The Miracle in July

I know it's better
If we can wait until the morning comes
But I know it's easy
If we don't know what is haunting you

[Bleeding Hearts] by [Soft Reeds]

In Portland, life stirs ferociously lush in the Spring. Vibrant textures and colors erupt and retract in violent, unstable bursts of natural variables. The weather changes constantly. The climate can go from humidly sunny to perpendicular rainstorms to impaling hail storms to slicing, tree-toppling winds – all in the space of a day (or less).

And there is rain, so much rain, but it works as a necessary trigger for the spectacular metamorphosis of Spring in [Portland]. Those of us who claim to be "natives" have learned to detect the subtle nuances in the infinite variations of rainfall here in the Pacific Northwest. There are rain showers illuminated by brilliant sunbeams; raindrops fat, loud and sparse; a bright mist, almost glowing, clinging to hair, evergreen trees, and moods; and stinging peltings. If you [can't stand the rain] you will not like Portland in springtime.

And that's too bad, because a glorious Spring sun can also play in the sky. Today, for instance. It's nearly 75 degrees. I've flung open the French doors to my home's sunshiny patio and made excellent use of the cushiony outdoor furniture for the first time this year, enjoying a few pages and a nap in the shade. The fragrance from my beds of Lily of the Valley fills the blue, cloudless sky – and my senses. But I know this is springtime in Portland. A storm-bearing darkness is just as likely, at any second, as this summertime weather in the Spring.

I know terrible rains roll in quickly and silently, and I'm prepared to dash for safety. But right now I am enjoying the gift of an unlikely sunshiny day.

Me: Sorry, I'm not done with research. I will prbly have it done tonight. =)

I had begun in earnest to assemble the research and contacts necessary to satisfy the requirements of the organization that would fund the production of the movie Daniel and Søren were writing with the hope of [filming in Oregon].

Daniel: no worries, prb don't have time to delve into it before later this week
Me: oh good
Daniel: how are you darling
Me: tired but pretty. you?
Daniel: pretty but tired
Me: lol
Thanks for talking to Lily
Daniel: I'm extremely hung up
I feel like work is all I ever have time for - I'm behind on almost everything
Me: Won't be like that forever. You feel overwhelmed?
I want to say thank you for staring at Lily.
Thats *my* forte, feeling overwhelmed.
Daniel: staring at Lily
yes some say it's staring
you know its not
but I'm glad I got through to her
Me: I know
But he's gone, Rod is gone.
Last night he was escorted to the [greyhound bus depot]
Daniel: really? tell me all about it
Me: dude, youre terribly busy arent you?
Daniel: yes but this is important - love is involved - tell me please sweetness
I'll send you my new favorite Radiohead song
Me: I got a text from her last night
"ready to buy that ticket"
and she and a friend named marcus came over
to discuss the plan
Daniel sends [Radiohead - Nude].MP3
Me: she was flirty and had been drinking for a while, liquid courage I guess. I went over the facts of bus travel
and we caravaned back to her place. At the last minute Ryan decided to go, for
the theraputic benefit of it I suspect.
Daniel: yes I'd say
Me: Ryan and I went over to Lily's place. Rod opened the back door
we all filed into the kitchen
then Lily said "no other way to say this but we're sending you back to colorado tonight"
Daniel: jesus
Me: Rod nodded and immediatly started getting his shit together. we knew he'd have more than the allowed baggage
but I decided I wasn't going to pay the extra money to ship it all with him at once.
You have successfully received C:\My Received Files\Radiohead - Nude.MP3 from Daniel
so after he'd gotten everything together marcus explained he could only take 2 bags
and we'd ship the rest once he got back and emailed an address.
Rod tried to go talk to Lily's oldest before we left
which so enraged Lily I thought her eyeballs would pop out.
Rod didnt look at me or Ryan except for in confusion when we first came in the back door
Ryan enjoyed staring at him the whole time.
We left Lily at home with her kids (it's almost 10pm by then) and we caravan over to the bus station.
Daniel sends [Radiohead - All I Need].MP3
Me: on the way to the bus Rod stopped being so quiet and demanded (from marcus, who was driving and following me and ryan in my car)
what I had said to Lily and what Lily and what we had all discussed.
marcus said "I dont know buddy".
Daniel: ha
asshole
Me: marcus was very calm and cool and kept calling rod "buddy" and "pal" in such a way that it was hard to tell how condescending it really was.
I mean, Who calls a 30 year old "pal" and isn't trying to make a damned point?
Daniel: 'I just know you're getting on that bus'
'buddy'
fantastic
I'm so happy
Me: Yeah? it gets better
Daniel: really?
tell me
Me: we get to the station and rod clams up again.
I go up to the counter and buy him a ticket. was so easy, no one
gave a shit that rod was obviously nervous about it, pacing and eyes darting,
and here I was very friendly and paying for his one-way ticket.
the place stunk like piss.
Daniel: hahahaha
Me: There was trouble with one of his bags, it didnt close all the way
so we made him tape everything down and I
handed him his ticket.
Daniel: this is a fucked up story
jesus
getting transported like that by people who don't want you
harsh and right in your face
FUCK OFF - you're not wanted
only in America
Me: he went into the area that outgoing travelors sit, at the far end,
and marcus and ryan and I stayed outside the
glass wall but inside the building.
for the next hour rod walked in and out of the building, opening and closing the automatic doors,
and every single time marcus walked out casually behind him.
we were afraid he'd take off.
You have successfully received C:\My Received Files\Radiohead - All I Need.MP3 from Daniel.
Daniel: LOL
Me: security noticed this and raised an eyebrow at marcus
who quietly explained the reason we were there
and that rod absolutely needed to get on the bus when it came
Daniel: I'm laughing my ass off here
Me: they winked and promised that would happen
Daniel: hehe
Me: so about 10 minutes later there's an intercom message
from security
Daniel: yes?
Daniel is inviting you to start viewing webcam. Do you want to Accept (Alt+C) or Decline (Alt+D) the invitation?
You have accepted the invitation to start viewing webcam.
Me: "all unaccompanied bags are subject to search. all passengers must stay with their bags at all time"
so no more in and out of the building for rod, who wanted to avoid a bag search
hi handsome
I've missed that gorgeous face of yours something terrible
Daniel: serves him right
asshole motherfucking dipshit
hi baby
Me: about 20 minutes before the bus left ryan and I went home.
i was very tired and marcus was very capable
Daniel: great
Me: you're so nice to look at
Daniel: thanks
BABY
Me: lover
Daniel: just me
wanna see some pictures from the set?
Me: YES

