Revealing truths

My boyfriend and I were hanging out at his parents' house last night. Something was said and his mom started talking about the Halloween costumes he wore as a kid and dragged out the photo albums to illustrate her stories.

Sitting next to her on the floor in their living room, I leaned over the photos and was surprised at how eager I was to see these new images of the man next to me. F sat behind me, watching over my shoulder and adding an occasional remark to her narration.

First she found a picture of him as John Elway, not surprising considering he grew up in Denver too. I giggled at how complete his costume was: helmet, jersey, short pants and knee socks. I turned my head and smiled at F, before turning back for the pictures of him as a pirate and as Superman (a favorite character of mine!).

Soon she came across a picture of him in an elaborate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume. Squinting at the pictures of him, I asked him which TMNT he was. Without giving him a chance to answer, I caught a glimpse of the buckle on the belt of the costume and said, "Oh, you were Michelangelo." "No, that's an R.," he pointed out indignantly. "I was Raphael."

His arm stayed over my shoulder after his gesture and now his breath was near my ear as his mom flipped backwards through his life, searching for the piece de resistance. I found out this weekend that F had a love of Snoopy when he was young, so it was a kindergarten-aged F dressed as Snoopy that made up our last stop along memory lane. His mom found the pictures she was looking for and began to describe the costume, from the floppy ears to the gloves with paw prints on the palms, but it was the emotion of the story that drew me in. She smiled as she reminisced that he just beamed all day when he got to wear his Snoopy costume, and her smile turned bittersweet when she said that she couldn't bear to give the costume away when he outgrew it.

Seeing her emotion and feeling F's arms wrapped around me, my heart began to overflow with my feelings for him. I grinned at the images of him in the Snoopy costume and the adjacent holiday pictures of him in a child-sized suit. I also felt a flutter lower than my heart, reflecting my curiosity about whether we could have a son that looked like that.

Spooky weather

Late last week I knew the meteorologists were lying to me. Well, in Colorado that isn’t hard—if his or her mouth is open, they’re probably going to be wrong. But in this case they were being malicious, allowing young children to believe that the weather might be nice for trick-or-treating.

I trick-or-treated for almost 18 years in Colorado—I speak from experience when I say that the weather can be nice on October 30th and November 1st, but any freak weather occurrence in the US will find its way here before trick-or-treating starts. It can even be nice that morning for school costume parades (although that’s unlikely), but mark my words that it will snowing, hailing, very windy and/or raining before the candy gathering starts.

Striking midnight

The problem with being a Cinderella team is that when the clock strikes midnight, the coach is gone, the horses are mice, the dress is rags and all you're left with are some glass slippers. But you have some pretty great memories too!

Ways to get the giggles

1. Call a used DVD store to find out if they have "Spice World" on DVD.

Seen

Bumper sticker:
Save an elk, Shoot a land developer

Scent of a man

They say scent is the sense that will most vividly retrieve memories for us. They also say that we're attracted to potential mates by their scent.

I first noticed a man's scent after Ants kissed me goodnight in one of my very first kisses. As I drove home that night I could just faintly detect his scent on my letter jacket.

For years after my breakup with D I knew that I would be able to identify him in a dark room just by the way he smelled--loving and tender, with just a hint of innocence.

One of the proctors for my GMAT wore the same cologne S did when we were together. It was so distracting to me that I was relieved when he was assigned to sit outside the room while we took our test.

Now it is F's scent that I smell on my clothes when I get home at night. My perception of his scent has changed since we started seeing each other. He still smells clean, but he also smells warm and solid.

I know that my perceptions of his scent are reflections of our deepening relationship. I'm glad for the ways that it has already changed, curious to see how it continues to change, and wondering if I'm ignoring messages that part of me already knows.