This one is about how a simple
decision, a mere choice, an action, can change the direction of your
life and set you on totally different path.
It's the old drawn out series of
connections: “If a butterfly flaps his wings in the Amazon jungle
and scares a bird that drops a nut that hits someone in the head who
jumps and avoids a poisonous snake...” That sort of thing.
A year ago today, I put down the APBA
dice and set aside the 1991 baseball replay game I had started about a month earlier, filled the
car's gas tank and before the sun even rose, embarked on the 554-mile
trek to northern Illinois to meet a girl I had only spoken to by
telephone for the previous month. We had talked about her putting her
home on the market and I offered to help her prepare the house for
sale by raking her yard, cleaning up the outside, doing whatever was
needed.
There was no real intent by me other
than to help someone I cared about. Romance? Are you kidding? My
confidence level in that sort of thing always had me asking potential
dates if they wanted to be my next ex-girlfriend.
She could use the assistance and I
needed to get out. That was pretty much the entire motive. Since my
wife passed away in 2006, all I had done on my own before was make a
few jaunts to St. Louis some four hours away to watch Blues' and
Cardinals' games. It was time for a change.
So, I made the decision. I offered.
Obviously, it was weird. A guy
suggesting he drive that far just to “help” had all the markings
of some episode of Dateline NBC. Reporter Keith Morrison would open
the show about mysterious murders by stepping through my Illinois
girl's neighborhood, “He was a nice guy who wanted to help,”
Morrison would say. “... Or was he?”
But she made her own decision after
some brief thought and she accepted, and I headed north.
I arrived in her town shortly after
3:30 p.m., registered with the hotel and called her. She was still
getting ready and was a tad late. I watched the end of the
Florida-Tennessee football game and waited.
At 5 p.m., she was still getting ready.
At 5:45 p.m., she called and said she
was fixing her hair and I could come over in 10 minutes.
At 5:50 p.m., I waited in her driveway
for her to come out.
At 6:03 p.m., she came out and I was
promptly smitten.
We drove to Wal-Mart and bought toilet
seats for her home on our “date.” Despite that blissful first
venture, I first felt she didn't like me that much and that I was
pretty weird. (Actually, I was weird. I was pretty exhausted from the
drive, extremely nervous like a junior high school kid on the first
date, way out of practice for even commencing with small talk with a
woman and totally out of my league in class. I had about as much
chance impressing her as I had of winning a Pulitzer Prize at the
newspaper where I worked). I thought I'd clean her yard the next day
and then head home, defeated but at least having the chance to have
seen Lake Michigan.
But then, I made another decision. I
didn't give up. At least I'd have a friend, I thought. And I
soldiered on. I decided to stay for the entire five days I had booked
the hotel.
The decision worked. After our Wal-Mart
venture, we ate at a Cracker Barrel and then she showed me around her
town. The following day we went to church and the lake and then
watched for a lunar eclipse that night. It was cloudy and we never
saw the moon disappear, but I did see love begin to appear slowly.
During the next 10 months, I drove up
there 16 times. She sold her house, we moved her stuff out, I hauled
her cats down here in May and on June 7, she and her dog moved in
with me.
It's been tough at times. The first
night we were together, ants invaded the dining room and kitchen,
doing a conga line from a patio door to the bowls of cat food. A week
later, my air conditioning unit went out which is not a good thing in
the steamy climes of Arkansas. Last month, I got sick and ended up in
the emergency room with a massive renal infection. Doctors took a CT
scan to see if my kidney was trying to crawl out of my body and they
pumped morphine in me because of the pain. The bill for that li'l
folly is going to be fun.
But it's also been great. We watch
Cubs' games on television a lot. We've binge-watched the game show
Family Feud and Naked and Afraid to the point of tired hilarity. We
play a Trivial Pursuit game we found at a flea market. We cook dinner
together and we make bets on where her dog will poop when we walk him
around the neighborhood each night. This is my life now.
I still find time to roll the APBA
games, albeit at a much, much slower pace.
A year ago, other than noise from the
television or the occasional blast of music on my stereo, I had lived
in silence for more than 10 years.
Tonight, one of the cats is in heat and
yowling like a banshee on crack. The second cat is chasing the first
cat around the house. The dog wants to go for his nightly walk and
the washing machine is chugging like it does on most days. There is
noise in my home now. Blissful noise that signifies I actually have a
life. A year ago, I was resigned to the fact I would be alone.
Tonight, I realize how one minute
decision, one sudden thought, can change everything and make
everything better.
