The Aloft Blog

The love light in your eyes.

It took me weeks to gin up the courage to ask him out.  When you are 17 and you are madly in love (in only the way a 17 year old can be) with your best guy friend and you've made the executive decision to ask him to your senior year Homecoming dance - well, that takes a lot of courage. 

Note for those of you playing along?  I am rarely brave.

So on a random evening, I called him.  This wasn't a rare occurrence.  In any given week, we likely spoke on the phone 4 or 5 times.  But this call was to be different.  I had worked up the courage to do it.  After hours of talking this through with my best girlfriend, Wendy, I realized that I needed to do this sooner as opposed to later.  The call elapsed just as most of our conversations did...the exchange of pleasantries, gossip about our friends, people not our friends and the day. As the conversation was reaching its natural end, I realized I had to do something and fast.  My courage was draining out of my body quicker than a boat with a HUGE hole in it.  So I did it.

"So, umm, would you want to go to Homecoming with me?"

"oh, wow, umm, well, I can't, I'm sorry" (or something to that effect, it was 21 years ago, after all)

He couldn't have gotten off the phone with me faster if he tried.  

I hung up the phone and stared at the stripped wall paper in disbelief.  I had done it and I had failed.  Well, I didn't fail, really.  The task at hand was to ask him out.  I did.  I just didn't get the answer that I wanted.  

I felt like I had lost everything.

I had no idea what to expect the next day.  We had a pattern, we'd hang out before school and then meet up with the rest of our friends for lunch.  I walked into school petrified that morning.  What if he never wanted to talk to me again?  (spoiler alert, he did talk to me again) but the next few days were pretty uncomfy for both of us and completely nerve racking for me.  If memory serves, I cried each morning on the drive to school.  God bless Wendy for listening to me drone on and on and on about it.  

Thus began what I have often referred to as the worst week of my life.  Later that week the exhaust system would fall out of my car completely.  Yeah, it wasn't good.

But what amazed me is that said best friend?  We recovered.  It took a few weeks.  He had known for years that I liked him but he didn't like me in the same way and now we had very tangible proof of it.  But we recovered.  We seriously did.  After a week or so it was as if it had never happened.  Homecoming came and went.  He went with someone else, I went with my girlfriends.  We moved through the balance of our senior year of high school and I discovered that he was taking the same girl to our senior prom.  No one asked me and I sure as hell wasn't going to ask someone else.  LESSON LEARNED! 

The night of our prom, my friend Will hosted a bunch of us for dinner at his house.  His parents went all out, serving us almost with white gloves.  It was pretty amazing.  I got to our pre-party dressed in my finest and Will came to me with a corsage in his hand.  He said, "BJ dropped this off earlier tonight for you and asked me to give it to you" and with that Will put the flowers on my wrist.  

I was in shock.  There he was with some other girl and he thought about me and did one of the most loving and wonderful things that anyone had ever done for me.  I wore those flowers as if someone had just asked me to marry them.

Fast forward a few hours to our prom and it was a great night.  Despite the fact that BJ was at the prom with his date, I would guess he spent the balance of the evening with me.  I thanked him for the flowers and he smiled and blushed.  At our prom that year, we had a band and a DJ and the band started into "Wonderful Tonight" which was our prom "theme" song and BJ asked me to dance.  There are 3 things I remember about that dance.  

1.  Resting my head on his shoulder.

2.  The fact that the crappy band changed up the lyrics in ways that just hurt my heart at that moment.

3  The hug BJ gave me at the end of that dance.

I knew in that moment that I was so very loved.  Not in the way I *wanted* in that moment but I didn't doubt for a single second how much he loved me and cherished our friendship. 

Some 10 years later he would walk me down the aisle as I married.

Some 15 years later he would apologize for breaking my heart when he was a "clueless" kid.

Some 20+1 later I wish him the happiest of happy birthdays today.  I am so blessed to have such a friend in my life.

We once had it all the entire sky*

He called for the first time during the “X-Files”.  This was a sign that things were clearly never going to work.