Several photos from the farmhouse in Billund where Daniel had spent the weekend began to arrive – photos of Daniel with three female cast members sitting on the grayed sun-stripped porch, all of them bundled up in winter coats, huddled together under warm sleeping bags. There were photos from a Saturday night of dancing and drinking, where the cast "went to the only place in Billund you can go to at night to have a good time." Daniel is wearing the green and white sweater which I first saw him in as he waited for me under the skylight in the Copenhagen airport – a brooding Eros.

Me: good lord you're handsome
Daniel: flattery
Me: truth
what's that you're drinking? on the table?
Daniel: here's one of the other actresses and me
I'm having beer
nah, it's a Remy Martin
Me: I love seeing this!
took out the earrings, I see
Daniel: yes
still haven't put them back in
here are all the girls
Me: so it looks very cold
Daniel: it was freezing - but no-one got sick.
Here's Pernille - who I know and got into the movie
Me: good boy
Daniel: I'm never sick
Me: riiigggghhhht
And those three days in a row you didn't fuck me
had nothing to do with the raging sinus headache
from too much smoking
Daniel: hahaha
Me: I'm still mad about that
missed chances to make sweet love to you
but these photos almost make it up to me! they're great!
thanks so much for sharing them with me, honey
Daniel: sure
I need you to see them
see what I'm doing

An idea nestled into the fertile ground of my imagination. I heard a click as my mind connected this statement of Daniel's – that he needed me to see the photos – with the message he'd recently sent to me the moment he was back in texting range after his shoot. There was a sense of him needing to do the right thing. He was struggling.

