An Apparition of Spring

He held the graduation announcement in his hand for a long time as he gazed pensively out his study window. The lilacs were in full bloom, their lovely flowers blanketing the bushes with a quilt of scented purple. A young couple was walking on the sidewalk, no doubt on their way to the college. They were holding hands as they paused in front of his home to watch two squirrels, wild with the exuberance of Spring, chase each other around the trunk of a maple tree. The young man used their pause to steal a kiss from his lovely raven-haired companion, and the man behind the window turned his gaze away from them, feeling like an intruder. He felt an instant of contempt for himself, and for the staid, ordered existance that had him sitting at his desk, compelled to answer his mail the same day that he received it. Wasn't a bit like the old computer catch-phrase "garbage in-garbage out?" he wondered, to be a slave to such a routine. Especially today, when the late morning was lush with exploding foliage. The odors of green, of growth, of flowering life, he knew could coax his soul into rhapsodies of longing if he gave in to his urge to emerge from his walled-in world to give himself to the splendor of a beautiful Spring morning.

He had work to do though. With the discipline of one who has convinced himself over the years of the virtue of sacrifice, he drew the shades, driving away the temptation of Spring as though he were Christ in the wilderness demanding that Satan with his beguiling vsions "get thee behind me."

He picked up the graduation announcement again that he'd set down and re-read the handwritten feminine postscript that had been scrawled at the bottom of the printed announcement in order to personalize it.

We'd really love for you to visit us. It's been so, so long. Sarah is
divorced and is back at the U. of M., working for the college. She's been
asking us if you'll be coming up for Andy's graduation.
Love,
Donna

It had been almost a quarter of a century since he had roomed with Donna's husband, Phil. Suddenly the littered beaches of his mind were awash with waves of memories.

Images of night and lights, the taste of wine and the sound of conversations that ran rampant in the evening, slurred toward midnight and expired into the silence of couples content to just lay in each other's arms towards dawn. Memories of the warm sand on the beach at Park Point, an image that you could curl your toes into. Memories of a body athletic and muscle-taut as a tightly tied knot. Yeah, memories. Remembrances of snowflakes floating down to melt upon glistening laughing faces,
and of the long drives in his old sixty-nine Chevy. Those were the nights of searching, of a wanderlust that lead to indifferent destinations. The voices of Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and the Doors would echo through the night, keeping him company via his car's cassette player.

Sarah was with him in those images as well. His roommate's girlfriend's best friend, she had become an integral part of his life almost by accident. Her soft voice was a source of strength and comfort, as reassuring as turning to your favorite D.J. on the radio after midnight. He loved the way that her long brown tresses would frame her tanned face, her brown eyes and her Bridget Bardot pout of a mouth in a portrait of symmetrical loveliness, and the touch of her slender fingers, as they would reach for his. He'd put an arm around her and pull her close to him with a fierce possessiveness. He'd taken for granted that they'd be married someday, as soon as he achieved a decent measure of financial security.

After graduation Sarah had urged him to take a few months and accompany her up the Appalachian trail, a hike that could take them from Georgia to Maine. She kept telling him how romantic she thought it would be. Just the two of them sharing the adventure of a lifetime and the wonder of the wilderness together. "Let's not get married and fall into the rut of work and a home," she argued. "At least not until we've had a chance do do something that we can look back upon for a lifetime."

He thought her idea was frivolous and told her so. Repeatedly. Finally she turned to him after one of his well-reasoned arguments that he'd crafted to show how ludicrous her suggestion was, and snapped, "Screw you then. If you don't want to go with me, I'll just go by myself."

He let her go. He had just started work at the bank and he was anxious to impress his new employer. With the rapacious appetite of youth he devoured sixty-hour work weeks as though he was a teenager at a table feeding a "growing spurt." To paraphrase Jim Morrison, "he wanted the world and he wanted it NOW!" Unconsciously he had shoved Sarah aside to concentrate on his work, riding the merry-go-round of Capitalism, straining to grasp its dangling gold ring. He didn't realize until later that Sarah's letters were becoming shorter and less personal. They started coming less often. That was fine by him. He really didn't have the time to write much of a letter in response. He was just too busy.

After only two years he weas offered the position of Senior Loan Officer. This was the gold ring. He grabbed it and clung to it in triumph with one hand and turned around to reach out to Sarah with the other. To pull her toward him. But she was gone. He hadn't even noticed that he had lost her. Later that week he'd received a short note from her telling him of her engagement to a young man whom she first met during her hiking adventure. He wrote an even shorter note back, wishing her well.

He'd tried to take hold of too much, like a young boy reaching into a narrow-mouthed jelly bean jar. What he came out with was just a fraction of what he'd thought he held in his hand. Not only had he let Sarah slip through his fingers, but his idols had fallen from their pedestals as well. Joni Mitchell, whose lithe body floated in her swimming pool like a scented delicate lily of loveliness in her "Hissing of Summer Lawns" album cover had morphed into a middle-aged woman with an age-ravaged face and a quirky penchant for privacy. Cat Steven's albums were shattered in the streets by fans who couldn't understand his wanting to transfer from the "Peace Train" to a Moslem on a prayer rug espousing his pro-Ayatollah Shiite beliefs. Bob Dylan had degenerated into a parody of a poet, drug-debilitated into mumbling nonsense. There was Muhammed Ali, punch-drunk now, only a pathetic shell of the great fighter that he'd once been. Even the great God Morrison had burnt himself out. He had blazed with the splendor of a Roman candle, exploding in a hedonistic display of excess, riding the storm into the loneliness of a heroin overdose.

Sarah had left his life twenty five years ago. A quarter of a century was a long time. He walked over to a mirror and looked at himself as critically as he'd observed the eclipse of his heroes. Yeah, his hair was beginning to turn grey. Thinning too. His firm, muscular body was beginning to degenerate into middle-aged flab, and he noted the beginning of what looked to be a double chin. His stomach was protruding as well.

Now Sarah had emerged again into his consciousness, like a wraith returning to the scene of her haunting. Try as he might, he was finding it difficult to banish her from his thoughts. What would she think of him if she could see him now? He could envision her; young, vibrant and beautiful, looking at him and thinking "Good God, has he ever let himself go to seed."

Maybe she had as well. Childbirth, a stressful job, a divorce, all could have conspired to have wreaked havoc upon her. Age is a remorseless enough foe as it is without having to face it burdened down with disappointment.

Sarah's image continued to pirouette in front of him, though. Suddenly she vanished. Then he caught sight of her again. She was running down the beach, away from him, laughing that delightful laugh of hers. She was daring him to pursue her and to pull her down onto the sand, locking her in a passionate embrace that would hold her close to him for good, this time.

He picked up the graduation announcement again and looked at the pen, scroll and mortar board on its cover. "What a wonderful time of life to experience, he thought aloud. "I wish I could live it all over again." A wisp of a smile creased his features as he stood up and reopened the shades. He sighed sadly. The young lovers had long since departed, and a bank of formidable grey clouds had moved in to cast a pall upon the morning. With an air of futile resignation, he crumpled the graduation announcement into a ball, tossed it into his wastepaper basket, and reached for a post card.

Sarah's image continued its solitary run along the beach as he watched her move further and further away from him. Bitterly he shut his eyes in an attempt to exorcise the vision of her diminishing figure from his mind before he wrote......

Dearest Donna,
Please extend my congratulations to your son Andrew, and my
regrets to you, Phil and Sarah. My busy work schedule makes it
impossible for me to travel to Minnesota at this time. I will send
Andrew a cashier's check from the bank on Monday.
Again, my most sincere regrets,
Jack