how simple love can be :: Personal Narrative Essays

how simple love can be    I imagine slipping out of my dress and into the tub, lying in the gentle light from the window, my eyes closed against the insistence of the mid-summer heat. I allow my body to remember the rhythms of the water, and I dream of the green spring which first drew people to this city and centuries later still bubbles up between the stones and the sand. I can hear those first horses and men snort as they drink, so near death and then saved by a crevice in the earth that sings of a cool darkness and a hundred thousand rains.  Ã‚  Ã‚      But the heat of this August night pulls me back.   Reality is a street cafà © in Nimes, where Cam is nursing his last cup of coffee. As I struggle to let go of the daydream, a young dark haired girl with chubby arms and tired eyes places a card and a small, stuffed blue bear beside my cup. After looking for a moment into our faces, a moment when no one's expression changes, the child quietly makes her way to the next table. When all the tables have been served, she rags her feet to go stand by her brothers and father who wait on the sidewalk. At the sound of the father's mandolin and a nod of his head, the brothers join in on a rough rendition of an old Spanish folk song.  Ã‚      The cafà ©'s patrons, in deference to the little girl or in a desire for the music to stop, begin to lay money down on the cards, and after a few moments of voiceless scuffling with her brothers, the young girl is pushed toward the tables. Once again wearing a blank but intense face, she gathers the bills and coins into her hands, then quickly walks back and hands them to her father. He nods at his inattentive audience, touches his hat, and without a word, he and his family drift down the street to the next cafà ©.    I reach for the bear, study its polka dot bow tie and swing it on my finger by its gaudy golden thread while smiling at Cam. He tears it out of my hand to throw it after the family, but I hold on to his wrist, and still smiling, open his palm, take the bear back and drop it into my pack.