The Great Date: Jiminy Cricket
It’d been a month of keeping his head to the ground, methodical order to his days, increments of waiting, handling life and making more of it happen. Thrills, excitement, hilarity, beauty, challenge, serenity all abound. Leonard was keeping it together, 30 minutes/3 miles on the eliptical every morning, double shot espresso, and a check of the weather, news, and goss on two sometimes three continents. Skype Saturdays playing global catch up with his life spread thick and Almond croissant Sundays. Friend hangouts were like nuclear family children 2.5 a week. Friends, exes, bezzie mates, and surrogate families fullfilled him in the way they were meant to. In the way a mother’s love endures, and a father’s support never fails, everything in life was a-o-k.
Yet here he was another bluff, vista, hilltop this was his life. Whether gentrified Williamsburg loft roof gardens, Parliament Hill, or climbed rocks of Joshua Tree. Places where the infinite was expanse were all he lived for. Because what all the connected dots of land could not see was the constellation of events that had changed his function from him to him ‘n’ her. He needed an occasional moment in the wide breadth of uninterrupted space to know that it was still just him, him a-o-k. There was more out there, fact.
Leonard would widdle away from the group, take in the sky, blue or black, sun-coated, grey, or sparkly, and wonder if there was a peak of galaxy connecting him to Sarah at that moment.
The insanity overbearing - thinking of someone else thinking about him. This is certifiable. Leonard was practical, clear-headed, routine. And Sarah was no Jiminy Cricket. The immensity of an infinite view meant maybe just maybe there could be more, even if he’d climb to the top just to breathe the air and close his eyes.
Yet “depth over distance” had failed Leonard, life’s deepest evolutions greatest loves would cease to come from Sarah, his true love would be simpler, heaven in the form of dinners at 8 and gingham clothes on kitchen tables, spice racks, package holidays, and none of the above would be effected by the fact that he still read Sarah’s star sign with his own. Yes, sometimes he would leave all that, his 2.5 bed flat with all the accoutrements of a-o-k, and wonder about her. But Sarah was then, and this, this now, with burps, scars, and heart tattoos, shopping lists and serenity prayers, this was now… Jiminy Cricket.