Author's note: Hello all, and a Very Merry Christmas to all of you! I'm FINALLY back with this story after several months of not updating it. As a quick refresh, in this story, Sam and Lillian have made it to the very top of the Ferris wheel during their ride on it at the Canadian National Exhibition. I'm excited to continue this story in the new year! Thank you SO much for your support of it in 2023; it means the world!
I hope you all enjoy Chapter 5, and I pray you have a blessed Christmas season! And to my dear friend Paths, I hope you enjoy this little Christmas present on the 4th Day of Christmas!
Surrendering to the Skies, Leaning Into Love
Chapter 5: A Delightful Disorientation, and Peace Amidst Fear
"How are you doing, Lillian?" Sam inquired, speaking up concernedly after a few soundless moments of letting her come to terms with the fact that they were officially at the top of the Ferris wheel.
All sense of speech had retreated from her, as if her mute voice was the shell of a hermit crab into which she had drawn back. Also, her body had totally stilled—like an unorthodox sea that had gone flat and motionless even amidst the fairground winds that assailed her as she floated in the skies—and she had been looking straight out at the clouds, not daring to drop her eyes toward the fair scenes below.
Her brain was like an umbrella, shielding her from water droplets of truth, protecting her from their potential discomfort. It still had not completely absorbed the fact that she and Sam were at the mountaintop of the monstrous, revolving beast.
However, if she dared to look down, she feared her brain would drop its umbrella of protection, and she would get doused with unease. Then again, her ride with Sam had been a fulfilling adventure thus far. Perhaps looking down would unlock new wonders?
Maybe, just maybe, I should be brave and look down at the fairgrounds below? An unusually audacious voice piped up in her brain, and she surprised herself with the thought.
"I...I am okay because I haven't looked down yet...I don't know if I have the courage to look down, Sam, though there is a curious part of me that wants to," she responded in truth. "I fear my knees will go weak and my stomach and heart will bounce in my throat..."
"Lillian, I understand why you don't want to look down. It is disorienting." Sam paused, letting his empathy extend thoroughly to the deliberating lady beside him, a lifeline for her anxious self, much like his strong hand continued to be for her as it stayed put in hers.
"But maybe that disorientation, that risk...maybe they are part of the adventure. Maybe they are part of the fun," he declared sagely, his lively smile diffusing across his cheeks like the helium being pumped through the colorful balloons that adorned the fair below them in a blithe medley of colors.
Hmmm, Sam has a point...perhaps what we fear most in life can also be the most gratifying experiences...and perhaps they can even be fun, disorientation and all.
Besides, if Lillian was being fully forthright with herself, her legs had felt more than a touch unsteady long before stepping foot onto the Ferris wheel, ever since she and Sam had taken off in the horse-drawn carriage ride that Chuck had given them early that morning, so that they could make it to their just-the-two-of-them excursion to the fair. She had also felt like she had her very own bouquet of balloons bobbing unremittingly in her stomach all day. Both of these off-balance sensations could only be attributed to the man to her right: The man whose smile rendered Lillian's heart defenseless against its forces.
Sam's smile ceaselessly possessed the peculiar contrasting powers of making her heart float like those invisible balloons in her stomach and tactile balloons on the fairgrounds below, and like the Ferris wheel seat they were soaring in, while also bringing her heart to its knees.
So what was a little more knee weakening, stomach bouncing, and heart floating? She had found the feelings could be enlivening. And as long as Sam continued to hold fast to her hand with his own and keep her moored amidst her unsteadiness—which was ironically caused by both the Ferris wheel's unnerving rotation and his endearing self—she knew she would be just fine.
"After all, you and me..." Sam continued, his eyes purposefully falling to his and Lillian's joined hands, and voice intermingling softly with the late summer breeze, creating a heartfelt harmony for her reception, "We're a prime example of a risk being worth it. At least, I think we've been worth it." He entwined his fingers more intentionally around Lillian's to affectionately accentuate and solidify his statement.
