Ginne–After, Despite, Because

MEMOIR (and) GRAND PRIZE WINNER ISSUE 2 CONTEST

JOHN PHILIPP

After she stepped onto the health club patio and commented “It’s less windy out here,” after I lowered the book and my eyes walked up long tan legs that wouldn’t quit, after we talked for thirty minutes and then left to attend to things-we-had-to-do-today, after she called two hours later and said the hell with her client did I want to take a ride, after we spent the rest of the day in Sonoma driving, waking, talking, after we sat outside the Kenwood restaurant surrounded by beautiful baby mountains that sloped into green-graped acres, after we nibbled on brochetta, cheese, and pâté, sipped chardonnays, merlots, and cabernets, after we spoke of vineyards and vintages, mountain lions and Mexican laborers, past hells and future hopes, after I gently kissed her good night and worried all next week working in Chicago she wouldn’t feel the same when I got back, after we spent the Fourth of July in the hundred degree dry heat of the ten square-mile ranch where she grew up and spent every weekend roping calves to tag, vaccinate, castrate and release, until she was sixteen and announced she wanted a social life on weekends and, if her dad didn’t agree, she was running away, after we met her family, her friends, her neighbors who owned the forty-three trucks—more than half with gun racks, after we enjoyed the man-made mile-and-a-half lake which supplied cooling winds while we ate, drank, and exploded fireworks long into the night, after we returned to Sonoma the next week to look for houses we’d like to own, we decided, two weeks after we’d met, to get married, and did just that three weeks later, holding hands on the balcony of her house overlooking the marina, listening to wise and caring words of a therapist friend who’d paid ten dollars to some outfit in New Mexico to be a real minister.

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