CHAPTER THREE
It was the tail end of Indian summer in central Wisconsin, the eastern half of Wisconsin, between Lake Michigan and Lake Winnebago, a Saturday afternoon, on the first weekend of October in 1946. It was a memorable day, not just because it was a gloriously sunny day, a one-day surprise comeback of the distant summer that most folks had forgotten. Summer was making a final appearance in a parade of gray fall days that would not relinquish their grip for quite some time, like a kid ducking in and out of the rhythmic legs of a marching band, thinking he could upset their stride.
The sun’s rays felt unearthly good in the bubble of leafy, loamy, swirling autumn air that encased Carl’s new red 1946 Ford Super Deluxe convertible as he and Connie rode the waves of rolling pavement westward in a state of connubial bliss on Highway 151. They were headed westward out of Manitowoc on this meandering two-lane route, into the late day sun, toward Connie’s hometown of Chilton.
The drive would take them past hundreds of acres of wavy, flat cornfields, but of course, the corn had been harvested. The fields lay fallow, dotted with late summer weeds beaten down by a month of morning frosts, flowing over acres and acres of colorless dirt furrows, settled in for the first blanket of snow to put them down for the winter. An early winter was in the forecast, although the farmers didn’t need to hear it from the weatherman. They knew the signs. They could tell sometimes just from that dead leaf smell of the air, but for them, clues were abundant. September’s thick, dense clouds of Canadian geese had thinned noticeably in the past week. Their low altitude honking could no longer stop a conversation in mid-sentence. The migration wasn’t over, but it was down to single v formations, one after another, unlike the previous weeks that had a v on top of a v on top of a v, with so many layers of v formations that the sun strobed with their passage.
Something fiercely cold was coming, and the birds knew it, although all it took, really, was a farmer’s glance at the tree lines beyond the fields to see that most of the leaves were already gone, their glorious days of color but a memory. They had been knocked off their branches by cold streams of air flowing out of the Canadian tundra far to the north. Winter was coming to Wisconsin early, and it would be big.
Connie and Carl drove by the stark fields with the ragtop down, soaking in the warmth of the late afternoon sunshine and feeling a sense of inner peace that only comes from being with a person one is deeply in love with and whose love is infused with an indescribable contentment from knowing that it is mutual. They were a sublimely happy couple.
They glanced at each other every few miles, smiling and looking into each other’s eyes with the same feeling they’d had for each other when they’d walked up the aisle and out of the church on the day they’d gotten married seven months and three days ago at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chilton. Their love for each other was so intense that it could have lit all the lighthouses on both coasts of the country and all over the Great Lakes. They didn’t need the sunshine of an Indian Summer day to feel warm as long as they were in each other’s company, but even so, the afternoon rays felt awfully good on their faces, making them feel even more alive and carefree and a little toasty as they drove with their faces slightly turned up to confront the late afternoon sun face to face. Carl had the heater on low, further adding to their collective sense of wellbeing and mutual warmth. It was a perfectly beautiful afternoon, and Connie and Carl were a perfectly beautiful couple, perfectly in love. Every once in a while Carl would accelerate out of their casual cruising and briefly take the car up to seventy miles an hour on a straightaway, adding to the exhilaration both felt in this particular moment in their lives.
What are the words that describe the indescribable depth of love that can exist between two people? The two words “true love” serve merely as punctuation for this feeling so great, so deep, so uniquely human. That it’s an indescribable love does not mean it accepts a loss for words, but simply that words are inadequate. The shortfall doesn’t mean something must be able to define it, for all words are inadequate. Some know this love firsthand; others who may not, undeniably recognize it when they see it in others. It is a golden vibration that stirs every human being, and its emanations invigorate the muse in every poet’s heart. Couples that have it, glow in the core of its symbiotic radiance.
This love is not elusive, even though poets often say it is. It is not even rare or as uncommon as the world’s greatest romances. It happens all the time, and it is not only all around us, but deep within us as well, like a perfect seed, still and waiting but for the right combination of nutrients. When couples have it, that indescribable love, everyone else is a credible witness. It’s the love that is there for everyone, a love that every human is capable of experiencing, the love that every human desires because it is what makes us human more than any other emotion. This indescribable love between two people is what it is, and it is worth hoping that it comes into our lives.
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