Deer in the Streetlight

Last night I got home late. After finally showering and changing my clothes (sickness had me living in the same pajamas for days), going grocery shopping with my mom and picking out a fragrant tree to set up in our living room, I went to dinner and a movie with a friend. Of all of the days I spent in Utah, I didn’t leave my house until Saturday night. I had a fantastic dinner, went to a delightful movie (Hugo was a sweet love letter to the film genre and I enjoyed it) and just when I thought the evening was perfect, I saw my ex driving home. My friend said he was engaged and all of a sudden I felt numb. Then I felt compelled to start rambling about how glad I was that we weren’t together anymore.

And I am. Film school would never have happened if we had become engaged. He didn’t see a benefit to going to more school and talked me out of applying the year we were dating. It was what I wanted and I let him make that decision for me. Gratitude for the lifted spell is something I express every time I think of that time in my life.

As my friend and I sat in the car under the cover of stars and streetlight, a deer sauntered from the blue-black of night into the lamp halo illuminating the street and I paused.

When I am away, I forget that deer just wander into our neighborhood and onto the campus of my alma mater as if they owned the place (which maybe they do). It is always a surprise to see an animal casually perambulating down the street on an evening constitutional.

He clopped down the street with his antlers bobbing and when he passed out of sight I leapt out of the car and chased him down to try and get a picture. So majestic. So fantastical. So otherworldly. I wanted to capture that moment. But when I rounded the corner he was gone. My friend followed and after about a block and a half we stopped and joked about how we thought we saw him on the roof. “Santa is real!” I whisper-yelled in an attempt to punctuate this ambiguous moment with laughter instead of the gloom that follows loss like a shadow. Even when that loss is inevitable.