"What do you say, Ms. Lillian Walsh? Do you agree with my statement? Or, do you disagree?"
Though serenity and assurance swam at first in the cerulean seas of his eyes, Lillian noticed the tiniest undercurrent of uncertainty about her impending response soon take shape beneath their surface, as his question continued to suspend itself in the air, a gondola of its own inviting her in.
Out of compassion for Sam's underlying doubt and vulnerability, Lillian felt her heart compress in her chest, as if her chest's walls were closing in on it. Then, after those walls resurrected and she comprehended the full significance of Sam's statement about her and him being a worthwhile risk, and of his accompanying, more deliberate handhold, she felt her heart take off in a quickstep, the floor of her chest a ballroom it drifted expeditiously across. Her heart was swept up by his tender ways, much like how wildflowers whirl and sway in a revitalizing summertime wind.
Apparently, Mr. Sam Tremblay has unleashed the inner dancer of my heart. I never knew it could move at such a sprightly tempo until he came around...
He sure is a puzzle for my heart. How he can make it frisk and frolic at warp speed one minute, and bring it to complete rest the next...
How can he even have the smallest doubt that our relationship has been worth it, and will continue to be worth it? Can't he tell he has a steadfast grasp on my heart, and not just on my hand?
"Lillian...?" Sam tried again, worry broadcasting itself on his forehead in the form of descending eyebrows that seemed to stamp his eyes with unease. Additionally, the undercurrent of uncertainty brewing in his now-pewter eyes, which were shadowed with concern, was intensifying.
Self-conscious about her delay in responding to him and warmed by all he had expressed through his words, eyes, and gestures, she felt a blush toss a thick coverlet of pink pearl on her cheeks. He had read her mind, in a way...the parallels between the Ferris wheel ride and their relationship, which had just recently officially taken flight but had been growing wings for a while now, were not lost on him.
I wonder if he realizes he frequently makes me feel weak-kneed, like this Ferris wheel, even as he helps uphold me and helps bring me back into balance...
Lillian, answer his question! The poor man is going to become distressed if you take any longer...
"Yes, we—and our relationship—have been worth the risk. Very much so." She squeezed his hand to seal her statement, and then wove her fingers gently yet firmly around his in turn, forging a still more unified front with him.
Relief rained down on his features, restoring his face to its former vitality and pervasive sense of calm, and bringing his eyes back to their more brilliant ocean blue.
"I'm sorry for taking so long to answer," Lillian continued sheepishly. "I was...distracted by my thoughts for a few moments." Her self-conscious blush escalated, enhancing the pink on her cheeks so they looked like a field of tulips burst into full bloom, but she figured she owed him an honest apology.
"Care to share those thoughts?" Sam inquired, inquisitiveness peeking around the pupils of his dashing denim eyes, which had darkened slightly again with intrigue.
The shade of Lillian's face now morphed from deep pink to a vivid cherry, and she figured it would blend in quite flawlessly with the fire-engine red balloons she had seen affixed to the hands of many young fairgoers that day.
God forbid, if the orphanage ever goes under, I could get a job as a red balloon at the fair...thanks to the curiosity of the man on my right!
"Lillian, are you okay?" Sam repeated this same question that he had asked her several times earlier with his eyes, and once with words.
Those exceptional eyes that express so much...
The undercurrent of uncertainty in his eyes from just a few moments prior now made a return appearance. This time, however, it was paired with an undertow of benevolent amusement at Lillian's flushing face, amusement which manifested itself in the spirited sparkle of his eyes and the modest revelry of his slightly raised right eyebrow. Flustered, Lillian looked away hastily, fearful that if she didn't, she would be enveloped by both brewing currents and only with herculean effort, be able to detach her eyes from Sam's.
Sam Tremblay was shamelessly fascinated by Lillian Walsh. She was continually a complex, yet lovely code for him to strive to decipher, one much more challenging for him than trying to figure out the best, most seamless ways to execute his various handyman tasks around the orphanage. Her multitude of facial expressions and recurrent rosy cheeks were a window, albeit a bit of a nebulous one, into her heart, and he knew her silences said as much as the statements she made, even if he was not entirely certain what she meant by all of them. He did harbor an awareness of when she was leaving significant things left unsaid, as he sensed her doing now.
