The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” – Oscar Wilde
The drive from the Getty Center (where we got kicked out) to Long Beach was not pleasant at all. The traffic was horrendous. Plus sitting in the backseat usually gets me car sick. Which it did. But talking to Celine and Jun and getting to know their story made the ride better. A chance meeting one September morning at a store where Jun works and where Celine was shopping was all that was needed for a spark to ignite. I am sure he has helped a lot of other women that have shopped in the store. But Celine must have made the most significant impression for him to courageously ask for her phone number. So a coffee date and countless memories later, they are now sitting in the bottom of a pier on a chilly December evening, trying their hardest to make each other feel cozy and warm.
The pier smelt of salt and rotting fish. I look down and I can see all the rocks below, the ones closer to the water, were almost completely covered with moss. Except for one. I already know getting down there would be tough. So I put my camera bag down on the ground and told Celine and Jun to wait for me to get to the lower part of the pier. I can hear Celine yell for me to be careful but I didn’t want it to ruin my concentration while I carefully jockeyed my way across the moss covered rocks. And just about when I thought that I was safe, seeing how I made sure I stepped on a rock that wasn’t covered with moss, I somehow lost my footing and almost ended up slipping and falling into the water. Not an impression that I want my clients to remember me by. Good thing I was able to regain my balance and played it off. But I could feel my heart beating through my chest. Not because of an injury that I might have sustained, but because of the shots that I already have in my camera that might get lost when it hits the water. I now realize that maybe it’s when you feel safe and let your guard down, that’s when love comes in and tries to knock you down. I mean, I literally went out of my way to avoid those moss-covered rocks, but it was that unsuspecting rock that almost caused me to fall. Funny ain’t it? Because thinking more about it, I came into a realization that in Celine and Jun’s case, they both might have fallen from that same unsuspecting, quietly unassuming proverbial “rock” that I was talking about the first time they crossed each other’s paths. The only difference is that they’ve been in love ever since with not a single bone broken. I guess that’s just how love is. Unsuspecting and unpredictable.
