27 August 2012
This memory is taken from one of the many vacations Nate and I took together. There'll probably be a lot of these as not only were vacations my favourite time of the year (they still are) but whenever we went together it was like we left the normal world behind and we could just live this absolute dream together. I haven't been able to recreate that emotion with anyone on vacation yet, and that's why I've found myself delving back into old photo albums to see how much fun Nate and I really had.
When I wrote my music post, I promised a post on why Wonderwall by Oasis is such a poignant song for me, so here it is.
We went away to the Hamptons literally at the beginning of our relationship, for July Fourth, and we just had the best time together. Again, it was at that stage when every gesture you make is overly dramatised and you're still discovering your feelings for each other, which are growing daily. One night, he knocked on my door and invited me over to his house, which I obviously accepted, and my parents didn't care enough to stop me, stating the omnipresent phrase 'she's with Nate, she'll be fine'. I distinctly remember him wearing a blue Ralph Lauren shirt and sand coloured chinos, mainly because I've always loved those colours on him; I ended up wearing that shirt; and I remember being delighted when he sat on the sandy beach beside me and his chinos matched the colour of the sand.
Before we went to the beach, he went into his house and grabbed his guitar. There's a long and painful story behind that guitar, but basically at our boarding school it was considered 'on trend' to do a lot of things: like sport, music, art and academic, all at the same time in order to win scholarships. So, Nate decided to take up the guitar to satisfy the musical requirement in his all-rounder scholarship. Needless to say he wasn't the best guitar player in the land. Sure, he could play, but what he could play was very limited, and unfortunately he didn't really have the patience or the time to add anything else to his repertoire. So, when he brought out his guitar so we could sit on the beach just outside of his house, I was looking forward to listening to the same song that I'd heard all summer long.
But when he sat down and I rested my head on his shoulder, the simple melody I expected to play didn't, and instead I was faced with one of my favourite, classic songs. The good thing about the guitar part for Wonderwall is that it's instantly recognisable, and he didn't really need me to hum the lyrical time over the top for it to be recognised, but I did nonetheless. And by the second chorus, Nate and I were blasting the lyrics out of our less than tuned vocal chords, laughing and joking as various lights in the surrounding area turned on to see what all the noise was about.
That was all it took in those early days to make Nate and I relax. Just add a song he's just learnt to play and some agitated neighbours, and you had a night when we forgot about everything. I made the most of it, sure, but in my head I didn't ever know that the carefree part of our relationship would come grinding to a halt. I thought that this was how it would always be: Nate, me and no one else standing in our way.
I was sort of true: no one did stand in our way. But some thing did, and that was what made all of our carefree moments fade away into oblivion.
A Month Of Memories #7 • Opuss № I