A Hole In One
I’ve never been into making New Years resolutions and actually trying to keep them but this year when someone asked me “What’s your New Years resolution?” I came up with a real one. “I resolve to resolve my relationship with The Girlfriend, one way or the other.” I hadn’t seen her for three years. That’s not a good sign. It wasn’t as if one of us was away at war. Hell, soldiers get leave to come home occasionally. I assume maximum security prisoners get to have visits where they can make eye contact through thick plexiglas. They don’t even send astronauts or cosmonauts up in space that long. No, there aren’t many good explanations for not seeing someone you’re in love with for three years especially if you’re both living in the same country that has a system of highways and regular air flights.
And yet, such was the case with The Girlfriend and I. So, what was my explanation? For three years, she had kept me at bay by making repeated promises to come home from the place in which she was working, even making plane reservations at times. I wasn’t invited to come down to see her. The nature of her work was so secret, I couldn’t be entrusted with her address, only a post office box. She insisted that she be the one to make the trip because she wanted to see our cats. But every time, just as she was about to leave, something prevented her from coming. I never kept count but I’m sure that happened over a dozen times. Occasionally, I was given a reason that seemed plausible like a health problem but usually it was just generically related to her work which could never be explained in detail. Each time, I would go around and sheepishly tell people “I know you think I’m crazy but this time I really think she’s coming.” It worked out well for inspiring me to do those extra-effort “company’s coming” cleanings that a house needs occasionally.
My faith in our relationship was never completely shattered by the repeated blows of disappointment because, when she would find time to call me, she made me feel like nothing had changed between us. Her voice was like an aural narcotic, washing my brain in a calming euphoric glow, releasing memories of the comfort I’d felt during the years we spent living together, the days when I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. As the calls became less and less frequent, even an email or a text message could trigger the endorphins. These regular reversals of paranoia led me to believe and often remind myself that when it comes to figuring out what she is thinking, I’m always wrong. No matter how high the evidence was stacked or how indefensible her failures to come home, communicate or provide explanations seemed to be, I just assumed it had to be my failure to understand her and have faith in her. This interminable rollercaoster ride took its toll. I was just hanging on by a thread and I was ready to fall but I couldn’t be the one to cut it because I was ready to climb back up if she still wanted me. I had to hear it from her. I told her I was a big boy and I could take it but she never threw the punch.
Recently, the signs had gotten worse. After begging her not to let three years go by before we saw each other, she informed me by text that she had cancelled her flight to come home for Christmas for the second year in a row. Additional texts outlined additional cancellations but never any explanations. Weeks went by with nothing but a text here and there asking if I was snowed in or claiming she’d call later but never doing so. Then the texts stopped and after receiving no calls for 2 months, I looked at my calendar, saw a week with nothing scheduled and decided to go find her. I’d planned on doing that the year before but she talked me out of it before I had a chance. I had put together some clues to her whereabouts that allowed me to triangulate an area with a beach she might frequent. I spent quite a bit of time visiting it on Google Earth and imagining how I might find her. When the call never came that might dissuade me, the morning of departure arrived and the momentum of my fantasy voyage launched the black BMW Loveboat down the road.
I realized that I might be doing something really stupid. Driving a thousand miles to visit somebody who doesn’t know you are coming, who may not want you to come, whose address you don’t know, who may have travelled out of town herself, who may or may not be visiting a certain beach at any particular time is a plan that doesn’t seem well thought out. I didn’t want to warn her I was coming because I seriously thought she might hide. The success of my plan was definitely a long-shot. NASA engineers could at least calculate where the moon was supposed to be once the lunar lander arrived. I was heaving a basketball a thousand miles and hoping it would swish through the net. It was like stepping up to the tee and swinging for a hole in one.
On the drive down, I had time to think about why I was making this quixotic journey. Winter was coming back to Columbus after a brief respite and my last escape had been Christmas and New Years 2007 in Key West. But I wasn’t going because I needed a vacation. I just needed a simple answer to a simple question and I felt like the only way I could force her to answer me was by holding her there with my eyes so she could see the tortured soul that needed to be comforted or released. The separation was killing me softly and silently, like being smothered by your lover’s pillow. I needed to momentarily defeat the distance and the silence by pushing back the miles, breaking through the sound barrier and gasping for just enough of a breath to ask her if she still wanted to be with me. I wasn’t hoping to accomplish any more than that and was prepared to make a quick obsequious exit, figuring the chances of her giving me the answer I wanted to hear were slim. Yet I continued to bet against myself and fantasize about a sweet reunion.
