I first saw you years ago, on TV, breaking it down in the House of Mouse. You were fourteen, and you were singing some lame song to "the girl of your dreams." Something about forever and promises and things no fourteen year old really knows anything about. You were such a gawky kid. Your hair was too big, you were too... clean. But even then I saw potential. I kept watching until you left and the show got worse, and only had that Timberlake kid and Britney holding it together.
You were so squeaky clean.
You disappeared for a couple of years. In time, I forgot about the dorky kid from the Mouse Club. Until one day you showed up again. You weren't alone, and you weren't on Disney. The Timberlake kid was back, and there were three others. I still saw you as the dork from MMC, and liked the other two more. Not Timberlake, and not the other painfully clean kid, Lance. No, I fell for the cut ups, the "men" as I said then. For a couple of months I ignored the niggling feeling that I was missing something about you. I concentrated on them. And the music, of course.
Then one day, cruising through a web site, checking out pics, it hit me. Like an 18 wheeler. You weren't a dork anymore. Clean maybe, as you'd yet to let the scruff grow, but you were still older than I'd let you be in my mind. And I finally saw it.
I saw how you'd grown. How the years away had changed you. How the industry had changed you, even since the beginning of your group. You were harder, more wary. Leaner, almost. Like a wolf. They travel in packs, live in families. I could see that structure in the five of you, in the family you'd created for yourselves. A constant struggle for alpha, as you are all strong willed, except maybe Lance, but always a love and respect and a... bond I guess. A bond that ties.
That's what I saw through the TV screen.
Then I saw your concert.
And there I saw your physical strength, your courage, your passion. You have so much inside you. All of you. And I see it and every time I do it fucking amazes me. I watched you dance and jump and sing for two hours straight. Not quite believing, I came back the next night and watched you do it again. Tireless. You have this untapped energy. It lies dormant much of the time, but then onstage it tears out of you, as if it had a life of its own and only dragged you along for the ride.
And then I met you in person. Entering those lame contests pays off sometimes, when you're the lucky one in a trillion. But I don't believe in luck. I believe in fate.
And when I talked to you that night I saw your fatigue. I saw the toll you were paying on the road to success. You weren't obvious about it, but I could tell that it was the last place you wanted to be.
At the end of the night, you felt bad for being such a dump, and asked for my email address and phone number. There I saw your kindness. I didn't believe I'd ever hear from you again.
Over the next year, after calls and emails and that one brief phone sex experiment, I saw your dedication. To a person, a relationship. A commitment you'd made that first night, that you'd kept.
I was shocked. Delighted. In love.
And it was then. Then that I saw your love.
And when the band finally broke up, I saw your pain. I saw you raging at the dying of something special inside of you. Something I wasn't ever able to share in. I saw it in your bandmates as well. And as much as I was able, I felt a death in myself. I saw your emotional strength and endurance then. And your resolve, your need to survive, to perservere.
You showed up on my doorstep that day, haggard and desparate. Florida was a move I made for myself, to get out of Maryland, out into the world. And it was a move I made for us, to explore the tensions, the emotions running so close under the calm surface of our relationship. You were lost that day, needed my help to find yourself. I let you in, and held your head to my breast as you sobbed your grief, wretched at the thought of losing your friends, your life.
But you never did lose them. And that's your loyalty. Friends first, NSync second. Which is why it still works. They are the brothers of your heart. So different from a biological relationship, it comes from a genuine love for one another. One wholly unlike and yet unmistakeably similar to the love of a natural brother. A tie that binds.
The day you proposed to me, I saw tears in your eyes. I saw a love in those tears that I'd never seen before. A depth I've never experienced. It shocked me and thrilled me at the same time, and I couldn't help but say yes.
On our wedding day, you cried. I looked over at your four best men (they wouldn't let you choose) and they cried too. Happiness. Utter happiness. Like I'd never known before, filled me to the brim. I'd never known I could be so full. And it spilled over, pouring into you. I know you felt it. I still can't look at those pictures without crying.
And then Emma was born. And I saw "daddy" in you. I saw the father figure that emerges from every man when they first hold their offspring. Nine months is a long adjustment period, but men rarely often take it. They spring from "not-a-father" to "father" holding their child for the first time. Mothers look on and smile, as I did, watching the glimpses of dawning realization, of awe. You were so in love with her from that moment forward. Your little girl.
Chris was taking her to the zoo. Claimed it was an "insult to humanity" that we hadn't taken our two year old daughter to the zoo since before she could talk when we got bored that day and you decided you wanted to see pandas. They had their day. I'm sure they visited every exhibit possible, with the boundless energy of a womanlike child and a childlike man. It was on the ride home, when his old Cruiser was hit by the rig running the red light. Baby, that day I saw your despair.
Later, at the funeral we held for both, trapped in my own misery, I realized that I'd made watching you such a habit that in the depth of my sadness, I watched you still. I lost a daughter and a friend that day. You lost your daughter, and a brother. Baby, I stood at that graveside and watched them shovel dirt over two of the largest pieces of your heart. And I knew. I knew you wouldn't ever be the same.
And you weren't. For years after you clung to me and your remaining brothers. You became overbearing and overprotective, in an attempt to protect you from us, and us from the world. I saw your fear. Fear of love, feeling emotion, loss. Because life was suddenly so precarious, so unpredictable. It could take you high as a kite on minute, and send you crashing down the next.
We'd crashed, baby. We'd crashed and we were burning. Burning still because we couldn't let go. Couldn't make ourselves forget.
And I remember how you looked that day. The day you decided you'd had enough. You called your brothers, invited them over. We watched old videos, interviews, home movies of Chris and Emma. We broke out the photo albums you'd hidden away. We swapped stories until dawn, laughter ringing through the cold, empty house, tears washing away the stains. We remembered. That was the first time in three years you let them drive home without making them call you upon arrival. We made love until the sun went back down, and then we slept for 23 hours. Then? Baby then I saw your heart. Still broken, still missing pieces, but mending. Trying to heal. Knitting itself back to mine, in order that we not face the rest of the journey alone.
So ask me again Josh. Say it.
"Ashley, what do you see when you look at me?"
Now I have my answer.