.:Out of Chaos:.

I never understood why I kept that book. Why did I not return it to the high school library? Why did I not only carry it with me for twenty-eight years but also know EXACTLY where it was at all times. At first I justified my actions by reviewing again the due date list on the back page. This poor lonely book was checked out in March of 1962, January of 1972, December of 1975 and then my turn... February of 1985. Four times in twenty three years. Sad book.

The book? The book is the biography of a scientist Michelson and The Speed of Light by Bernard Jaffe. This man was America's first Nobel Prize winner. He used mirrors and prisms and candles to determine the speed of light by interpolating refraction rainbow patterns. Dry and why would I check it out keep it and in that moment a month ago know EXACTLY where it was in my home within reach to where I was on the phone and talking to a girl now a woman (still as beautiful now as she was then) who was in the library twenty-eight years ago at that moment that I picked it out of the shelves and she walked by me. Walked by and remembered that moment in her memory as "that boy is so into his book he did not notice me walk by."

Missy found me recently in April of this year on the nefarious FaceBook and when the friend request came through I knew exactly who she was and remembered her in high school with a smile in her team outfit for field hockey running out to practice. In our conversations as we began chatting lightly a month later in May that spooled up to the question "what is your memory of me so many years ago?" The answer was... the library isle, the boy, the book and a moment never forgotten.

The thing is because I checked that book out and never returned it because I have been lugging this object all around the country all these years and because immediately upon hearing Missy tell her end of the library isle moment I reached over and pulled the book from my book stack next to my desk I knew that indeed I did notice and I never forgot that moment either.

Our conversations during the next few months gained in trust friendship and intimate details shared. Sharing to the point where we made the effort to get together even though we live over 700 miles apart and when we got together it was magic.

Bounding leaping never wanting to let go of that first hug kind of magic.

A few days later when I dropped Missy off at the airport and went about my week I was astonished that each day after felt like a week and a week a month. While things went so well we were talking about connecting more permanently we quickly upped the time scale from January to October.

We are both in agreement that we don't want too much more time apart that something more than magical happened twenty-eight years ago and draws us both together today. That moment twenty-eight years ago between a boy and a girl in a library.

Isn't life amazing? Isn't it grand?