The Adventures of
David
Elizabeth
and Leif

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to digress.  It’s not even our anniversary or anything, but I’m reading a book in which some characters are driving across Oklahoma and it put me in mind of the first road trip David and I ever took together.  It was December of 1994, we had been dating since September I think, and we decided to do an extended road trip for Christmas break.  We drove from Atlanta to Dallas where I met his family for the first time, and then we hoofed it on up to Denver where he met mine.

It was during the second leg of our journey when, as things do on long trips in confined spaces over endless miles of flat plains, it began to feel kind of tense.  We weren’t exactly fighting or anything, just engaging in that siblingy kind of banter that ventures just close enough to offense to create a thickness in the air.  Who knows the subject of our banter, but at some point the car became very quiet for some long minutes.

A bit of background:  We hadn’t been dating that long, nary a kiss had passed between us and I think we both felt a little shocked that we wanted to venture out already on our own version of Meet the Parents (which, thankfully, lacked almost all of the cringe factor of the later to be made movie…). But I think we both felt that this friendship was worth looking into, for which, as everyone knows, a long boring road trip is indispensable.

So at this quiet point in our journey I’m thinking: Great.  Who’s idea was this?  We don’t even know each other that well, I can tell he’s mad at me, was it the thing about the green cars?  Are we too different?  Are we too alike? Etc., etc.  Then he says, “I need to tell you something.”  Oh boy.  It’s over.  I’m kind of surprised, I didn’t thing we were arguing that much, but maybe he just doesn’t like the back-at-ya type, I mean he is from the south, kind of—- “I think I’m falling in love with you.”    …

I don’t remember what my actual response was, but I don’t think I said anything at all.  Maybe David remembers better, but I’m pretty sure the subsequent silence just took on a new quality.  (Actually, now that I think about it, he was probably doing his own bit of mental gymnastics when I didn’t say anything back:  Oh, great.  Nice timing, smoothie.  You just had to go and blurt it out like that, didn’t you? And we have how many miles until Denver??? Etc., etc., etc.

Well, eventually it came out that I loved him too, and one thing has led to another, including a new little person on the face of this earth named Leif.  But two things stand out in my memory of the rest of that road trip: watching the sun set four or five times over the gently rising and falling Oklahoma horizon, and looking over at David, asleep in the passenger seat, and wondering if I might be with this new but strangely familiar person (strange, strange, very strange) for the rest of my days.  After 12 years of being married, moving steadily through the now predictable cycle of sunups and sundowns in our relationship– –the risings warm, inspiring, blinding, the settings dark, brooding, deep– –it turns out I just might.