Me: I needed to see them, as well
to feel close to you
Daniel: def
Me: my little story was good, hm?
Daniel: YES
BRILLIANT
ME LOVES U
Me: awwwww
I love youuuuuuuuu
Daniel: I KNOOOOW
Me: yeah??
lemme tell you again
Daniel: sure
please
gimme
Me: I love Daniel - an incredible lover, writer, and actor - the man who loves me like I've always wanted
to be loved
Daniel: THAT'S ME
cute girl you are
my girl...
Me: did you sleep well last night?
Daniel: like a babe
Me: without ME???
Daniel: sure, when I'm beat I sleep like a dead man
Me: I'll allow it
I guess
Daniel: thanx
appreciate it
Me: I'm a giver
when Im not being a taker
Daniel: me too - coincidence
Me: don't think so...
Daniel: me either
Me: but what is it if not a coincidence?
answer that smart boy!
LOL
Daniel: I guess we'll have to date
Me: nah, lets just fuck
Daniel: sure
I'll fuck you
Me: oh good. lets get it onnnnn
Daniel: problem
Me: oh?
Daniel: 5000 miles
Me: FUCK
I have to go to a meeting now
Daniel: sure I'll just work again
Me: keep me close, love you sweetheart
Daniel: you're here
Me: thanks again for the photos and tunes. I love it
when you share your life with me. Please talk to me again soon.
Daniel: night babe

My Viking lover was again my [Internet Warrior]. Online he could give and receive love freely, accept my passionate, consuming love unconditionally, just as he had when I first fell in love with him. "I show my love by listening to my loved ones," he'd said to me once, "really paying attention to their needs and wants, and being there for them. No matter what."

At this point I had been home (after my first trip to Denmark) for just a couple of weeks, enduring days of an ominous, presaging heartache. Daniel had been offline for part of the time, drastically reducing our channels of communication when the amputation between us still felt fresh and the wound still warm. And when we did "talk," we'd fought – again – about Lily. An argument where I practically begged Daniel to understand how I could dare be angry with her.

I had sent an Epic Email to Daniel at the end of my trip – a 979 word Manifesto of Love and Devotion to the Future with Daniel – which had gone unanswered. And a week later, in the midst of the anniversary of Pops' death, I'd sent Daniel a regrettably pissy email, followed by another regretful email (an attempt at damage control) – both of which were still unacknowledged by Daniel. All this yearning, all the jumbled transmissions from one separated lover to another, all those words with multiple meanings and hidden messages, hung darkly over us like the threat of a fast-moving, devastating storm.

I found myself losing weight again, lost in lethargy, and critically sleep-deprived. A rise in the chemicals that produce panic pooled in my belly and made eating unsavory. I was getting most of my nutrition from glasses of lemon and gin, drinking every night – a big change in my lifestyle which had begun in Denmark with [akvavit] and schnapps and beer for lunch and Jack Daniel's on the rocks for dessert. The buzz from intoxicants somehow made leaving Daniel behind and made returning the role of mother and sole breadwinner palatable.

The inheritance death-money which had mysteriously come at just the right time to get me to Denmark had been spent. Many bills had been paid off, and I'd replaced my elderly milk-chocolate-brown free-to-me couch with a stylish black leather couch from Ikea. I'd also managed to send Ryan to some classes (on programming and creating art for online games) to help him with the career he was pursuing. But now I found myself struggling once again to live off of the wages from my low-level video production job at a law firm and $53 a week of child support. I was sputtering again, and secretly beginning to ridicule my grand plan to pin the hopes of our love's endurance on professional success. How could I, an unknown writer and single mother from Portland, Oregon – with no literary connections – fulfill my part of the plan?

One Friday morning before work, after another tremulous, twisted night's sleep, I found Daniel online and waiting for me.

Me: Hi honey
Daniel: hey babe - and goodmorning - just came home from getting the kids
wanna see them?
turn on your webcam
Me: Yes!

An icy surge of adrenaline-like nuerochemicals jolted through me. The children, Clive and Ana, suddenly filled the video box on my screen. There, waving at me, was small and emotional Ana with her almost-white hair, the girl who'd let me hold her hand on our way to a picnic lunch at [www.vilhelmsborg.dk]. And there was Clive, trying desperately to control the open-mouthed grin exploding on his face, his freckled nose in a crinkle. He was wearing the [Pendleton] cap which I'd given to him. My eyes filled with tears, my heart with longing.

