Growing up we never lived near my grandparents, except for a four year stint in Kentucky. Whether it was conscious or not, I was raised on the idea that you went where life took you as opposed to picking a place and then looking for a life. I don't think one notion is necessarily better than another, but it does play into how I envisioned my future. Of course, I would love to live near either of our families but Dan, even though he didn't move much as a child, agreed that we would go where the job was. I never imagined that we would live here, where we do, near my parents.
Finding out that we were moving to Dallas last year was so surprising. Our home found us (because that's what homes do), a mere two minutes from my parent's original house here. That means that we were somewhat familiar with the area seeing as how over the last 5 years, we have visited these streets, parks, stores, etc.
I have found myself, on more than one occasion, having deja vu sort of moments.
Standing in the park.
It is 2001, the summer after my first year of college. Dan has brought me "home" to Texas and to meet my parents. Texas isn't home to me. I don't know anyone or have any friends. I'm not familiar with the roads, the stores, the anything.
We are doing some fun things while he is here. We drove to Arkansas to visit my sister, Chandra's family. We went boating, took walks.
And we fed the ducks at the neighborhood park.
I'll be a monkey's uncle if Dan doesn't look to be 14 years old in this one.
And now, 2011, I am standing in the same park as my children scale the jungle gym, scream down the slides, and swing on the swings.
I drive past the park and the lake every morning as I drop Ava at school and see the colored sky peeking over the trees and I am back where we started.
In the mall.
It is later that same summer of 2001. Dan is back.
This time we are wandering the jewelry stores looking at diamond rings.
And now 2011, we are taking the kids to the play place
and going for pleasure rides on the escalators.
To someone who grows up and lives in the same place or grows up knowing where they'll be, this may be ordinary. But to me, feeling that out of the entire world to choose from, the fact that we are right here, right where we started is... weird? crazy? ironic? coincidental? fate? Fill in the appropriate word because I haven't figured it out.
There is one place though, from that summer of 2001, that we hadn't been back to. And unlike the others, it didn't hold a great spot in either of our memories. I couldn't remember anything about Six Flags except one ill-fated bench.
Six Flags was the last stop on our itinerary before Dan returned to Utah after his first initial visit. His flight would leave early the next morning. As the afternoon turned to evening, and I started to anticipate his departure, I got kind of crazy. I didn't want him to go, but mostly I didn't want him to go without giving me the ultimate commitment. I knew that he was the one for me. And I had told him that a time or two before. He said he needed more time.
There on the bench, near the end of the day, I started to cry. Really, really, really cry. I begged, pleaded, tried to convince him to just tell me that I was it, I was the one for him. Again, he told me he needed more time.
And that was the very last thing I wanted to hear. I was either right for him or I wasn't. It was either now or not. And I wanted now. In truth, I never would have broken up with him, it was just that I could not imagine anything more torturous than loving him a few more months (years?) and then have him decide that he didn't want me. I may have been young, but I knew my own mind. I knew that by putting it all out there as I had done, I was literally setting my little thumping heart into his hands. The longer he made me wait, the more I thought I would die.
And that is how I sounded on the bench at Six Flags. Like I was dying. Multiple people stopped to see if I was okay. Multiple people asked me if I needed help with my boyfriend and gave him the stink eye. I really wanted to say "Yes, please beat this boy into submission and tell him that he must be mine forever!" But all I could do was say, "I'm okay" between hysterical sobs.
Pathetic is probably the most accurate descriptor. I look back now and still feel bad for myself. I was so young and felt so scared and vulnerable and I just needed that reassurance so badly. But he wouldn't give it to me. We left Six Flags. We went back to my parents house where I resumed the pleading and sobbing on my parent's couch into the wee hours of the morning.
And then he left.
According to him, it only took a few days of being apart and he was sure, I was the one. Given the details I have just described above, that is obviously an absolute miracle.
This Thursday we will have been married for ten years. And yesterday we went to Six Flags to take care of some unfinished business.
We got there when it opened. We rode a roller coaster. We ate some lunch. We rode a few more rides.
Then we found a bench. We shared a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich. Back and forth we passed it, biting the cookie and licking the ice cream, until one last glob sat in Dan's fingers.
"You aren't going to eat the last bite?" I questioned.
"I was. But I think I owe you." he said. And he dropped the last bite into my mouth.
