Nov 20
10
In The Beginning (22)
TWELVE
The big day had arrived and I just couldn’t calm the butterflies flitting around in my innards. Truth is I didn’t want to. The arrival of the flight from Dallas/Fort Worth had just been announced. Am I going to be able to keep myself from jumping up and down like a ten year old with all the excitement I was feeling and totally embarrassing myself when I actually saw him?
I stood a way back from all the people waiting around the gate. At Kona they don’t have those enclosed gates and walkways thought of as “normal” in most airports, including the one in Hilo, on the other side of the Big Island… just the stair platforms that roll up to the side of the aircraft like many Caribbean islands have as well. The Kona airport is just, well, outdoors.
People were exiting through two doors. Two hundred people must have already deplaned when I saw him at the forward door! White “t” shirt, faded jeans, and a dark blue belt, just as he had described. I wasn’t able to make out what his shoes looked like, but with the gray hair cut a little longer than military style, I knew it was him. He was certainly good looking. “Calm down Suzy,” I muttered to myself.
I remained quite away back until he caught sight of me and walked over and put his computer case down and opened his arms wide and I never, have felt anything so good. Like an idiot, and against all my previous self-directed exhortations to be calm and act “cool,” I murmured loudly enough for him to hear, “Oh this feels way too good.”
He held my shoulders and stood back, “Will Barry said you were beautiful, but I didn’t expect a goddess …good grief, Jeanne, I don’t mean to come on to you, but oh my, can we have another one of those hugs?”
It felt even better the second time. “Let’s find a place to sit down,” I practically gasped and we found a bench – “Please tell me, that the same thing that has happened to me has happened to you. I feel ridiculously forward, but let’s get it over with, if you’re going to reject my overtures do it now, I’ll live with it.”
He grabbed my two hands in his and held them gently, but firmly and I felt an electric-like current pass between us. “Reject your overtures!” he exclaimed, “good grief, I haven’t looked at a woman for over twenty years and I’m totally smitten. Jack, Bob and Will all told me to get ready to be swept off my feet, that you were gorgeous.
“Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – I asked if something was going on and, Jeanne, I felt a total release …and I knew we were going to click – but I didn’t expect it to be immediate and simultaneous for both of us …not at my age and after all these years.”
“We’re the same age,” I said, a bit sardonically, trying to keep my voice calm, and failing miserably. “I haven’t been kissed in over 25 years, would you mind terribly breaking the ice?”
We sat on that bench for at least fifteen minutes “making out” like a couple of high school kids; later telling each other that it seemed so natural, while knowing that it was ridiculously unbelievable. “I feel like I’ve known you all my life and that I have been in love with you forever …oh, Brad, am I scaring you to death?”
“No, I’m relieved. I can’t get over this, a stunning woman who wants me as badly as I want her. I just hope this doesn’t cool off.”
Brad put one finger alongside his nose pointing to his eye, with the rest of his hand covering his mouth and bent over, shaking his head in bewilderment. Then he recovered, looked at me with a lop-sided grin that I immediately fell in love with and would melt every time I would see it in the future.
“Jeanne, this is perfect, you are perfect. Can we do this one more time before we go get my bags? Gently, but perfectly we kissed again …then we walked hand in hand out to get his bags.
“May I tell you something?” I stopped him and looked up into his face, he waited expectantly.
“I just thanked our SPIRIT-PARENT for arranging this so perfectly. I’ve been going nuts for several days, not knowing what to expect from myself or from you.”
“I have to correct one thing, you said to me in your e-mail, Jeanne …and this is not to help your self-esteem because that is all ego nonsense anyway, and our perceptions are all based in that realm …however, you referred to yourself as “gangly” and a lot of women who are tall feel that way about themselves and I generally agree with the perception.
