“Hazel.”
The name sounded so beautiful in his mouth, spoken aloud, or at least it seemed to be so in Hazel’s ears.
“Nice to meet you, Hazel. My name’s Nate.”
“Oh! Nice to meet you Nate!”
Hazel had to suppress a smile as she introduced herself. He was so cute; after all, he was tall and slightly muscular, with brown eyes and light brown hair… how could he have moved here over the summer?
Already she knew she was going to enjoy AP Physics C, especially with a guy like him as her lab partner. She could see that this was going to be a good year.
She wouldn’t know this at the time, but Nate himself was holding back a smile. She was so pretty… He was already biting his lips – We’re in school, I just met her, I don’t even know her! – and trying not to blush himself.
In a high school yearbook from 2006, the name “Fuse, Hazel” showed a teenage girl, with long silky black hair, black eyes, and a large smile that expressed its happiness, transcending the pages to the present day with the happiness and sunshine and promise and hope inherent in it.
A thirty-three-year-old man, who was beginning to bald and had begun to show a bit of a beer gut, looked at the photograph with longing. He remembered the girl whose face was immortalized in glossy pages.
She was so sweet when the two of them first met that late August day, first day of school. Both of them were juniors, a few months apart from one another, she being younger by about four months. How could she know what would befall her fourteen years later?
The two of them were doing homework at his house. He had already finished the practice problems from the 2004 test, but she was still struggling on the E&M portion of it. Electricity and magnetism was not her best subject.
“How do you figure out the magnetic flux again?” Hazel asked, looking up from the other side of the dinner table, papers strewn all over and filled with calculations and sketches of currents and resistors and graphs. A plate of apples and peanut butter sat half eaten near her TI-83 calculator.
You look so pretty when you’re frustrated, Hazel.
“Oh. Um, here, let me show you what I did…” Nate leaned forward to point at the diagram, drawing arrows to represent the magnetic fields. “Remember the right hand rule?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Like this, right?”
Her arm brushed against his. The shock of the brush jolted up his arm and he had to blush more.
I have to tell her.
“Hazel…”
“Hm?” She looked at him, curious. “Did I do something wrong on the assignment?”
“No… it’s just that…”
His face was blushing red, but it was too late to turn back now—
“I don’t want another pretty face. I don’t want just anyone to hold. I don’t want my love to go to waste. I want you and your beautiful soul.”
She looked at him, speechless.
Oh gods, how is she taking it? I shouldn’t have said anything, I shouldn’t have even considered it!
Then she surprised him with a kiss on the lips.
2007. Hazel looked beautiful in her yearbook photo, as always.
That yearbook had pictures of student life. Among them were pictures of the two of them together – dancing at Homecoming, laughing as the two of them splattered one another with paint during class competition as seniors, the two of them crowned Prom King and Queen. Memories of a beautiful time.
And some that weren’t on the pages. The many dates they went together to the public library, the local restaurants, the park – Hazel especially loved the swings, he remembered fondly – the kisses they shared and the hugs. The smiles, the notes, the cries of joy as they received their college acceptance letters. The affection, the love they had for one another, their dedication and their faith in the other.
Memories.
”Will you marry me?” he asked Hazel one day.
They were in the public library, sitting at one of the tables. She was reading Time, he Scientific American when he popped the question, handing her a small paper loop taped together to resemble a ring.
She said yes.
There were photographs on the wall of the house, depicting their lives apart and together. One of the largest ones was of the two of them on their wedding day.
He was wearing a regular tuxedo, but Hazel – Hazel was wearing her beautiful strapless wedding dress, her hair tied up in a low bun on the back and her bangs curled on the side of her face, framing it beautifully.
On her neck, there was something blue – a black cord on which hung a pendant of thin silver wire in a circle, with a drop of sapphire in the center.
The thirty-three year old looked at it and remembered.
“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Carter. It’s a girl.”
Hazel breathed. Slick in sweat and tired from everything, she managed to breathe out one word before she fell asleep, finally getting some rest.
“Alison.”
Nate took the crying newborn into his arms. Even now, the child was beautiful – and what’s more, it was his child. His and hers, a representation of their love for one another.
A symbol.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy!” cried out his nine-year-old daughter. She held out a card and a picture – something that she drew herself. A simple drawing of a father and a mother and a daughter, in a house together. All of them were smiling.
“Happy father’s day!”
Smiling sadly, he turned to Alison. She did begin to remind him of Hazel so.
“Thank you Alison. Happy father’s day to you too.”
In Alison, he saw Hazel, the girl he lost. In Alison, he saw the girl – the daughter – he had. In Alison, he saw the past, the present, the future. In Alison, he saw hope – hope for him, hope for her, hope for the future.
Hope.
He gave Alison a hug. “I love you sweetie.”
“I love you too Daddy.”
Hope.
Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 11:20 pm
