If We Could See Everything in Retrospect

Dread. Or boredom. The rangy Iowa farm boy wasn't sure which was clutching at his thoughts. He was clutching his notebook like a fig leaf as he leaned against the wall. Waiting next to the door leading into a dreary course in elementary functions, taught by a dreary man who read in monotone from the lifeless textbook he'd penned.

For the moment, the kid was mesmerized by patterns cast by the September light streaming in through the wall of glass across the hall. This little-over-eight-minute-old signal from a distant star, played in the stairwell. It's hypnotic dance washed across students as they spiraled mindlessly down the steps. Golden light. Flickered and fused in random patterns. Dissolved. Collided. Painted the marble floor in silhouettes, then splashed in abstractions across the wall.

Suddenly the spell was broken. A figure had caught his attention. A woman emerged from a room next to the stairwell, saw him and walked toward the kid. She stopped inside his personal space, looked up into his blushing face and said, "You have the most beautiful eyes." Then she nudged closer, nearly touching him, refusing to release her gaze from his.

There was an eternal two-second silence. He replied, "Yours, too," and he felt like leaping down the stairwell, hearing how stupid it sounded spilling from his lips. But she just smiled, then walked away as the door to his class opened. He watched her disappear into the flow of students moving by like a river through the hall. Watched as she disappeared round a turn of the hall. Then he entered the cell holding elementary functions.

A few days earlier he had met her sitting with some of his friends. She was introduced as "Joan," in a hurried round robin roll call at dinner in the dorm cafeteria. He'd never given her a single thought. Someone as striking as she wouldn't be interested in him. Now, he was mystified by her actions as the drone of his professor died in the stagnant air. 

He decided she was just messing with him, and dismissed the encounter. But the following Monday and Wednesday, with their classes in that building, Joan would walk over and speak to him. Within two weeks they were together every day. Joan loved music and the kid would play guitar and sing with her for hours. They climbed trees together. Threw football. Joan could put a beautiful spiral on her passes.

It was common for Joan to be hit on regularly. But she made a point of reaching over and grabbing the kid's arm or winking at him in the middle of some guy's pick up line. She seemed to know when he felt insecure and would say just the right thing to destroy his insecurity. For five or six intense weeks they had been inseparable. He was absolutely crazy about her.

Then one day after dinner, she walked him outside and asked if they could sit and talk. They held hands as they settled on the dorm steps.  She didn't hesitate. She told him they needed to go their separate ways. When he asked why, she told him, "You give your heart away too soon. Hold something back. Make sure the other person is at the same place on the road with you."

He was devastated. He felt gut-kicked. He was lost. A week later Joan came up to him at lunch and handed him a sheet of notebook paper. On it she had copied the poem The Road not Taken. She simply said she wanted him to have it, then turned and left. He read. He understood. But it deepened the loss. And he was certain he'd never get over her, that there was no one for him, that he'd never love again.


It's almost thirty-nine years later. The sun is streaming in through the studio window. The Iowa farm kid, now on the cusp of old age, stares out the window at a late summer St. Louis sky. The stillness of the scene is interrupted by intermittent flashes of yellow and black as goldfinches flit from cone flowers in the garden to the nearby trees.  In a few moments he leaves to eat lunch with his wife.

This morning those memories of youth lie in the sun like unearthed stones. The kid's amazed and amused by his recall of Joan. Amazed because both Joan and he met their lifelong partners just weeks after the miserable break up. Amused because of how flat and pale that farm boy seems when he rummages through the emotions and thoughts that still remain a part of his memory in old age.

And the kid still loves Joan. She will always be a part of him. He will always be indebted to her. The break-up was a gift masquerading as sorrow. The richness of his marriage bears witness to this fact. Joan had set the table for the love of his life.

I thought it might be entertaining to have back story on the song posted. It's the first song I wrote. It is amusing to hear the lyrics, so heartfelt, of this 19-year-old kid. My wife and I still have some contact with Joan. She was and is a woman we both are glad was part of my life.