This was 1998.  I had a standing date with my roommate and a few friends to watch the “X-Files” every Sunday and no phone call, even from an interesting suitor, would interrupt that. Thankfully, “Antiques Roadshow” didn’t have the same allure so our Monday night conversation went much more smoothly.  We had exchanged a number of emails prior to this phone call.  We met through an internet personals site before it was the thing that everyone was doing.  This was 1998, after all.

We had a lot in common – music, politics, history – things we both loved and knew a lot about. And humour.  We made each other laugh and laugh hard.  After a few hours on the phone, we agreed to meet the following Saturday to see Susan Werner.  He volunteered with an organization that put on folk concerts and I was a die-hard folky.  It seemed like a good way to meet.

I arrived as planned and was ushered to my seat with many apologies of not being able to sit with me.  Understood, understood.  However, as my obtuse self, I didn’t quite realize I was on a date.  It wasn’t until after the show when he made the offer of going out with the large group or on our own that I realized “Oh man, I’m on a date”.  I actually think this worked to my advantage though as I was really at ease and comfortable with this guy that I barely knew. 

A quick dinner post show turned into a 2 and a half hour conversation in his car and the acknowledgement of wanting to see each other again.

And thus began what would end almost 8 years later after a number of marriage counseling sessions and tears that at times felt unending. Holding such a tender place in my heart for two people who at their core had felt like misfits from the start.  For two people who thought love and marriage would allude them and for two people who tried to make a marriage work that was just not meant to be. As the sage Dan Savage often says…every relationship you ever have will end.  Until one doesn’t.

“Lovers that we lose we never dare forget” ~ Susan Werner

* from St. Mary's of Regret ~ Susan Werner

Oh I don't love you but I always will...

"I will take you to see the Pacific Ocean", he said.

When you are mere moments from turning 21 and Chicago is the furthest west this east coast girl has been, those words are about as romantic as romantic can get.  Besides the thrill of first love, the promise of seeing something that I had wanted to see my whole life was intoxicating.  Like many a first love, that love was not to be but the dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean remained deep in my soul. 

Fast forward two years to a love that was absolutely never meant to be but fit the bill for a short time.  I went to spend 5 days with him in Redwood City, CA.  There were so many things wrong with that relationship that just do not bear repeating but the gift of that trip was seeing the Pacific Ocean.  We drove over Highway 92 and with each hill crest I held my breath expecting to see the ocean.  It was almost as if I had stopped looking and then BAM - there it was before me.  Stretched out before us like a band of blue and beautiful that brought me to tears. 

"It's so beautiful", I whispered.  I also said silently in my head "I'm not supposed to be here with you, someone else is supposed to be showing me this."  But that's what happens when you are still in love with someone else. 

We drove south along Route 1.  I stared out of the window the entire time.  I was absolutely mesmerized but the size and the beauty.  It isn't like I had never seen an ocean before that day.  I grew up less than 2 hours from the Atlantic Ocean but this...this was different.  We ate lunch that day at the Davenport Cash Store and spent the day in Santa Cruz.  Other than that the only details I remember of that day are about the ocean.  The quality of the light, the sounds of the waves, the smell of the air...I just couldn't believe I was finally there.

Tonight, some 15 years later, I watched the sun set over the ocean in La Jolla, CA.  I watched the seals on the beach, the sun set over the water.  I noticed the quality of the light, the sounds of the waves and the smell of the air.  My in-laws have a house on the New Jersey shore and I have taken to getting up to watch the sun rise over the ocean and while that has a magic - nothing approaches the magic of the sun disappering into the water.  It is something I could watch daily and never tire of the beauty. 

While my life and love is deeply entwined on the east coast...my heart...my heart belongs to the Pacific Ocean.

The World Was On Fire

I awoke with a start that morning with a tapping on the bedroom door. 

