I needed to get away. Away from all that they were. Maybe not from them per se but from the life of mine that they brought back to my mind. I knew I couldn't go home. I got up from my dorm room. I wandered over to the walking path . I had found so much comfort within those woods. Their hills and ways so engulfed me. I had spent much of the last semester just walking these trails. Trying to figure out, trying to move ahead, trying to find the next step..... I would be their nanny. They had offered me the job. What were the complications? Why did the pastor not want me to take it? There was nowhere else for me to go. At least not in my mind. I had been as honest with them as I knew how to be... Had told them everything about who I was, why in my mind I couldn't go home, and yet they still hired me... Wow. In hindsight I would have closed the door on my backside. And now I can look back and think if they were willing to hire me then the pastor had been right and I should have not taken the job. What is it that they say about hindsight? Oh well.... So I embarked upon the life as a nanny.
Simple enough. I hadn't ever been around many kids. There were only two. The days were long but the children were great. Still in the evenings when the family was about their business I would sit in my room and look out the window. I would wonder about my parents, my life ... I would wonder about him... and how he was doing..... I would wonder about our paths and if they would ever cross again.
I remembered the first time I met him..... It had been in class. Something kept pulling my attention towards this guy who sat two rows over and three seats back. He had this great smile. It just stayed on his face the whole time as if he had found happiness and knew its secrets. During the course of the lecture I must have turned around half a dozen times... It was as if a magnet was pulling me to turn and take notice. The time for the class to be over came and we all got up to leave. He and I ended up walking through the door way together. I was dwarfed by his height. He had this way about him and we struck up a conversation. As we exited the building I spoke of how a bunch of us always had dinner together and would he like to join us.... He politely expressed that he had already accepted an invitation to dinner but would love to in the future. We parted ways.....
I saw a very good friend of mine rushing over to me as I headed to my dorm room. She was so excited about something. First day of classes. Was it the class she just came out of? I stood and waited.
"I met him!" She said. "He just glowed" She began to talk about a guy that had been in her class earlier on in the day and how she had invited him to dinner with us all.... No, I did not at that point put the pieces together. But yes, as I am sure you have figured out the guy was one in the same. She spoke about how he must be her future husband because there was such a distinct attraction towards him. I just smiled. One thing I had found was that there was this disease called "he is the one itis." So I listened as she told her story and was happy for her..... Dinner came and the realization that he was one and the same person came with it..... We all had a good laugh. The joy got even deeper when we realized that a very dear mutual friend (who had come to college the previous semester on consortium) was actually his cousin. She had given him a list with all our names on it. A sort of hook up with these people list. However he had put the list away, thinking he would make his own friends. At the end of the first week, we were all headed out to do something together when through a phone call , the realization came that the people on the list and the people he was hanging out with were one and the same.... Funny how life happens that way sometimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment