Bigfoot in the Wild

I was sitting in the Lowe's parking lot waiting for my curbside order when I saw something I wasn't sure existed anymore.

An older couple walked out of the store together.

Nothing remarkable about that.

They weren't dressed up. They weren't celebrating an anniversary. There wasn't music playing behind them. Nobody was filming them for some viral video about what true love looks like after forty years.

They were just two people leaving Lowe's.

They pushed whatever they had bought toward their car, loaded it up, and got ready to leave.

Then I noticed him.

As his wife walked toward the driver's side, her husband held the door open for her.

Again, nothing remarkable.

Except she didn't just get in.

She leaned into him.

She gave him a big kiss and wrapped herself around him in a quick sideways hug. For just a moment, she rested her head against his chest.

It lasted maybe a second.

Then she climbed into the driver's seat.

He closed her door and started walking around the back of the car toward the passenger side.

And before he got there, she reached across the center console and unlocked his door for him.

That was it.

That was the whole thing.

Two people leaving a hardware store.

And I sat there watching them like I had just seen Bigfoot in the wild.

Because apparently it exists.

But good luck convincing anyone when you tell them what you saw.

Nothing Happened

That's what struck me afterward.

Nothing happened.

He held a door.

She kissed him.

She leaned against him.

He walked around the car.

She unlocked his door.

There was no grand romantic gesture.

No flowers.

No expensive dinner.

No anniversary trip.

No marriage counselor explaining the five things successful couples do.

No social media declaration about marrying your best friend.

Nobody said a word that I could hear.

They just seemed to notice each other.

And maybe that's what caught me.

They were both participating.

He reached toward her.

She reached toward him.

He made her life slightly easier.

She made his life slightly easier.

Neither gesture required anything from the other.

Neither seemed calculated.

Nobody appeared to be keeping score.

It was just this tiny exchange of:

I see you.

I thought about you.

Come here.

I got you.

It probably wasn't even conscious anymore.

Maybe after decades together, these little movements had become muscle memory.

His hand reaches for her door.

Her hand reaches for his lock.

Her body reaches for his chest.

His arm makes room for hers.

Maybe that's what intimacy looks like after all the dramatic definitions have burned away.

Not fireworks.

Reflex.

I Didn't Know I Was Hungry

I think that's why the moment stayed with me.

I wasn't sitting in that parking lot thinking about relationships.

I wasn't looking for evidence that love exists.

I was waiting for somebody to bring me whatever the hell I had ordered from Lowe's.

Then these two strangers walked through my field of vision and somehow touched something painfully tender inside me.

I realized how hungry I was for what I was watching.

Not necessarily for a relationship.

Not even specifically for romance.

For reciprocity.

For the experience of reaching toward someone and feeling them reach back.

There is something profoundly lonely about spending enough time questioning whether another person wants you that mutual affection begins to look mythical.

You can get so accustomed to analyzing everything that eventually you forget intimacy isn't supposed to require forensic investigation.

Was that affection?

Was she being nice?

Did she mean something by that?

Am I imagining this?

Am I asking for too much?

Am I reading something into nothing?

Does she actually want me here?

You can live inside those questions for so long that seeing two people answer them without words can stop you cold.

She leaned into him.

He didn't have to wonder.

He held the door.

She didn't recoil from the gesture.

She kissed him because apparently she wanted to kiss him.

She rested her head against him because apparently his chest was somewhere she wanted her head to be.

Then she unlocked his door.

Not because he demanded it.

Not because she owed him.

She simply noticed that the person she loved was walking toward a locked door.

Click.

Come in.

Such a stupid little thing.

Such an enormous little thing.

Love Without a Press Release

I think we've made love unnecessarily theatrical.

Maybe because the beginning of relationships usually is.

We remember first kisses.

First dates.

First nights together.

Proposals.

Weddings.

Anniversaries.

The big moments photograph well.

Nobody takes a picture of someone unlocking the passenger door.

But maybe we should.

Because relationships aren't primarily lived in the moments we photograph.

They're lived in parking lots.

Kitchens.

Hallways.

Bedrooms when nobody is having sex.

Grocery stores.

Doctors' offices.

Traffic.

Tuesday afternoons.

They're lived in thousands of tiny opportunities to communicate:

I remembered you were there.

I considered what you might need.

I enjoy touching you.

I want you near me.

Your comfort matters to me.

You don't have to earn this particular kindness.

And maybe the accumulation of those moments becomes something much larger than any single romantic gesture could ever be.

Maybe love is partly the experience of being repeatedly considered.

Not worshipped.

Not constantly accommodated.

Not protected from disappointment.

Just considered.

Two separate people continually remembering there is another human being beside them.

The Part That Hurt

Watching them felt beautiful.

It also hurt.

I don't want to pretend otherwise.

There was grief in that parking lot.

Because sometimes seeing something healthy doesn't immediately make me hopeful.

Sometimes it shows me what I've been missing.

There are forms of loneliness that are difficult to recognize until you see their opposite.

That afternoon, I saw an opposite.

I saw affection that didn't appear negotiated.

I saw tenderness without embarrassment.

I saw a man offer something without disappearing inside the offering.

I saw a woman receive something and then instinctively give something back.

I saw mutuality.

And something inside me said:

Oh.

That's what I've been looking for.

Not perfection.

Not a woman who never disappoints me.

Not someone responsible for healing everything that happened before she arrived.

Not endless reassurance.

Not sex on demand.

Not someone who reads my mind.

I want someone who reaches back.

That realization is both incredibly simple and incredibly painful.

Because I have spent portions of my life believing that loving harder might eventually create reciprocity.

If I understand enough.

Give enough.

Provide enough.

Wait long enough.

Explain myself clearly enough.

Become safe enough.

Become useful enough.

Become desirable enough.

Maybe eventually I will feel someone reaching toward me with the same instinct with which I reach toward them.

But reciprocity isn't something one person can manufacture for two people.

You cannot love hard enough to produce someone else's reach.

Their hand has to move too.

Maybe Bigfoot Isn't the Point

I've thought about that couple several times since.

I know absolutely nothing about them.

That's important.

I don't know whether they have a wonderful marriage.

I don't know whether they've hurt each other.

I don't know whether they fight.

I don't know whether they've spent years sleeping back-to-back after arguments.

I don't know whether they've survived betrayal, illness, resentment, financial problems, children, grief, or all of the other things that can happen between two people over enough years.

I witnessed maybe thirty seconds of their lives.

So I don't want to turn them into proof of some fantasy.

Maybe they argued ten minutes later.

Maybe one of them drives the other absolutely insane.

That's not the point.

The point is that for those few seconds, what I saw was real.

He reached.

She reached back.

She reached.

He received her.

And perhaps that's enough.

Because healing has required me to question some of the stories my imagination tells me about relationships.

The painful stories.

The romantic stories.

The sexual stories.

The stories where I already know what another person feels before she's actually told me.

Maybe the alternative isn't finding the perfect relationship.

Maybe it's learning to pay attention to what is actually happening.

Is there warmth?

Is there curiosity?

Is there affection?

Is there respect?

Is there desire?

Is there effort?

Is there room for both people?

When one reaches, does the other ever reach back?

Not perfectly.

Not equally in every moment.

But genuinely.

I Saw It

Eventually my Lowe's order arrived.

I drove away.

The older couple drove away.

They have no idea I watched them.

They have no idea that an insignificant moment in their relationship became significant in the life of a stranger sitting in another car.

I doubt either of them remembers it.

That's almost what makes it beautiful.

For them, maybe it wasn't evidence of anything.

It was Tuesday.

Hold the door.

Kiss.

Hug.

Head against chest.

Walk around the car.

Unlock the door.

Go home.

But I remember.

Because for a few seconds, I got to see intimacy without having to imagine it.

I didn't have to interpret a smile.

I didn't have to create a fantasy.

I didn't have to figure out whether affection was hiding somewhere underneath indifference.

I didn't have to convince myself that one-sided effort was love.

I just watched two people reach for each other.

And maybe that's what I want to carry with me.

Not envy.

Not grief.

Not another impossible standard against which to measure my life.

Evidence.

Evidence that tenderness can become ordinary.

Evidence that masculinity and tenderness can occupy the same body.

Evidence that receiving love doesn't require surrendering strength.

Evidence that giving love doesn't require abandoning yourself.

Evidence that two people can still notice each other after the spectacular parts of love have become everyday life.

I saw it with my own eyes.

Right there in the Lowe's parking lot.

Bigfoot in the wild.

And nobody is ever going to believe me.