Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part Four)

Reminder Story #3

(Why would you think you had to settle?)

When I was little, my Grandpa once told someone, "The sun rises and sets on Baby Jessie, in my eyes."

They used to call me Baby Jessie - a nickname coined by my very first friend, a boy I grew up with named Tony.  Tony's mom and my mom were friends from church.  He was a year or so older than I and we used to crawl around on the floor and eat crackers together when we were babies.  Hence, "Baby Jessie" - a nickname that stuck well past the years I would've liked it to.

This name later shortened ("Baby Jessie" was pretty long to say) to just "Baby" a lot of the time, which was fine until about junior high-school (if his little sisters are reading this they're surely saying, "What?!  Junior High!  You started trying to nip that in the ass at eight years old!!").  Okay I did try to stop it earlier, but I was wishy-washy about it so it never really worked.  But by the time I had a teen-aged boy calling me, a teen-aged girl, "Baby," I doubled my efforts at nipping it in the ass.

Setting aside any condescension this nickname might imply, Tony was incredibly kind to me.  His intention was never to be condescending.  Instead, there was a little secret specialness to the name - a little reminder of how long we'd known each other.  What made it hard to let go of, for me, was the feeling that had grown between us over the years (which was the kind one might have for a sibling).  And what made it hard to let go of, for him, was simply that he struggled to see me as a big girl even after I'd grown into one.  So when I finally demanded that he stop, he had a terrible time of it - genuinely struggled to get the "Baby" out of his head.  After all, he'd called me that his whole life.  But I kept reminding him and kept reminding him, "Damn it Tony, it's Jessica.  Call me Jessica will you?  I'm a big girl now."

This is one of those odd things that I'd take back if I could.  Tony was killed in an accident when I was in college, leaving behind a whole host of people who absolutely adored him.  And I wish I'd never gotten after him.  I wish I'd let him call me whatever he wanted.  The things that seem like such a big deal sometimes just really aren't.  

My entire life I've had these incredible men (and boys) around me.  These people have adorned my childhood and beyond - a present and loving father, my brother who was my only sibling and best friend, uncles, cousins, friends, Tony, and the grandpa in whose eyes the sun rose and set on me (I was his only grand-daughter).  I've always watched, fascinated, the ways in which they've handled themselves in the world.  And the ways in which they've treated others.  It was directly from them, in fact, that I learned early on how to pick the men from the boys - metaphorically speaking.   

My grandpa used to clip me fat, pink and red roses from his garden.  Then we'd go for walks, me carrying around bouquets the size of my head - with gloves on of course, "Baby Jessie" mustn't get sliced by a rose thorn."  They're almost disgustingly romantic.  But they're memories I wouldn't trade for a million dollars a piece.     

One year when I was very little, he bought me a kitchen set for Christmas complete with miniature sink, refrigerator, and stove/oven combo.  The kitchen didn't come with a cupboard/counter top, which I, a spoiled rotten brat, immediately pointed out, "Where will I put my dishes?  And where will I prepare my pretend food?"  My grandpa went into the garage and, by the end of that week, produced a little cupboard with real counter-top on top, salvaged from their real kitchen remodel.  The unit even had a tiny, little drawer for my plastic silverware.  "You're absolutely right," he said, "No kitchen is complete without a counter top and a cupboard."

Now, my grandpa wasn't made of money.  He was orphaned at an extremely early age and was never given any advantage with which to succeed.  However, he was smart.  And he worked hard.  So by the time I came along and ever wanted for something, he managed to get it for me (even if it meant he had to make it himself). 

One day, and I can't remember how old I was, my grandpa laughingly said to me, "Jessie.  You're going to need to marry someone who is rich.  You can always learn to love them."

I thought that was terrible.  Not only that but it also, taken literally, made absolutely no sense.  He wasn't rich and my grandma, who owned her own business for over twenty years, loved him more than all of life itself.  And he loved her double that.  So sometime later, during my high-school years if I remember right, I asked him exactly what he had meant when he said that.  

He said he meant that I'd always had high expectations (and that he hoped he'd had something to do with that).  And it was his opinion that I should continue to have high expectations, especially of any potential husband.

"Find a man who wants to provide for his family, who wants to give you all the things you want in life.  It's not everything, and it's not always even possible in this day and age to provide for a family or give them everything they want.  But find someone who wants to.  Because that's the mark of a real man," he said.

I told him I thought that was a little old-fashioned.  So, just to make sure that I could buy my own kitchens in the future, my grandpa later paid my way through college.  He said this was specifically so that I'd never have to rely on someone besides myself to meet my expectations.  But I thought it was really because he thought I had a broken picker. 

What the hell is a picker, you ask?  It's the thing I picked my boyfriends with.  I stole the term from some friends of mine:)  And I thought it was broken too.  For awhile.  

When I started out to find the "perfect him," I happened to be intensely attracted to boys that treated girls like garbage.  Or at least that's what I thought at the time.  But what was really happening, I realized much later, was that I was simply in high-school.  And the boys I dated, well... they were in high-school too.

When I was a high-school teacher a few years ago, I remember telling the girls not to have high expectations of the boys in regards to relationships, "You don't understand honey, he's in HIGH SCHOOL.  Boys at that age have one, and only one, priority with girls.  It's got to be the only reason they're willing to put up with high-school girls at all.  It doesn't mean they're bad.  It means they're young." 

