They were 23 and nearly 23. Young but already lifetimes into life.
Two years before, he had come back from 25 B-17 combat missions over WWII Europe, and was training to go to the Pacific theater. Death was behind him, but silently crouched ahead. Thankfully, the war ended, and he came home.
She walked in a commanding fashion. She didn’t have to say anything, but she did when she wanted to. That was the contained power she wielded all her life, in a place that stretched far and wide but was still nowhere.
At some point, their paths crossed. She walked in her arresting way, across a street he was driving on. The vectors, though exact and easily missed, were joined. Though he was at the steering wheel, she was in complete control. Their horizons merged but expanded.
Words and rings exchanged in a backyard, among the trees. Both in suits, hers skirted. Fully suited to each other, but each with their own constellations. Later that night, those stars appeared in the sky. They would see them on their honeymoon, driving out west among the natural stone monuments.
In the decades to come, she would guide both of them. He could build things and fix them, and so could she.
July 20, 1947
I Ate All the Plums 