If you’re new around here, the television show LOST, is my absolute favorite. Today is the 15th anniversary of the season 4, episode 5 – also known as The Constant. I will admit that the bar is low when it comes to TV/movies that entertain me. Hahahaha!! But what I love about LOST is what I view as the writer’s biggest gift to faithful viewers – the characters. People who weren’t huge fans of the show or who may have been infrequent viewers were hyper-focused on the plot. I get it. But as a character-driven writer, I was in love with the show because of the writer’s dedication to the characters and their stories.
The Constant is absolutely my favorite episode of TV (of all times). It was one of the bright spots in six seasons of LOST. And it’s a great TV moment, overall. Here’s a great recap and here’s the moment . . .
Stay close to me when life is easy and we feel breezy and light. Stay close when the storm clouds roll in and we are rocked off our foundation I don’t ever want to know what it’s like to pass through the best and the worst days, without you close to me. You are like sunshine to my soul. Stay close to me.
***
While I continue to work on my novel and prepare to finish another (called Sea Glass Hearts), I’ve decided to take my short stories (most of which aren’t posted here) and poems and put them together into a book of poetry/short fiction. At the moment, that book is feeling like it will be called A Love Like Sunshine. But as with all things related to my writing, it could change 101 times before I’m done. 🙂
As usual, yung pueblo seems to share things that hit me right in the gut. I saw both of these posts this morning. Two things have kept me single far longer than I ever imagined – focusing too much on my career and a dogged determination to find what yung highlights in both of these posts. I am not going to lie – I have always been more fearful of being alone and miserable in a marriage than I was of being alone, period. If I’m alone, I still have a life that has meaning. But alone in a marriage seems like a horrible place to be. And so, I’ve been willing to wait until I found it – until I found him. Or he found me – whatever. I was close. I’ve been close. Close, but no cigar. I didn’t realize the complications that come with being older and single – particularly when you don’t have kids and want them. Nonetheless, I’ve recently had this eye opening experience that makes me 100% certain that waiting was good. Waiting was right. It will (eventually) end where I hope it will. Sometimes, we need reminders of what is worth waiting for, pursuing, praying for, and fighting for. A selfless love – one that places the other person before self, and that is just as dedicated to a partner’s wellness? That is worth waiting for.
“The water is perfectly still Fall of a thunderbolt waiting until When the lightening nearly hits the lake You’ll know how it feels to want you and wait Count me in” – Early Winters
It is summer. Eastern Carolina is a sight to behold in the summer, even more so on the coast where the air is like a sultry, sexy Flamenco. It just seeps way down deep into your bones. The light in the early evening is like this living thing. It almost breathes. Deep. It wraps me up – safe and content.
He, the beautiful man of the hard way, is a challenge I am sometimes convinced I can’t meet. Even after all these years. Today, in a quiet moment in the midst of a busy day, I thought about the way his eyes hold mine. There has been fire and light for me in his eyes – for me, for as long as I can remember. Me. His fierceness lights me from the inside out with just one look. In the middle of an everyday moment, I look up to see his eyes on me. And there in that moment when I’m nothing special on my own and living in the mundane, I am all there is in his eyes. I am the only one in a room filled with people.
And then as quickly as he is fierce and passion, strength and fire, he is vulnerable. His tenderness for me still churns my insides like it did from the beginning. In those moments, I think I love him more than I knew was possible. On nights like these when the lightening bugs pop and flash in the approaching night, as we sit quietly on the porch, I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. There is stillness and quiet between us just like it used to be in the beginning, when he said all he needed to without a word spoken. The heat surrounds us in spite of the encroaching darkness. The rising moon isn’t bringing relief from the swelter.
But somehow, in spite of the sweat that trickles, and the air thick, all I can think about is the way fire and heat burn off the dross. We have been tried and tested in the fire. In the quiet, he reaches over and takes my hand in his. Ten years and a handful of days after the first time he did that very thing, it lights me up inside. Still. I close my eyes, lay my head back, and breathe deeply of the contentment that comes from loving him above myself – even when we do it the hard way. Even when we are tested in the fire.
– Flash fiction by Elaina M. Avalos
*I wrote this in 2013. This is a repost from when I started this blog.*
elaina-avalos.com 