I pulled Ryan, who was getting ready for school, into the web-camera's view, so he could say hello to the kids and answer Daniel's questions. "Are you turning in your homework?" "Staying out of trouble?" "Playing any new games?" Ryan wiggled away and finished getting ready. Clive and Ana also drifted away to watch television in the background behind Daniel, there in his apartment – our apartment – where strands of my hair lay, ground into the rug, and where my smell still lingered in the nightie which I'd left behind.

My face was wet with tears. I knew the webcam couldn't show them, so I ignored the drops as they fell onto my laptop's keyboard. Daniel lit a stick of the incense which I'd brought him, [Nag Champa].

"This reminds me of you," he said. "Of you being here. I need to find a place to buy it locally. I'm almost out."

Daniel's speakers were on, and his kids could hear everything. The conversation was benign, domestic. I wanted vows of adoration and eternal fidelity. I wanted to hear Daniel's sounds in my ear, hear the breaths between sentences, hear his faintly English accent, hear the inhale of cigarette smoke into lungs. I wanted my man to profess that his love for me protected him from temptation, that the strength and endurance of his love could withstand our arduous journey towards bliss.

"Can you put on your headphones," I said, "and kill the speakers?"

I watched Daniel suck in his sloping lower lip, and I was instantly reminded of the first time I'd seen him do it -- breathing in his lip and hesitating, wavering against my request. That had been just 30 minutes after our first kiss under the Copenhagen airport skylight, as we headed by train for our hotel. Daniel was sitting across from me, and I'd asked him to sit by my side. And he paused, with a little grimace, drawing his lip into his mouth, before consenting.

A screaming shattered the shocked silence inside my head. What does it mean when you do that? I'm losing you...yes, I am. [I can see it in your face].

My face, like digital glass, betrayed my hurt and confusion on Daniel's computer screen. Daniel put on his headphones and turned off his computer's speakers.

"You are more beautiful now than I have ever seen you," he said.

I threw my head back and laughed, spontaneously, incredulously.

"I'm not just saying that, Shelley. You're so beautiful...you're glowing." Daniel looked ruined with sadness and pain, as if loving me hurt him.

I looked at my face in my own video screen. The yellow morning sunlight had flooded the living room where I was sitting on the couch, my laptop on the coffee table with the webcam tripod behind it. The illumination outlined my dark hair with a soft glow and contoured my prominent cheekbones. My eyes had turned light with diamond-kissed irises. Tragedy became me.

"It's because I love you so much, honey."

Daniel bristled and looked like he might suddenly flee, or cry. Instead he crumbled into submission to the words forming between his lips.

"I love you," he shouted.

Ana turned, startled. She looked at her father sitting at his desk, and then at the video on the computer screen. Looking into the webcam she smiled broadly. She understood these English words perfectly.

This moment marked the first – and last – time that Daniel said the words, actually spoke the words, before I did. In Denmark, once, he had said it in the dark bedroom, but only in response to an "I love you" from me as he crawled over me to his side of the bed. Every other time our love had been expressed via technology, perhaps both of us too shy to say it in person. With the lights on, so to speak. Yes, saying it face-to-face had always been a challenge, for both of us, but the reasons was not due to a lack of love. Perhaps, in fact, there was too much of it.

Daniel shouting those words like he did, when he did, was a [heartstopper]. It was as if he'd been forced to admit, finally accept, that he was in a relationship with a girl who lived 5,000 miles and nine hours removed from him. We both sat there a few moments, surely both of us wet-faced at that point, still pretending that our relationship and our promise of a shared bliss wasn't the single most difficult, most impossible feat in the world.

That night, after a day of distracting, unfulfilled work which failed to damper the fumes of looming [trouble], an email arrived from my mother to further darken my spirits – an update on my dying sister, Ruthie. I had to force myself to read it. I had to make myself accept the residual guilt and sadness that would be left on my hands, like Lady Macbeth's damned spots. Over time I had allowed myself to believe in a sick duality which condemned Ruthie for her character flaws, for her continuing to love those who abused her, while insisting that my own missteps in love and life – and the missteps of my Danish lover – were caused by circumstances beyond our control.

Mom was short and sweet about it.

Subject line: Ruthie

Beloved Eldest,

Mark brought Ruthie up from Vegas and left her here, in my care. She's been in the hospital for a month. She was drunk and yellow when she arrived, and now is pink-ish again! She comes home tonight.

I love you fiercely,

Mom

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The Miracle in July is the work of author Michelle Anderson.