Just a short time ago on their Ferris wheel ride, Lillian had brushed by that same "Are you okay?" question of Sam's when he had asked her it out loud, right after she had turned scarlet-red when the thought had popped into her head of marrying him one day.
Though bashful again, this time she felt like she should be more honest in her response and even address his prior question about her thoughts. She was coming to a fuller awareness that as a couple, it was necessary for her and Sam to share what was in each other's hearts and to be transparent with one another, in order to grow in their relationship. She took a deep breath and decided to be frank with him and present her heart to him in plain view.
"I'll be fine, Sam, after a few moments." And even if my cheeks are still this red at the end of our fair visit, I can double as a fair balloon and get an extra day to explore the Exhibition, she thought to herself in good-natured humor. "And well, the truth is...I...I was thinking about...about you."
A delighted, cheeky smile that was equal parts joyously surprised and somehow shrewdly knowing hijacked Sam's face, so that he looked half-chipmunk and half-human, his well-aligned teeth on fully display. Lillian felt her heart and stomach pinch together in an odd fashion at his jesting, exuberant grin, and she lost all nerve to detail her thoughts about him to him any further.
Sam waited for her to expand upon her statement, but when she didn't, he responded teasingly, "I can only hope you were thinking...favorably of me, and not thinking of me in a negative light, considering I was the one who persuaded you to get on this Ferris wheel ride...?" Out of caution, his grinning lips bounced back to neutral position.
"Don't worry. My thoughts about you...they...they were...they were good thoughts." Even as Lillian wobbled her way through her words, she felt a flock of giggles gradually ascend within the cage of her chest. Before long, she let loose this full-of-life flock of giggles, which propelled laughter from Sam to fly forth in turn.
"I'm relieved to hear it," Sam answered, his soaring laughter spurring his eyes to sparkle still more dynamically, as if they were glinting meteors set into motion by Lillian's contagious joy.
His eyes then took a break from their cavorting to latch upon hers soundly for a cluster of seconds.
"Maybe sometime you'll elaborate on those thoughts," he added, in what was more an inquisitorial statement than an outright question. He kept his tone nonchalant and breezy, but his eyes betrayed the genuine, deep interest in her thoughts that was held by his heart. Weighted with earnest expectancy, they were two anchors that pulled Lillian's heart in toward his own.
"Maybe," Lillian murmured shyly, her laughter coming to a swift cessation as her heart squeezed in her chest and then went back to its quickstepping ways under Sam's influence.
Before long though, a mischievous, merry shine emerged in her eyes more spellbinding than the stellar shimmer of the amethyst geodes they had seen in the Natural History exhibit earlier that day. She sportively elbowed Sam lightly in the side with her right arm even as she kept her right hand securely threaded to his left at all costs.
"If we make it safely back to the ground," she declared in a ribbing fashion.
"Fair enough. Since we're at the fair and everything...get it?" Sam chuckled zealously at his own pun.
"Good one," Lillian acknowledged, even as she paired the compliment with a hearty, yet somehow still graceful, groan.
"Speaking of the ground, Lillian...if you do want to take the risk and look down, we can count to three together, and then look down together. What do you think?"
Together. Lillian would forever like the sound of that word when it came to her and Sam Tremblay, and she pledged to herself to try to never take it for granted. Their togetherness was a gift.
Stay focused, Lillian. Stop getting distracted by your thoughts about Sam, and you and Sam...! At least the man had the rare ability to make her forget, for a few moments, that they were revolving in a supersized bicycle wheel innumerable feet above solid ground.
"Yes, I do want to look down, and doing so together will help me. But Sam?"
"Yes?"
"Can we make it five seconds? I could use an extra two seconds to breathe."
