to move up and down
I’m working in the garden with a friend, our knees black from the rich soil I’ve cultivated for years. Bon Iver keeps running down from the house to deliver strawberry lemonade, sunscreen, little picnicky snacks and compliments, and eventually I ask if he’d like to join us.
‘Thank you, but I have too many things to do,’ he says. ‘I need to bring you parasols and cakes, and sharpen your trowels, and I’m writing a new song to make the peas sweet and the sunflowers tall!’
Bon Iver is experimenting in the kitchen. ‘I want to make you a meal that symbolizes our love!’ he shouts over the banging of the oven door and something that sounds like oil exploding. Eventually, I go out on the porch where I can’t hear it. The sun is warm and ants are doing something interesting, and eventually I fall asleep in the chair.
When he wakes me, he’s laid a blanket on the worn, bleached boards and the sun is sliding behind the Western hills. A cathedral’s worth of candles make a centerpiece.
He feeds me lamb and mushrooms, good dark bread with mustard, the first of the fennel sausage that’s been curing all winter, and vanilla ice cream poured with brandy. The cream drips on my chin and he leans forward to kiss it.
‘So explain,’ I say, with a smile, ‘how this dinner represents our love.’
He says, simply, ‘It’s everything I wanted today,’ and he wraps me in his sweater, seeing that my arms are raised with bumps; it’s become quite cool. The orange light from the candles and the vanishing sun fall upon his kind face.
If another man had said that to me, I might have laughed. But when Bon Iver speaks, he says exactly what he feels, and it pierces my heart like an arrow.
Bon Iver is photographing raindrops on flowers.
“What kind is that?’ I ask, about an unfamiliar cluster of apricot-colored buds close to the ground, their leaves spattered with mud from the the morning’s downpour. He pokes it gently with a finger—it’s springy—and then squints into the sky.
He says, ‘It came here on an asteroid.’
Which is what he always says when he can’t identify a plant.
Bon Iver has been at the microbrewery tour all day. When he’s dropped off by the neighbor back at home, he’s as red as a beet and laughing at the grass tickling his feet.
All he wants is a sandwich, his flannel nightie, and to tell me that I’m a treasure, at least a thousand times.
‘Let’s get away for a little while,’ he says, so we drink deeply, close our eyes, and imagine we’re on a pebbled beach, the sun washing our bodies, and the golden yellow glow is so real I feel it might blind me if I open my eyes.
‘What’s in this drink?’ I whisper.
Bon Iver is going around fixing things because another storm is coming and he wants to feel that he’s in control of something.
One wobbly table leg and a dripping faucet later, he has his nose to the window, monitoring the budding trees, the daffodils, and the blades of bright green grass that will soon be–in his mind–trapped unfairly beneath a blanket of snow.
‘The water is good for the mountains,’ I say, helpfully, but he truly feels that spring is playing an awful game with him, and he just sighs.
From the music room, I hear Bon Iver’s alarm go off. He hurtles into the room where I am working.
‘What?’ I say, confused.
He kisses me soundly, pats me on the hip, and is gone.
An hour later, his alarm sounds again, and he comes running.
Bon Iver is piping rosettes onto a lavender chocolate cupcake and humming a silly tune.
I tell him that I’ve been writing my little stories for a year now.
‘What little stories, baby?’ he asks.
Well, anyway. Happy birthday to us, and thank you.
Bon Iver stayed with a friend for a night to help him out with some trouble. I took the time to tidy Bon Iver’s drawers and left a sweet-smelling bar of lemon soap in with his shirts.
That night, I played records loud and drank a bottle of wine, just because I could; I popped corn and ate it in bed, my head swimming between the pages of a delicious historical fiction.
At midnight I woke to a sound, and felt popcorn on the pillow, I sat up straight and listened…
…but it was just Bon Iver, who’d driven 40 miles at night because he didn’t want to sleep without me. He curled into his spot between me and the cat, he pressed his nose into my neck and sweetly cursed me for being so comforting and warm.
Bon Iver will always rush to help. He’ll pull over to change a stranger’s tire, he’ll bring coffee and an extra pair of hands when the neighbor’s fence is down. I commented upon this once.
‘I just assume anyone would do the same,’ he said, surprised. ‘Look around you––our world is filled with good people.’
I look through his eyes, and yes: the world is filled with good people who would do anything to help.
