Good Morning Heartache

When I first went to my therapist and talked about what I had hoped to accomplish through therapy this time, one of the biggest things was to be able to talk about Daphne, and all the good things we had shared together, without falling apart. I have not, even after all these years, been able to say her name out loud without immediately flashing to the anguish and terror of our last day together, and/or the pitiful hospital scenes of me begging to be able to see her with her father screaming at me that I was to blame and forbidding me to ever see her again. They are not pretty pictures. It was a horrific, hideous ending to a very beautiful relationship. And then she was gone.

My therapist suggested that I try to write about her. What follows has taken me a lot of tears to write. Every memory as painful to remember as it was beautiful to live. But I am very happy now to try to share her with you:

Her name was Daphne. Named after the Alabama town where her mother was born. She grew up in Harlem, New York. The daughter of a college professor and a lawyer. Somewhere around the time that she was owning the full depth and breath of her sexual identity, her parents disowned her. She rose to the challenge.

We met at a university. She was a post graduate student on a fellowship grant. She was incredibly smart. Like rocket scientist smart. An assistant in a bio-neuroscience research study team that involved the piecing and cataloguing of DNA. She tutored other students to make a little extra money. And I was needing a lot of help to get through a advanced statistics course.

I fell in love immediately. Or at least that’s how I remember it.

Her skin was the color of Hershey’s milk chocolate and I loved the keyboard our interwined fingers formed. Her eyes reflected all the love and warmth of a person who has known God. She had an infectious smile. She was physically and spiritually strong but had the heart of a child. She was serious about her work, passionate about love and playful in everything else. She loved to laugh.

We lived together in her tiny campus apartment for almost three years. She loved to cook - southern style. Fried everything and collard greens and things with corn meal and bacon fat. I gained weight. She would wake me every morning saying “good morning heartache” with such a big smile it always made me laugh.

I had been with women before but never ever thought it was a lifestyle I would spend my life in. Until her. And then I saw eternity.

She never learned how to drive a car. Growing up in the city there was no need. I tried to teach her. She who could split DNA could not figure out which way to turn the turn signal stick. Every time she would screw up she would just stop the car in the middle of the road and laugh.

One anniversary she filled our bed with rose pedals. But we never got around to making love because the pedals kept sticking to body parts in weird ways and we couldn’t stop laughing. And that was even better.

Once we went to Provincetown with a group of friends, camping. She insisted on putting up the tent, which of course collapsed with the first puff of wind. A city girl, she hated camping. But loved a camp fire and toasting marshmallows. We ordered whole lobsters there and she laughed hysterically when they tied bibs on us, and then disected it as if it were a frog in biology class. I have never ordered it again.

I took her to Ithaca to see the gorges. She made love to me there, under a waterfall. That still stands as the most intensely passionate, breathtakingly beautiful love I have ever experienced.

She was a science geek who loved spicy Korean food, and gender bending. She was a student of 1920s Harlem, jazz and fashion. She loved Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and the big bands. She loved wearing her lab coat and playing doctor. She loved the beach, but only in winter. She was reduced to tears seeing a full starry sky. She had a fear of birds in flight but loved to hear them sing. She loved to go see the penguins at the Central Park zoo, taking horse drawn carriage rides through the Park, window shopping at Christmas and soul food at Sylvia’s.

She loved to walk in a warm rain and would stomp in every puddle. She loved to wear muscle shirts with suspenders. She loved babies and bubbles and African beaded bracelets. She loved to dance and the word ‘bedazzled’. She loved gospel music and grafitti art and wild cherry cough drops. She loved to make me blush. And she was very good at it. She loved “aha” moments and being surprised. She found life miraculous.

She loved her parents, and God, and Billie. And she loved me.

Happy Birthday Daffy. I will always love you.