"I'll happily give you all the seconds you need, Ms. Walsh. Always." His eyes affirmed his statement as the seas within them came to a stoic standstill that underscored his seriousness.
Not quite expecting this response from Sam, in which he pledged his patience towards her for the future, Lillian's eyes lit with a salient spark of appreciation as her cheeks once again warmed. A wholehearted thank you resounded in the depths of her eyes, which had evolved into a more indigo shade in their own earnestness, like a rare blue hibiscus.
"With that said, Lillian, we've started to descend," Sam noted somewhat regretfully as he delivered the news and transitioned from romantic to practical.
"I know it's still a bit hard for you to believe that we'll make it back down safely," he remarked playfully as the resplendent blue in his irises rolled once again like buoyant ocean waves, "But it really won't be too long 'til the Ferris wheel reunites us with the ground again. So, we'd better make it no more than five seconds, and start counting. Are you ready?"
"I suppose it's now or never," Lillian conceded with the enthusiasm of a deflated fair balloon. Her previously rosy cheeks had turned pallid, changing her from a cherry red balloon to a popped white balloon rather rapidly.
"Yes. Now or never. But I've got you," He reminded her, solidifying his grip on her hand once more.
"Okay, I'm as ready as I'll ever be," Lillian assented. Here we go...
"One...two...three..." They counted in unison.
"Fouurrrr...fiiiiivve..." They concluded. Sam kindly extended the length of the last two seconds, and Lillian loved him all the more for it.
Now that they had counted to five, and Lillian had breathed deeply while doing so, it was officially time for her to surrender her brain's umbrella of protection. She let go of it as she courageously looked down. A woozy feeling pummeled her at first, prompting her heart to skyrocket in her chest, her head to spin like a chandelier struck by an earthquake, and her legs to shake like dice taking their big chance, as she momentarily seemed to lose her bearings. But the freefalling feeling was also fascinating to yield to—the heart-in-the-throat feeling she acquired was vivifying, in a way. She felt like she was truly living, and it was oddly both invigorating and relieving to concede the control she continually fought so hard to retain and maintain in her everyday life.
Sam sensed some vertigo had seized her, as he could feel her quivering and had seen how her torso had pitched forward.
"Are you dizzy?" His eyes narrowed in acute awareness and care, then returned to their normal diameter as he seemed to offer them to her as two stepping stools so she could regain her bearings.
"Yes, but mostly in an oddly pleasant and delightful sort of way." Carefree, relieved laughter spiraled out of her and around her like the novel swirling candy on sticks that she and Sam had seen for sale in a concession stand below them shortly before he had proposed their ride on the Ferris wheel.
"That is good then!" Sam ransomed his own heap of relieved chuckles from the margins of his diaphragm.
"So, my prediction about the disorientation being fun came true. I was right after all..." He gave Lillian a satisfied wink, but she missed it due to being completely riveted by their bird's-eye view of the fair.
"Look, Sam!" Lillian exclaimed distractedly, her voice copious with astonishment and wonder as she pointed to the scenery underneath them. "Everything below us looks like it could be part of Mary Louise's village she's created for her dolls!"
Due in part to her fear of heights and in part to never having much of an opportunity to do so, Lillian had never seen humanity and its structures and creations from up above before. It amazed her how tiny everything looked—the fairgoers looked like the miniature dolls and figurines Mary Louise brought to life each day back home at the orphanage; the colorful, tent-covered booths and stands like small, wrapped birthday presents; and the two merry-go-rounds like miniscule music boxes Lillian could easily pack away in her bedroom dresser for treasured safekeeping.
I wish I could pack away this whole moment to save and relive whenever I'd like, she contemplated, awestruck.
"The perspective is incredible, isn't it?" Sam agreed, his heart warmed by Lillian's sense of wonder at their spectacular view.
"It truly makes me think, Sam..."
This time, seeing that he was not the subject of her thoughts, she was able to clearly articulate her thoughts to him.