I wasn’t looking forward to the long drive but I soon remembered how pleasant a road trip can be despite the aching neck and sore butt. The miles and the hours flew by as I entertained myself. In between discs of David Sedaris reading “When You Are Engulfed In Flames”, the new Gregg Allman was perfect traveling music and it was good to get reacquainted with Tom Waits, Gorillaz and Emmy Lou Harris who contributed the inevitable song that seemed to be written for the occasion. “One of these days I’m going to take that ride/Though there may be nothing on the other side”. As I crossed into the South, I smelled the steamy broth of life cooking outside, warming the inside of my nose and causing me to radiate under my sweatshirt.
I planned to spend the night with my cousin in Goosecreek, S.C. I exited the freeway just as night fell and my fear of having trouble following the directions to her condo in the dark turned out to be well-founded as I drove back and forth looking for a hidden street sign and discovered I hadn’t been given her correct phone number. After finally figuring it out and getting some sleep, I got back on the road in the dark at 5 AM. As the daylight returned, I felt a strange hopeful sensation when I turned off my headlights. I arrived at the hotel just in time to get ready to watch the Buckeye basketball game. Their defeat, which I took to be a bad omen, didn’t dampen my excitement and enthusiasm for the job ahead as I immediately headed out to do some preliminary reconnaissance of the target area.
I confidently navigated through the area I had often visited on maps and in satellite photos, parked in the public lot and took the path to the beach as imagination became reality. On the bridge, dappled with patches of sunlight between the shadows of the trees and bushes, it occurred to me that she probably walked through this intimate wooden space many times and now I was moving through her lingering presence. I emerged and was drawn to turn north where it seemed less populated. It was a beautiful warm day and the beach was full of people near the entrance. Even though I didn’t plan to start looking for her until the early morning when I imagined she would most likely be there, I soon realized that I was going to be unable to resist looking for her in the face and body of every woman I saw there.
I reached the smooth wet sand of the shore that gave ever-so-slightly to the impact of my bare feet. After strolling a short distance with my eyes wandering between the waves and the beach population, I noticed the translucent heart-shaped water balloons with purple stitching and tassels in my path. Remembering the warning on the chalkboard at the entrance about the presence of man o‘ wars, I wondered how many I had just missed stepping on. Then I saw a woman at the top of a dune, lying on her stomach and a blanket wearing a floppy hat, big sunglasses and an orange dress. I couldn’t get a good look at her face but I noticed her hair was the right color and the body-type was close. I wondered how many times I would see women in the next few days that would look like possibilities. I didn’t want to appear to be too obvious about checking her out so I decided to walk a little further and then double-back to get a better view of her. On my way back, I saw her running at me with an open-mouthed smile.
I’d been on the beach for 10 minutes. She had noticed me walking past her and wondered so she kept an eye on me. When I turned around, she saw the scarlet and grey “The Ohio State University” game day tee-shirt and suddenly I was telescoped into her world. It was unusual for her to be there. She hadn’t been to the beach much. Even then, she was working. That window of a couple hours on Sunday turned out to be the only chance I would have had to find her there. We talked easily and comfortably for about an hour. I was disappointed when she mentioned that I couldn’t come to her place which had to remain a business secret but she did ask how long I could stay and when I said all week she suggested I just remain at the reasonably-priced hotel I had chosen.
She said she would have to leave in a little bit to finish up her work but that she could be back around 7. I was just glad that I’d found her so quickly and that we had so much time to spend together. I saved the question I had travelled so far to ask for later. She came back after just a couple minutes to tell me to watch the moonrise which should occur around the time she returned, then left again. I was brimming over with happiness, luxuriating in my good fortune. I didn’t need to walk to the bar down the beach to get a beer. I was exactly where I wanted to be, laying on her plush red towel on top of a pretty blue and white bed sheet, watching the waves breaking and the people walking. The sky began to darken and the stars shyly revealed their whereabouts. As night fell and I was left alone on a deserted beach, the moon and The Girlfriend were no where to be found. I texted her “Nothing but stars”. She called and said a business emergency came up and we wouldn’t be able to get together that night. I quietly conveyed my disappointment and gathered up my stuff as best I could for the long slog through the sand, but the blindly-constructed arrangement of objects fell apart at the entrance to the bridge.
A hole in one can be deceptive. There might be some skill involved in getting the shot close but its luck that guides that little ball into the cup. Making one gives you reason to celebrate for a moment but its not as if you can just stand there and admire it until night falls and everybody’s gone. You’ve got to move on to the next hole where odds are you’ll be lucky just to shoot par.
