One Perfect Moment

by Sophie

Love & Romance

To my great astonishment and horror, blogger ate my post.

This has never happened to me before in what must be hundreds of posts by now. I had written a long and rather didactic essay on injecting interest into your fictional romantic relationships with the ol' inversion trick, playing off the unexpected, exploring attraction based on complex and layered experiences and emotions and not just the obvious.

Oh, blah, blah, blah, I bored myself so it's no wonder blogger too was bored and obliterated the thing as punishment.

Instead of trying to recreate that lumbering mess, I'm instead going to share a single romantic moment from my own past, one small interlude that occurred over two decades ago.

Chicago. Freezing, blowing snow. First year out on my own, first time I'd ever shared a place with a man. Christmas approaching; everything new and tentative and a little scary and a little silly. A tree for our apartment: sixty dollars we couldn't afford from a lot in Lincoln Park, much more Charlie Brown than Hallmark. A string of lights from Walgreens, Christmas cards signed - giddily! - with both our names.

Going shopping. holding mittened hands - it's hard to do; it was zero degrees and my mittens were bulky, his leather gloves were thick. What gift to get for his brothers, my mom? Taking our time exploring the little boutiques on Oak street; everything out of our price range, and then spending all our money not on gifts but on one perfect handmade frame in an art studio, for a photo of the two of us, which I will never ever throw away, though the hairstyle and the dress have long since faded from fashion and the day itself is lost to memory.