"Each of us is actually so small. We are each a very, very tiny part of God's creation. But God doesn't see any of us as insignificant, even though we are just like a fleck of sand amidst countless grains, like little figures roaming about a much bigger Earth that's too vast to even comprehend. Isn't it beautiful how much God loves each of us?"
"Indeed. It certainly makes you ponder..." Sam responded, a curtain of deep reflection enveloping his eyes, making them more of a midnight blue as he contemplated the breadth of God's love.
The point Sam had made some time ago on the Ferris wheel, about him and Lillian getting closer to God as they took to the skies, came barreling back to Lillian's memory as she transferred her focus from down low to upwards and outwards. Though she had formerly joked with him that his point was not all that helpful in making her feel like she was going to survive the ride, she more fully grasped the truth of it now.
The sky, along with its collection of clouds, had started to turn pretty pastel shades thanks to the influence of the late evening's golden light and the advent of sunset. The heavens boasted blissful ballet and bubblegum pinks, lavish lavenders, lovely lilacs, and ebullient lemony and buttery yellows. It looked like God had taken sticks of the white fluffy fairy floss sold at the fair and dipped them in delicate-colored dyes, so that the sky was full of rivers of various soft-hued shades of the spun sugar confection. The sky also mimicked a seamless collection of light-colored Easter eggs that had blended exquisitely together, making Lillian already miss that glorious springtime holiday that had graced them with its visit months ago.
God's presence, and His captivating handiwork that surrounded Lillian—that was so close to her, she felt she could nearly reach out and touch it—combined with Sam's tenacious but tender grasp, which was persistent and unwavering, worked in tandem to help Lillian feel, once again, a monumental heart-in-the-throat feeling along with a sense of unencumbered peace. This robust, yet ethereal peace spread to her heart, filling corners and crevices she hadn't completely realized were empty. Perhaps, she thought to herself for a moment, it was important to take a break from trying to do and be everything for everyone—as she often strived for at the orphanage—and just rest in the presence of God, and rest in the presence of the man whom she loved.
It was true that she had only been courting Sam for a month. However, their courtship had been a long time coming, and after today's events, she truly had no doubt about the magnitude of her feelings for the man at her side. She loved Sam Tremblay. And somehow, she knew she needed to divulge that undeniable truth to him by the end of their day together at the fair.
Smack dab in the middle of her fears, she had discovered awe-inducing marvels, thanks to Sam's prompting her to take the risk and board the wheel. She had also unearthed—from way up in the sky—the truth that peace could coexist with fear. Since she was a human being, Fear would inevitably continue to find its way to her table; yet with God and Sam at her side, Peace could also persistently sit across from it.
"Sam, it's stunning up here," Lillian piped up with a contented sigh after a few moments of taking in the masterpiece God had painted so thoroughly and effortlessly for them. "You are right. I do feel closer to God."
Sam just beamed serenely, deeming a verbal response to Lillian unneeded amidst the profound beauty that surrounded them.
And I also feel closer to God with you at my side, Sam, protecting me and encouraging me and showing me kindness, and opening up new worlds to me...I see Him in you, Lillian's inner voice added, though she was too overwhelmed with emotion to say it.
Though words again had failed her, Lillian let her heart lead her in her next course of action. Taking another deep breath for courage, as she had done numerous times that day, she laid her head softly on Sam's shoulder, leaning into his strength and surrendering her heart to his safekeeping. He leaned in gently in turn, and their hearts found rest together as the gondola continued with its gradual descent.
Author's Note #2: A big shoutout to my friend Paths for inspiring this thought of Lillian's about/toward Sam: "Can't he tell he has a steadfast grasp on my heart, and not just on my hand?" I was inspired by the part of Chapter 2 of her story A Mountie and a Banana Bread Picnic where Nathan takes Elizabeth's hand as she walks down the front steps of her house, and Paths' phrase "it was as though Nathan held her heart instead of her hand." Please go read this beautifully descriptive and meaningful story of Paths', as well as her other stories, if you haven't already! And reviews really do keep us going as authors, so any positive words you have to share on any of our stories are GREATLY appreciated! Thanks a million!