Additive

A window of opportunity opened in space-time to allow L. and I the chance to spend a night by the shore together.

We arrived mid-afternoon, and after some now-expected “oh shit, the fridge stopped working” distractions, and some (very buggy) tomato and dahlia planting, we got our bathing suits on and walked down to the beach.

That we had our suits with us at all was due last minute trips back into our respective houses, and even as we were walking to the beach I think both L. and I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that we’d actually go in the water. It’s June. The ice just left the harbour, what, two weeks ago?

When we got to water’s edge we put down our sundries and ran toward the water with carefree abandon. She dove in, head first. I followed.

We then spent a remarkable 20 minutes floating down-harbour with the current. The water was crisp, but not inhospitable. We glowed with the feeling of having defied probability, of having followed each other into the unknown.

Relationships can be subtractive—“I thought that love meant, if I go down, you go down with me.”, as John Kim wrote in Single on Purpose—or they can be additive, a gateway to places inaccessible individually.

L. and I took a leap into the ocean.

Whose idea was it?

I don’t know.

But we couldn’t have gone there alone.