corridor with its dully gleaming postboxes set flush into the walls and its small etched sign reading: mailroom, and the view of the bright campus lawns through the far open door and the evening warmth all conspire together, and it seems suddenly churlish not to respond to this perfect moment.

So I tear it open, and it is the warm, worn edges of the book that strike me first, soft under my fingers like an old, loved friend. I open the first page and begin to read it there and then, hardly seeing the stone steps under my feet or the avenue trees casting their dappled shade or the clusters of students passing by with their own well-worn secrets.

I notice a parting in the pages, and find a note slipped in there in your hand. This image: hugging the book to my chest in pure delight, caught in the streamers of green and gold light from the oak trees planted generations before. A lesson: life can be unapologetically beautiful and still true.

At the corner of the street I stop to settle on a set of steps that look particularly inviting. Some friends come by and I put the book away to walk with them, into a changed world.

And you see, I knew: before I saw the two white-shirted girls rolling down the sloping lawns, before my small sound of delight, before my friend turned to find its source, before our eyes met in a little shock of understanding, before we vaulted over the low wall and left our bags discarded -

two pairs of tossed-off shoes

a trail of laughter

and lying in a heap watching the puff-clouds drift, covered in grass stalks, we feel sorry for the girls who pass us by, hesitating at our invitation, unable, unwilling.

I knew it would happen. Because of the package. Because you reminded me that we create every moment, the way we wish it.

Making and remaking the world to suit our dreams.