A Love Story

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louie galiano

A Lov e Sto ry Life’s full of romance and adventure for Picayune couple

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TEXT BY LOUIE GALIANO This is a love story. It’s a love story about old furniture, foreign and exotic places, writing, and even science. But mostly it is the love story about Debbie, who walked into my office 25 years ago looking for a job. I gave her the job; she gave me a new life filled with tender beginnings and happiness. What makes Debbie so different is that she is totally sincere - a rare person without guile or deceit. There is nothing in her appearance that you cannot sense or immedi-

“KNOW” BY LOUIS GALIANO

Know that I am always here. Know that the peaceful wind is the sound of my breath, That the restful rain is the touch of my fingers on your skin, And that the morning sun is the warmth of my embrace. The gentle aria will be the echo of my voice And the changing seasons will be the awareness of my moving spirit. And you will also know me by my words And hear them softly as I stand beside you And speak of the constant wonder of my love for you. And so you will know that I have not gone, You will dream and I will be forever there And I will smile and tenderly kiss your face. And when you wake my memory will live inside you And will remain with you eternally without end.

ately feel. Strangers recognize that quality and strangers become her friends, offer their friendship, confide their thoughts, and somehow feel redeemed. Cold rooms become warm; one feels the simplicity of the true, the effortlessness of honesty, the gentleness of calm. She gives love in its entirety; it is not within her to hold back. There is a longer story but the abbreviated version one is that we worked together for a while, got married and opened an antiques shop in Picayune. We stocked it with the angular artistry of Eastlake, the surprising curvature of provincial, the sternness of Shaker. We added the blue jasper of Wedgwood and the quiet pastel of Nippon. Lace and crystal and silver were sold and we called the shop, appropriately, Galiano’s. Artists began to congregate and wanted to display their paintings on the walls. Poets passed through. A small Parnassus in Picayune. The shop has Debbie’s

stamp on it. It too speaks of love and has become a meeting place of sorts, a clearing house for news who is sick, who is well, who is pregnant, how is one’s mother doing. I work the shop on occasion and there are people who say that they’ll come back when Debbie is there. I guess that tells you something. But Debbie and I had mutually promised each other a life like no other and nothing detracted from that vow. We traveled - following whales in Baja, spending the day swimming at Magen’s Bay in St. Thomas, doing the countdown in Spanish at midnight on a New Year’s eve along the Paseo de la Reforma, chasing Hemingway’s ghost in Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, watching the Gatun locks of the Panama Canal fill and lifting our ship, looking for pirates among the narrow streets of the beautiful walled city of Cartagena. And we shopped. We bought more lace in Charlotte Amalie and silver in Taxco and

added them to our store. Along the way I had written a novel, “Snorkel - Immersions in Time,” which received some good reviews. I had planned the book as part of a trilogy but something happened as I was working on the second book. There was a morning when I awoke in pain and to stand on my right leg had become unbearable. After months of testing, cancer was determined to be the cause. The pain vanished and then returned and then vanished again and the type of cancer had yet to be found. During one of the vanished again periods I received a call from my old college roommate, the artist Aris Koutroulis, about whom I had written in “Snorkel,” and who told me that he would be in New Orleans in October. I drove down to see him and we sat in a hotel bar bringing our lives up to date and after a few Dos Equis we left mundane matters and speculated on the prospects of cancer and something called the Law of the Conservation of Matter. Aris always had a turn for the metaphysical, but this was pure science, he said. Essentially, the Law states that matter is finite and cannot be created or destroyed. While particles of matter may be rearranged, the sum of those particles must equal the aggregate of the original mass. We are attached to and part of the earth. One’s conclusion, then, must be that nothing really goes away. In some form we will always exist. Some weeks later the cause of the cancer was

determined. It was called follicular lymphoma - a blood cancer - and its treatment was chemotherapy. The chemo was begun immediately and in the mistaken belief that I could use my recuperating time to write that second novel, I found that the creative processes would not cooperate under those conditions. The chemo would not permit it. But as I began to feel worse, I considered the implications of the Law of the Conservation of Matter and my love for Debbie and in my belief that my life could possibly be more abbreviated than I had planned, I scratched down the accompanying verse and gave it the simple title: “Know.” I didn’t give her the poem at first, but carried it around with me in my wallet until it became creased and slightly ragged. But then again we have never kept anything from each other and one day I merely handed it to her without explanation. There was no need to explain. The last examination indicated that the cancer is in remission and other than an occasional loss of energy, there appear to be no ill effects. The pain has not returned. I have yet to test the Law of the Conservation of Matter. But the word is this: I still have two more books to write and there is a restaurant in San José del Cabo where the succulent shrimp fresh from the sea are cooked with cilantro and orange slices, where Cuban music is played on Fridays, where the desert air becomes cool at night, and where the whales play in the Sea of Cortez … and where the love story is bound to continue.

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