two who couldn’t grow together

“They’re called crepuscular rays,” he told me when the tide was low and the rocks slippery and the seaweed still shiny.  It would be romantic if it were anyone else.  The bay was beautifully blown glass reflecting the painted sky and bending ever so slightly with the breeze, the kind of water they tell you Jesus could walk on.

“I won’t remember that,” I responded, smiling, but only a little.  Four years, at least, since we’d been together.  “Do you want to do any debrief with the kids tonight?  Or is their activity enough, do you think?”

“It’s probably enough,” his eyes didn’t leave the water as he stepped forward and hurled a flat rock against the glass.  But it didn’t break, it bounced one, two, three, four, five times before it plunged into the water with a satisfying plop.  It reminded me of the Rock Olympics we grew up playing and had taught the kids yesterday.  Biggest splash with smallest rock, smallest splash with biggest rock, duck fart, skips, longest throw, shortest throw, and anything else we could come up with.  “Do you know how to play cribbage?”

“Of course I know how to play cribbage!  Buppa taught me a few years ago.  I haven’t met anyone else who knows how to play.”

“Me neither,” he responded as he pulled the small cribbage board and a beat up deck of cards from a plastic bag nearly eaten through by the salt water that seemed to find its way into everything.  I could tell he was smiling a little as he pulled a just-big-enough-for-cribbage flat rock between two rocks perfect for sitting.

We’ve grown a lot since the last time we sat across from each other playing cards.  He now talks about shower beers and majoring in education or philosophy and loving work with kids and wanting to be a teacher.  And it’s like a mirror and we’re sixteen again.  But we aren’t actually, we’re some type of grown up, and even after all this time apart and all that hate, there’s still something to adore about him, even if just for a moment when I beat him at cribbage.

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“They’re called crepuscular rays,”  I tell them, “Kind of a funny name, right?”

“I won’t remember that,” Matty says matter of factly.

“You can just call them sunbeams.”

“It’s like we’re going to heaven, it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Charlotte chimes in.

“It’s better than heaven, though, because we’re alive and get to feel with all five senses.  It’s the kind of moment you know is special while it’s happening,” a pause, “Lift your feet so I can lift up the bar.”  All three of my students lift their skis without taking their eyes off the horizon.  

The horizon is well above us at this moment as we approach the top of the chairlift and ascend into heaven, as my kids so aptly put it.  Part of me wants to call him and tell him I taught the kids about crepuscular rays and it was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen.  The rest of me knew the feeling was best kept to myself, merely a wish to return to a moment, now years ago when two people–who couldn’t grow up together–played cribbage on a rock as the sun set and made beautiful the glassy bay.