“Many tall women are awkward at best which fits the ‘gangly’ description …now this is my perception so admittedly it is suspect, but then maybe not. You are not gangly, you are not only beautiful in any man’s eyes, as evidenced by the raves about your looks out of all the guys back home in Florida, who told me you were a WOW to look at …you are statuesque, you walk with absolute grace and I am head-over-heels in love with the way you look from head to toe.
“That being said, you have the most beautiful face on earth and I want to kiss that pretty rosebud mouth of yours again and look into those fascinating green eyes …he put his hands gently on both sides of my head and gazed into my eyes …then kissed me so gently, yet I was overpowered, not by Brad Cullen, but by the pure love of SPIRIT pouring through him.”
“Oh, Brad, Spirit told me this is ordained and it has just been proven.”
“What a perfect term, my love, we are ordained and have been from the beginning. Did you sense it during that first interview? I sure didn’t, it didn’t even cross my mind.”
I merely wagged my head back and forth to signal agreement. “You know, Brad, one of the first things I learned from Spirit, through you, was not to put any man or woman on a pedestal in a spiritual sense …and that, somehow, strangely seemed to confirm that I didn’t need physical love and that staying single was perfect for me. I think what I’m being shown is that we both had to be thoroughly prepared for this and have been. I have no sense of regret that this should have happened sooner.”
“That is a wonderful thought, direct from SPIRIT and back to the words I believe you’ve been given to describe us being together, it is ordained. “Looking at me in total absorption again, he said, “nope – no regrets about the past at all, this is perfect, you are perfect for me in the NOW.”
“So is our working together, Brad, and it extends to a whole group of people here in Hawaii – four of which you will meet this coming weekend. By the way, they follow your website and they have quite a story to tell you. Our work with and through them is ordained as well. I first used that term during my plane ride between L.A. and Honolulu with a man named Jeff Barrett, one of the four who will be meeting with us. SPIRIT had me say ‘it is ordained’ that we would be getting together with them.”
“Kiss me again, I’m not sure where this physical stuff is headed, but all of a sudden I am totally identifying with Darlene – as you presented her physical awakening in your novel, Leapfrog, which I just finished reading last night.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something in response, but stopped and kissed me much more forcefully with an embrace that made me feel totally surrounded by love. I am fairly certain not very many people have experienced this kind of love. Darlene and Jack Adams would know exactly what I meant.
“You know, Jeanne, he finally started, I have been criticized a great deal for going into all that sexual detail in Leapfrog – but I knew I was supposed to include it and had Jack and Darlene read the draft as well as the others in our group to make sure I hadn’t gone overboard – Spirit gave the okay and everyone in the group confirmed it. I’m feeling the same thing now.
“I’ve been celibate ever since my wife left me, not really by choice – if I was going to be concerned about anything it would be sexual performance …I’m a total novice; so I guess what I’m saying is that I hope your expectations aren’t too high in that arena. I can’t say that I’m not aroused, because to use the common parlance, you turn me on …” he stopped talking and took a second to smile …the most endearing, loving, almost helpless looking, lopsided grin I’d ever seen.
“Holding you and kissing you fulfills every physical need I can imagine at the moment. I’ve never known such love on the physical plane; and it is exactly why all of us felt that Darlene and Jack’s story needed to be shared in explicit detail. Wherever our relationship is headed, I know that we will be together in every aspect of our lives …you aren’t getting away from me ever; that’s a warning.”
“If you think I want to get away from you, you’re crazy. I’d keep you just for the long-winded compliment you unloaded on me a few moments ago. Any woman would have to keep a man expressing such eloquence… in other words I’m not crediting you, the man; I’m saying SPIRIT gave it to you. Brad, I feel like I’m living and alive physically for the first time in my life. We’re both old enough that we can talk about sex and I suppose at some point we ought to …however this whole next phase of our lives is summed up by ‘it is ordained’. Let’s just be led by Spirit… I’m looking forward to loving you forever.”
“Hey, I think we just exchanged marital vows,” Brad said lightly, “but to be practical for a moment, I think we’d better go grab my bags before they take them to lost and found.”