Marguerite by Peter Christopher January, 2002

Marguerite has been my dream girl since we first met in real life. We were both in college, the summer break before my senior year and before her junior year. I first saw her spinning to the beat of night-time music. She welcomed me into something new. I became Marguerite. I became myself in her.

Marguerite radiated generations of refinement. Aesthetically, functionally, she was perfection: a swimmer, an equestrian, a dancer. She could translate ancient texts and explain modern microbiology.

Our love affair seemed as though it could resonate forver with harmony, although there were discordant undertones. One day, she pulled her physics textbook and homework notebook out of her backpack, and explained that she was only taking the class because her father had suggested it. I took the textbook in my hand, closed it and lay it aside. "We can figure the answers out by thinking, and we can have a great time of it too," I said. We were certainly different, but difference need not predetermine disaster.

Our first weekend together, she asked me to promise that I would always remain friends with her. I promised. It wasn't hard; I had already taken a few surface facts about her and made up everything else I needed to know. I knew she was my dream, and she was mine.

Two months later, those discordant undertones became much more clear. I began to fear that she wasn't serious about me. She was soon leaving for a semester abroad, and when we saw each other, she seemed to have already moved on.

Our last weekend together was at her partents' home. She had invited me down to meet her family and to spend a final weekend together before her departure. On the flight to North Carolina, I daydreamed how the affection we would show each other could last us through the months apart. But when I arrived, her attention was formal, and forced. On her home turf, it seemed she now realized that I was not the one for her. Perhaps she felt the same way about the way I related to her. Maybe it was just nervousness for both of us and we both were only wishing for the other to somehow cross the chasm we had discovered. Or perhaps my insecurity was exactly what she didn't need. And then, the moment after we had become real, she was gone.

We tried a few times in the next month to bridge our physical and emotional distance in letters. I looked weakly to her to bear me up. No one answered.

Then I gave up on Marguerite and waved goodbye towards Africa. I still don't know whether she was relieved or heartbroken when she received my news, how the real Marguerite felt about the end of our abortive courting.

And already, I was over her. I judged her unaffectionate, and unclear in communications. But as I became more familiar and comfortable with my own self, I saw how I too (or perhaps only I) was unaffectionate and unclear in communication. Perhaps I was the one unable to commit; perhaps I was the one who had been unable to communicate; perhaps I was the one who had been too impatient. And in removing my breastplate of judgment, I welcomed Marguerite back into my heart.

And just so, every time in my life since then, when I remove some article of my armor of judgment, Marguerite returns. Always the same mythical human-god, but I perceive her differently as I grow. At three this morning, she appeared. My first feelings were physical affection, then fear. I feared that was that she was leading me on, that she would draw me in to where I disappear, then also disappear herself.

It was three o'clock in the morning in the dream, too, and Marguerite and I entered her bedroom together, alone. When Marguerite looked at me, she never flinched or shivered. I was the only thing she saw. With her fingers, she brushed my cheek. Then as she saw me, I saw her, simply as a human being. I noticed it was my own hand on my face. I noticed it was my own eyes seeing myself. And as I saw that Marguerite was, and always had been, the fullness of herself, that same moment I saw that I now, too, was the fullness of myself. I saw why I had been drawn to her, to become one with her.

And now, miles and years apart, we have become one.