do you remember in high school, when i came to your school during lunch, to pick you up in my Honda Accord that was as old as me? and when you saw my car pull up, you jumped the picnic table like a scene from Footloose or Sixteen Candles (or whichever one that guy jumps a picnic table), and hopped in the backseat? you were a rebel without a cause and i was your driver. i guess that's how you could look at it.
remember the Dixie Chick sing-a-longs in that weathered blue Accord, and the time you drove me by the castle on the winding back roads of camas? and when we went with my boyfriend (and your friend's) family up north to watch him wrestle and we chatted the whole time. no, i wasn't aware of your adoration. i was focused and giving loyalty elsewhere, and you should be happy about that.
remember when i called you after graduating to say hi, and you told me you were going into the military and you'd gotten married? that was that, and over five years went by. i moved to Utah and lived another life, while you lived yours.
remember, after those five years, when I'd just graduated college and returned home, and I tapped you on the back at Kell's Irish Pub? then, I asked you where your wife was, and you informed me she was no longer? and then do you remember sitting in the booth and talking until the managers had to tell us it was time to go home? we were with friends that night, but i hardly remember them being there, do you?
husband, yes, I remember trying to get out of hanging out when you called to see if we were still on for that next night. sorry for the embarrassment as i finagled my way out of it with excuses. you shouldn't have had me on speaker phone in front of your friends, anyway.
remember during our first date to Motocross a few weeks later, when i showed up in lace and bangles to a scorching hot dirt-fest and you tried to hold my hand over and over again? remember when i resorted to using the port-o-potty, and when I came out I had toilet paper stuck to my forehead from trying to dab my face dry from the heat? sweet. you were so kind to inform me and kept a pretty strait face at that. i almost died.
remember that same day when we went to Top Burger for ice cream and sat on the bench near the playground where our children now play, and you asked me if i prayed? your question pushed tears into my eyes and it was all i could do but to not burst into sobs because you know, my entire senior year of college i contemplated God and wondered how and when i'd ever really know Him. i thought of Him while driving the 90 from Pullman to Moscow and Moscow to Pullman, and during the hours I spent driving from school to home and from home to school. i thought of Him when my brokenness was hard to avoid, when the emptiness felt full and the melancholy was my everyday. then you asked me if i prayed, and a rush of hope struck my heart and i didn't feel alone anymore. and it was then that i realized i was dealing with you as a man, and not a young rebel anymore.
that afternoon at the park probably has a great deal to do with the fact that at the end of our second date and the second day of motocross, when we each went home to separate houses, while the evening was just setting in, it already felt odd to be without you. thirty-six hours and i knew you were special.
remember how that was the only night we spent apart after that, for the next three years or so?
remember the night at Shari's Restaurant where we drank decaf until the early hours of the morning and you told me about reuniting with your mother in the hospital after her near-death car accident and after many years of life lived without her? you told me about unconditional love and forgiveness in a way i hadn't known.
do you remember drinking shiraz to Tracy Chapman's, Crossroads, on the record player over and over during hours-long conversation sprawled out on the carpet? seems Tracy Chapman was the soundtrack to our beginning.
or do you remember the time you called me a brat while we were packing up to go on our first beach trip? being in a rush is not my thing, even my mom will attest that i've fought this since childhood. but you called me a brat, and it was in that odd moment that i thought to myself,
i've found my match.
...to be continued.
image via pinterest
