IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS

It's the little things that trip us up.

Not everyday ... but some days.

Last year it was finding a lone package of Beef flavored Ramen Noodles that tripped me up. I was 6 months into widowhood, and memories were prodding raw emotions.

This year, it’s the sunburn on my nape, and across the top of my back.

When we were dating … and later, newly married, it was summertime, and Bob was outdoors a lot. He loved to water ski; and play rounds of golf after work – both activities done shirtless: he was beautifully tanned.

That beautiful chestnut tan …

Chestnut brown - by Summer's end, Bob's skin was this dark.

I would ‘tan’ too – but next to Bob’s darkly tanned skin, mine looked almost albino in contrast.

… came at the cost of being beautifully burned. Of course, I didn’t go on these forays with Bob, shirtless, but I did dress as skimpily as legally possible. And neither of us worried about skin cancer. It’s ironic that the one thing we should have worried about, and that doctors and scientists keep harping at us about (skin cancer) left him alone … and an insidious illness, neither one of us knew anything about – or saw coming down the pike, claimed him. I don’t worry about skin cancer for myself now: my philosophy is ‘what will be, will be. You can’t cheat appointed death.’

That said, I’ll get back to the sunburns: Bob’s, the summer of 1974; and mine this summer of 2020. My sunburn today itches like crazy as the skin heals itself; and the skin hurts to touch, so I try not to touch it too much. Bob’s sunburn in 1974 would tear, and I would peel it, so it didn’t look so scruffy. He’d lie across the bed, and I’d straddle his backside and peel the peeling skin off in one large section across his shoulders and down his back to his waist. Then I’d smear his back with cooling Noxema cream. He hated the smell of that stuff, but it soothed.

Bob had a beautiful body. And he had beautiful skin on that beautiful body.

I loved feasting my eyes on his beautifully tanned body.

When I close my eyes, and let my thoughts go back in time … I can clearly see myself standing on the dock at the River Rat tavern, watching him that summer of 1974 – in those short white cutoffs, water skiing the Columbia River behind his cousin’s jet boat with the hot sunshine making the water sparkle and his wet skin gleam while he did those triple ski jumps.

A golden god-like figure of a man.

My man.

And now, as then, I get a lump in my throat – though for entirely different reasons. Now, because Bob is no longer here with me. Then, because he was beauty in action.

I don’t need to be sunburnt to recall that river skiing vision.

But, inadvertently touching my tender sunburnt skin tonight did bring Bob and his sunburn occurrences to mind.

I'm further along in my solo lobo journey, and my emotions aren't so raw anymore.

And for a few minutes while those visions of days long past flitted past my mind's eye, I wished that I had the power to zap us both back to those hot summer days of 1974 when love was blooming and life was easy.

It’s the little things …