Eloquence

Being eloquent was never something I would have thought would be difficult. It's just like any other thing - if you want it enough it can happen, like learning to play the guitar or tame a lion. It's just effort and nothing more, nothing less. Natural talent is something that I've never actually believed existed; the world is a mixture of efforts with just a tiny smattering of aptitude.

But it's easy to be eloquent, and it's easy to not be eloquent. Oftentimes these two states of being are juxtaposed by the intentions, with your more severe efforts to be proper and smooth ending in the most utter failures. I would speak about the other direction, but that's not nearly as important in a society like ours. Someone trying to lack seriousness or poise or tact is generally not going to end up looking elegant by accident. I say generally, though, because I'm sure it's happened.

Eloquence is especially important in matters of courting, and it was never more important to me in one such situation. Her name doesn't particularly matter, but it was a strange one, so I might as well say it; she was Jewel. A suggestive name from proud parents, it seemed, and probably expressive of what most parents think of their new, pink, unblemished spawn. Fiery red hair also made the suggestion that her parents may have taken one glance at the newly birthed creature and thought "ruby."

Jewel was one of the most proper humans I have associated with in all my days. In all my four decades, I'd never before met a woman who had actually been to finishing school. From my cinematic experiences (I had worked in a drive-in theater in my youth, screening film after film for those who would watch, and those who didn't watch but showed up anyway), I had briefly been introduced to the concept by a dusty film featuring Ginger Rogers. Regardless, Jewel had a knack for always keeping her spine straight and her arms neatly at her sides as if balancing a fragile vase atop her head. When I approached her to ask for a date, elegance was an absolute necessity. I had saved my best denim jeans and button-up shirt for that day, even though the jeans were dusty and the shirt was wrinkled. I stood up as straight as my back would allow. Stammering and stumbling, I could feel my heart beating in the soles of my feet, my face heating up as I muttered the invitation. Hearing the answer was even more jarring than asking the question.

She and I dated for some time, but as anything, our interaction was fleeting. Whether by the choice of both those of a couple, a single one or the other, or neither, everything passes with time. Our love was not extinguished by either of our choice, the flame slowly deprived of oxygen until it could struggle no more. She was self-conscious about the wig she wore when we were wed, thought it didn't quite do her former fiery red hair justice. I agreed, but shared the sentiment that it was good enough as long as she was beneath it.

Seven months later, Jewel and I both knew time was short. She refused to rot in a hospital bed for any longer. She died in our bed on a Friday morning, a light rain pattering on the roof. It was seventy-two degrees on June 2, 1977. I was the only one there when she passed; we both told each other that our love was all we had, we weren't lying, aside from the usual and generally unimportant material things.

Life gives and it takes away. Of nothing else am I more certain.