"Time to get up"

I worked my way through the bleariness of sleep to gather my bearings and coerse my brain into reality from a restless slumber.  The type of slumber you have when you know that waking in the morning at an early hour is a requirement.  I stumbled to the bathroom and showered quickly and quietly.  I did my hair and put on the best clothes that I had available to me.  I tenatively made my way up the stairs to the kitchen where I was greeted with a "let's go" and we were off.  It was early in the morning.  Actually by many definitions it could have been described as the night before - 3:30 or something similarly obscene.  We drove through the cold morning on our way to the meeting point.  We were pretty quiet as neither of us were much for talking in the morning.  We listened to Chris Isaak and had an uncomfortable shift in energy at the end of "Wicked Game" and moments later we were at the meeting point. 

I was introduced to a number of people whose names are now mostly a blur to me.  We were briefed on what to expect for the day.  We were told of the rules and regulations.  We were told that no matter what happened we were to listen to them and them alone.  Follow all directions quickly and without question.  I was shuffled into a 15 passenger van with another woman and we were off again en route to our destination. 

We arrived at a high school where the vans were lined up in a specific order and we sat and waited.  The crowd grew larger and larger over time as the sun came up over the field.  And we waited.  Eventually a few people joined us.  A nurse was the first and she was happy to explain to us what to expect next with a casual air that only comes with experience. After what seemed like a very long time we felt the vibrations of the helicopter landing and a few minutes later a man in a suit knocked on our car and told us to go forward. 

We drove in a line very slowly out of the high school and through the town.  People were gathered on the streets with their signs and their flags and their messages.  We saw with our eyes the devastation that had come upon this place.  Bridges were gone, homes were underwater, streets were unpassable.  We made our first stop and someone came to get me and told me to switch vans.  I ran up and jumped in another van.  I looked behind me and there were people there about whom I had only read.  I looked over at my friend with eyes possibly twice the size of my head and he just mouthed "I know!" with as much excitement in his whisper as I felt in my heart. 

We continued on and we stopped in a housing development.  There was a Mustang parked in a driveway and there were questions to be asked.  We listened to conversations about who had the best candy in their desk and how things haven't been the same since the big change. Eventually we wound up at a fire company and the people in our van jumped out for their meeting leaving my friend and me alone.  We ate our sandwiches and went over and over again all that we had seen and all that we had heard.  And we wondered what would happen next.  Would we really get the chance?  What if we didn't?  Would we still be as excited?  Wow, we're tired!  We listened to the meeting in the fire hall on the local AM radtion station as it blanked in and out over and over again. 

Just as we were thinking we weren't going to get the chance.  Just as we were thinking that we were so woefully behind schedule that we'd never have the opportunity we'd hoped for all day -- we were told to get out of the van and follow some men into the basement of the fire hall.  We were told to line up in a semi-circle and that this would be quick but they didn't want us to miss this opportunity.  I was at the far end of the semi-circle when he walked in.  My breath was literally taken away.  He moved down the circle shaking hands with each person, saying hi, thanking them for their help today.  The more time that passed, the more nervous I was.  What was I going to say?  I had no idea until...well, until I had to.  He stood in front of me and my heart was about to pound out of my chest.

"Thank you for your help today"

"You're welcome Mr. President, happy valentine's day"

"You too"

And with that, he was gone.  The room exploded into a cacaphony of excited squeals and sounds of disbelief. 

We went back to the van and dropped off our passengers and made our way back to town.  We dined together that evening on bacon wrapped filets and the giddiness of an experience that we'd never forget.

Fifteen years ago today, my best friend and I had the opportuntity to drive in Bill Clinton's motocade in Woodland, Washington.  There had been dreadful floods in southern WA and northern OR and President Clinton was in town to see the devastation and to talk to the community about how FEMA was going to assist them in their rebuilding. 

In our van that day was Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, James Lee Witt, FEMA adminstrator, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) and a number of others. 

Fifteen years ago I was a bright eyed 22 year old who vowed to remember as many details of the day as possible and who thankfully has.  And even when, one day, I do forget.  I have the photo of shaking hands with President Clinton on a chilly Valentine's Day afternoon.