Love

From the beginning, I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what attracted me to her so forcefully. Maybe it was her tan, slender, almost perfect body, which she seemed just a little proud of when we ended up swimming together during PE at school. Or maybe it those crazy big brown eyes that seemed to grab me tight every time I caught sight of them; or her curly, golden-brown hair that danced in the wind like autumn leaves. Or perhaps it was just the way she spoke with that ridiculously cute voice that for so long had the power to put butterflies in my tummy. Or perhaps it was the very texture of her skin, at once soft and firm, although it took me what seemed like forever to work up the courage to hold her hand. I must have been already attracted to her by then!

Of course all those incredible but purely physical traits that I once thought were the main force of attraction turned out to be meaningless. I learned how much I was attracted to who she really was on a day that I first thought was one of those days you would rather forget, one of those days when nothing seemed to go right.

It was a sunny summer day in the east bay area, and I was just getting off work when she called me and suggested we have a picnic on the beach and watch the sunset over the ocean. It was late in July and I had been up at 5:30 that morning to get to work. My day at work wasn’t my favorite, and I wasn’t in the best mood when I finally got off around two o'clock. I went to her house to pick her up and nearly melted when I saw how excited she was to be going to the beach to have a picnic with me. She ran around to gather up the towels, and beach toys, and umbrella, and sunscreen. She was so lost in her excitement about going to the beach that she forgot her swimsuit! And her keys. And her wallet. And her phone. She probably wouldn’t have realized it unless I asked her when we were halfway there. I was glad she forgot her phone.

When we were waiting in line to get our sandwiches for the picnic, she grabbed onto me with a big bear hug and wouldn’t let go even when I tried half-heartedly to push her away. I pretended to be aloof, but she knew I liked it. Finally we got to order our sandwiches, and she was eager to order for me, knowing exactly what I wanted. Then we headed off on our hour-long drive to our favorite beach on the coast of the San Francisco Peninsula, just off of highway 1.

The weather was warm when we left, but it got colder as we got closer to the beach. The supposedly one-hour drive had already turned into a two-hour drive because of the horrendous traffic jam before the Bay Bridge toll plaza. I was upset because my beaten-up old car was starting to overheat, so I had to keep the heat turned up to avoid blowing the gasket. Driving in traffic like that could be very stressful. It didn't help that I had to repeatedly depress the heavy clutch just to move a few feet. I rarely got out of first gear. Yet her exuberance was completely unaffected by any of this, as if she were completely oblivious to what was going on outside of the car, other than the fact that she was on a way to have a picnic on the beach and watch the sunset over the ocean with her favorite person in the world. While my leg ached from the clutch, and I was hot and tired and angry at all the other cars on the road, she was singing and bouncing around in her seat, poking me and holding my hand and kissing me, and just being wonderfully excited about the day ahead.

By the time we got there it was cold and cloudy and foggy; so foggy, in fact, that you couldn’t see 100 feet out across the water. The sun was nowhere to be seen. But she was still excited. As soon as I turned the car off, she jumped out, gathered all her things, grabbed my hand, and raced to the sand pulling me behind her. She set up her umbrella and spread out the towels and started munching on her sandwich before I could even sit down. She finished eating and started playing in the sand, rolling in it and making “sand-angels” which she insisted looked like angels although they didn’t really look like anything at all.

When I finished my food, she insisted that I try to bury her in the sand deep enough that she wouldn't be able to get up. I started slowly piling sand over her until she said she thought she was suffocating. Finally I told her to get up and she couldn’t, so I joked around that I was going to leave and started picking up all of the stuff and walking to the car. She started screaming and laughing at the same time as if she were a little kid being tortured by a tickle monster. Finally I turned around and helped her out of her sand trap. When she brushed the last of the sand off, she started pouting and refused to stop pouting unless she could bury me in the sand as revenge. So that's what we did. She buried me and I pretended to be stuck.

Later, having pointed out that the weather was bad, and that we couldn’t go in the water because it was too cold, and how we were going to miss the sunset because of the fog, I suggested that we should go back. I felt bad saying all of those negative things, but when we got back to the car all she could talk about is how much fun she had.

On the way back there was more stressful traffic, and again, I had to keep the heater on to make sure my engine didn't fail. I realized it felt awfully quiet, and I looked to my right to see her all bundled up in her towel, sleeping like a baby after a long day of playing at the beach. Just seeing her curled up like that made me realize how great of a time I had had with her after all.

No matter what the situation, no matter what kind of mood came over me, she never failed to put a smile on my face. She was always happen and positive, ready to have fun and forget or ignore the things that made others upset. And her good humor was infectious. She made me feel like the luckiest guy on earth and she made me want to be better.