Our Names Written in Sand

“Our names written in sand

By the finger of God’s hand”

These are lyrics to a song I wrote. And in honor of my wedding anniversary approaching (this weekend), I will tell you these words came to be.

Yesterday, I mentioned that sometimes our subconscious leaks through, revealing what we really feel, even if we don’t yet know it ourselves.  

So, like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Liz and I became really good friends, really quickly. I had never met someone who I felt like I could just be myself with in such a short amount of time.  I could tell her everything, not only my dreams, but my fears as well. I trusted her (which is a big thing for me). And when we would hang out with other people, they could see how close we really were.

We met in graduate school in Virginia, and we were only about 20 minutes or so away from the beach.  One day we went with a group of friends to just hang out, and I was bugging Liz about guys… who she had a crush on (note that this was before I realized that I loved her). She was demure (she told me to shut up, probably) and then proceeded to write in the sand “Liz loves (but in a heart, of course)” and then left it blank.

I promptly filled in the blank with “Scott” (partly to irritate her, partly because I thought she might like me).  She WAS irritated (but not too much, of course), and tried to play it off by saying that there were plenty of Scotts in the world and plenty of girls named Liz… it was irrelevant. My response was to fill in her last name.

A friend of ours (actually, the same friend who first invited me to Liz’s apartment) had her camera and got a picture of it.  What was so cool, also, is that we had no idea at the time that she took the picture, but she framed it and gave it to us for our wedding.

Little did we know what our future held, and looking back, this was clearly a moment of foreshadowing, a look into our future lives. So, single people out there who are looking for “the one”: Pay attention to your subconscious. You never know what it might lead to.

And, writers … don’t forget that your characters have a subconscious as well.  Just like real people, they may SAY they want one thing, but deep down may want something different.  I think that playwrights and screenwriters know about subtext and will incorporate it into their manuscripts, but I think novel writers forget about it sometimes and the powerful statement it can make.

Liz Stumhofer

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Scott