We’re doing something a little different today. Gina Easley, our staff photographer, has been providing the images for most Full Grown People essays for years (some damn amazing ones, I might add), and now she’s started writing flash essays of her own. This is one from one of her series. —ed.

Photo and Writing by Gina Easley

He’s been gone for several days, and she doesn’t know where. This isn’t the first time. Sometimes he’s just hiding out nearby, keeping to himself. It’s nothing personal. Other times he ventures further away, and she finds him only through her own persistence or the kindness of strangers. She doesn’t know if this is one of those “further away” times. As always happens in these moments of uncertainty, she is struck with a deep grief at the thought of living without him.

Fifty years they’ve been together. Still, she doesn’t know if he loves her; she only knows that she loves him.

Fifty years, and still he insists on sleeping under the bed.

•••

She chuckles at this thought: her longest lasting relationship has been with a desert tortoise.

Back when her now-middle-aged children were babies, a friend gave Henry to Kathleen. Henry was a rescue tortoise in need of a home, and Kathleen took him in. He has lived with her in ten different homes, been with her through two marriages and three children, and has even seen her grandchildren grow into adulthood. She doesn’t know how old he is. A desert tortoise’s lifespan is long. He could quite possibly outlive her.

She’s never known what he is thinking or feeling, but she does know that he has preferences, and that he is willful. His determination is obvious and strong and was proven recently when she put up a board to prevent him from entering the garage, one of his favorite places. She watched as he banged himself repeatedly into the board in an attempt to break through. She admires his determination. But maybe that is why he’s gone missing again … perhaps he’s unhappy about the board.

•••

She steps into the back yard and sees him, basking in the sun. He’s back. She goes to him, touches his head. She’s reminded of the feeling of calm that overtakes her when she looks out at the ocean, and how curious it is that he has the same effect on her. Along with gratitude and relief at his return, she is flooded with love: a no-strings, no-expectations kind of love. For fifty years she has cared for him, seen to all his needs. And for fifty years he has reminded her daily that love needs no reason, that love itself is enough.

•••

GINA EASLEY is a photographer based in Minneapolis. Aside from her role as staff photographer for Full Grown People, she enjoys photographing animals and the people who love them. This is her first published essay.