Under the Linden Tree we lie

The magic of the internet.

The sun is warm. I just know the sky is blue, and I can hear the bees are buzzing around the clover flowers round and about. The birds are singing too, and frankly, I am in bliss.

I can hear her breathing. It is slow, long, and shallow: She is asleep. I don’t want to open my eyes and break the spell. I am satisfied with all the input that I already have. Yet there was always something magical about watching Margot sleep. I remembered the charm of it through all the many years that passed.

How many years exactly? When I count backwards through my life’s milestones, it amounts to thirty-four.

Could I have guessed back then, we would be laying here now? Not a chance! I’d blown it (as the modern vernacular would have it). Quite how, I never did know. Perhaps I’d rushed her too much; wanted more than she was prepared to give. I was filled to overflowing with youthfull impetuousness! But she was so gorgeous. So delectable. I was drawn to her like a rusty nail to a magnet. Not a good simile, perhaps: I might well be likened to a rusty nail, but she – she is too divine to be called a magnet! I was just blinded by my wanting.

As I squint open my left eye, she is facing me. And in her sleep she looks exactly as I expected. The years may well have changed her face a little, and her hair is shorter than it used to be, but she is still Margot. My sweet, dear, perfect, Margot.

In her sleep, she has that air of ‘schoolgirl’ – an air of innocence. I’ll stretch out my left hand, and take hers into mine: Soft, gentle, feminine fingers. In sleep, a child’s hand, pliant, accepting, perfect. She does not stir.

I could never have believed that making love would hold the same exhilaration; the same mystique and passion after all these years!

When I close my eyes, I can see us when we were younger. We were insatiable for one another. We are now. I am now so in love with her – as ever.

But back then, she left me. God, I was heartbroken! It truly was like having a limb removed! I had lived and breathed her. She was in my every thought. Everything I did was for her and our future. Suddenly, I was alone. I did not like being alone.

I do not like being alone. Never have. That’s probably why I went back to my childhood hobby of amateur radio – when I had sufficiently recovered from the loss of her. That hobby allowed me to speak with people over the air when work was over – in those long evenings and nights when otherwise the memories of Margot would creep through the chinks in my armour. And God, didn’t time drag by to begin with! Misery, deprivation, loneliness, part of me missing; all the things that would creep back in, and bit by bit chip away at the foundations of what was left of my life.

And then came the Internet. I think that must have provided the same distractions for me. In all those lonely hours of leisure. (Leisure, pleasure – two alike sounding words that might just go together unless you are alone, as I was then.)  Eventually, on the Web I discovered TEOTI. Strange, TEOTI brought me pleasure in new ways: A Forum of people who were interested in one another, felt compassion. They supported me – one another – in a way I could never have imagined.

I was searching for something completely different when I came upon TEOTI.  When I joined I chose the nickname ‘togram’, and when I first appeared on the forum people asked where I got the nickname from. I wasn’t forthcoming because I wanted to keep precious memories completely to myself. But I remember laughing to myself once when I cryptically told ‘vydana’, “Think about it with a mirror!”  He he, she still didn’t get it!  So, you see, I never forgot her name. I spoke it often inside my head, and when I was alone said it out loud, “Margot!”

One day – a day I now think of as being wonderful – miraculous even – I received a private message from ‘tiami’.  I read her message so many times that day and for days afterwards I can quote it word for word:

“Hi Togram, I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your journal this week. It was a little sad. It must have been hard to have felt that there was no-one for you in the romantic sense for so long. It reminded me of my “true love”. He was a bloke called Tarrant. He lived in the UK as I did then. Stupidly, I walked away from him. Don’t even ask why! Who knows or understand the whims of youth,eh. 🙂

Anyway, now I live in Australia. Have done since a year or so after we split. Perth.

I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to him and say, “I’m sorry”. Stupid, stupid, pride! Here, I’ve made a new life. New friends. I’ve done so many things since, but still, after all this time, Tarrant stays in my heart and dreams. Like you I am alone. Of course, I realise that so much time has passed that my dreams of reconnecting with Tarrant will always remain just dreams. 🙁

So, you see, there is a similarity between our stories isn’t there? I tell myself every day that it is never too late for a relationship to come into my life. I’m still waiting. 🙁

Speak with you again, I hope. Keep writing your journals they’re really interesting.

Tiami

P.S. Do you know, your nickname is my Christian name in reverse!”

Until that moment, I didn’t believe in miracles.

Now, I do… laying under the linden tree, with Margot.