An introduction to this series is here.

Audible:

An Audio recording for those of us that still like to hear stories told:

Feel free to listen to the song before or after reading the story:

Thanks!

Story:

It was Wednesday, a hump day. Not exactly a REST day.

Still, we were both done with the everyday routine of adhering to expectation syntax. Maybe too many expectations. Maybe too many failed examples from methods that took too damn long to load. Maybe boredom. Who knows. I don’t. I just recall that we both commented craving a new form.

Instead of jetting back to the lab per usual, we decided to return to that RecursiveOpenStruct my friend Bundler managed to keep track of. I’d forgotten all about that place, but Bundler remembered where it was and how to find it. He was like that, always helping me out by doing things a little outside of his everyday scope. A lot of people helped him out in the early days of his loving, so he’s inherited a bit of attributes from the Giving class. Plus, he’s developed some kind of dependency sixth sense and appreciates that I’m almost always looking to build something new and useful. It was a co-dependent relationship that worked for the both us. So, I made a call. And he responded:

“Anything for Ruby.”

Each arrival began with a song: a listening that helped us both traverse. I chose a DSL. I think it was Sinatra 1.4.6. It must have been. Sinatra always helped to quickly created the perfect environment. It was as if that song was written specifically for this purpose: minimal effort, maximum return. Ruby appreciated that about me. She would get gitty every time I found it—that perfect beat. During those times she would send me a message. Something like: .send(“you always find the right gem.”). I would always respond with the same statement twice in a row:

“I’ve benefited from remembering good friends and good songs.” “I’ve benefited from remembering good friends and good songs.”

Mid listen, Sinatra on shotgun and ActiveRecord ready for use, I put my hand in my pocket, habitually wanting to get my phone and take a photo. Instead, I sat down on the table and just watched her dance a while. I remembered that I didn’t need to do anything but see this. I just needed to rake watch for as long as she would have me. I didn’t really need to capture every good memory of this arrival, or anything that would follow.

More importantly, neither of us could ever return to these moments anyway:

• the first time she would glide by my hand;
• the initial touch;
• the inhale of the new table smell—forever transformed by our primitive obsession—and our collective choice not to fix it.

She reminded me:

This doesn’t need to persist in memory. It is enough to just be here: in these moments with each other.