But when I was in the situation myself, it didn't feel like a simple matter of timing.  It felt like the slow decline of a drug addiction.  I started out with high expectations, but then I seemed to lower my standards little by little.  I crossed one line after another - "I'll never date someone with a mohawk."  But I couldn't resist.  He was beautiful.  "I'll never date someone with a leather jacket."  But he's gorgeous.  "Okay, I'll never date someone with chains hanging off the leather jacket."  Hmmm.  "I'll never date someone who does drugs."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who does those drugs." "I'll never date someone who cheats on me."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who cheats on me twice."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who cheats on me three times."  And on down it went from there.

I thought I was attracted to boys that were, well... bad.  But they weren't really "bad."  They were mostly just "boys."  And every now and then Tony would ask me where one of them lived and tell me the guy might mysteriously end up a bloody smear on the sidewalk somewhere.  I would never tell him where anyone lived.  I'd poo-poo him instead, "It's my own fault.  I picked the guy.  But from now on, I'm only going to date nice guys.  Guys like you."

Then I'd grab the very next loser that came along and make him mine. 

By the time I was sixteen, I'd gotten sick of high school guys and found a whole new solution.  College guys.  "These are MEN," I thought.  However, as it turns out, college guys that date sixteen year old girls aren't men either.  And by the time I was in college myself, I thought I'd completely lost the ability to differentiate.  It's the only reason I could come up with how I ended up with this guy:

"You've thrown up on your pants again.  Did you steal money out of my account again?  What do you mean you lied about getting that job?  You can't pay any rent again?  You don't care that you cheated on me?  You don't care that I cheated on you?  No job?  No car?  No hopes or dreams?  You're still so baked at twenty five years old you can't get off the couch?"

I had sought excitement and found only boredom.  I had hoped for intimacy and felt only hurt.  I had pushed for closeness to the point of extreme distance.  I had looked for men and found only boys.  I wanted a "soul mate" more than anything else, and I had searched to the exclusion of anything real or worthwhile.  I had lost myself somewhere in the process of seeking the "perfect him."  I had completely forgotten that I used to hold roses with gloves on.  

About this time I'd been driving up to someplace to see a friend of mine from a summer camp that I used to go to.  And I took the loser with me few times.  Thankfully my friend never asked.  But he did, and rather sneakily I might add, try to hook me up with a couple of his friends here and there.  That probably should've been a clue into the inner workings of my picker. 

One weekend I left the loser at home and my friend and I drove up to see his family for Thanksgiving.  We stayed at his dad's house and the plan was to stay one night and then come right back the next day.  However, due to a big snowstorm coming in, they closed the pass we had to go through in order to get home.  So we got stuck at his dad's house for a few days.  This would've been fine except that his dad had a cat and I'm allergic to cats (hospitalized repeatedly during childhood after spending the night with friends and their cats - kind of allergic - back in the days before real antihistamines).  And you know me.  I love cats.  I absolutely can't keep my hands off them.  So it didn't take long before I started getting sick.

The moment the pass opened back up, my friend made a plan to drive me home.  It was a long drive and there were still lots of warnings about attempts to drive through this pass.  Plus, there were two additional passes after this one that we had to go through as well.  He didn't think his truck would make it so he borrowed his dad's car which had four wheel drive.  What this meant was that after he got me home, he was going to have to turn around and go all the way back (through the three passes), get his truck, and then drive himself (through two of the passes again) to get himself home.

There was so much snow.  And ice.  And about half way through the first pass I found myself feeling awfully guilty about it.  So I asked him, "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" he asked back.

"Driving me home," I answered.

"Uuuh.  Because you're my friend," he answered, "and I don't want to see you get sick.  That's what friends do.  Isn't it?"

"I guess so," I answered.

Right then I looked at him.  And I realized that we had known each other for years, but that I didn't actually know very much about him.  You know?  About who he was.  I knew that he played football, swam in the lake, and went out with the really beautiful girls at camp.  I knew he was fun to fill up coffee cans with chew spit with.  And we'd done a lot of partying together.  But I wouldn't say that I'd been that much of a friend exactly.  So I decided to use the time we had on that drive to ask him questions - try and get to know him a little better.  

I asked him specifically about his hopes and dreams for the future.  I guess I don't feel comfortable going into the details of these conversations.  I wouldn't particularly want my hopes and dreams from twenty-two years old blabbed about in a blog years later.  But one of them, in a nutshell, was that he wanted to be able to provide his future family with everything they ever wanted.  And he had a plan for how to do it too.  He'd put a lot of thought into it.   

"Really?" I asked him, actually surprised, "Are you being serious?"   

"Yeah.  Of course," he answered, "Every guy thinks like that."

"No," I said, "Of this I can assure you - every guy does not."

At first it made me worry about him a little.  That's how "not normal" I'd come to believe this kind of thinking was.  His expectations of himself seemed so high.  But I was taking psychology classes for the first time (picture me rolling my eyes), so I psycho-analyzed it real quick.  "This makes sense I guess, developmentally.  He's in his early twenties.  And he's having all these wonderful, although somewhat idealistic, perfectly normal dreams at the perfectly normal age for them.  Maybe normal guys do think like this," I thought to myself.

And as I listened to him talk I realized that the desire was genuine.  That normal or not, realistic or not, the "want to" was there.  And that, according to my grandpa, was "the mark of a real man."  My friend was thinking about the ways in which he could give to someone, not the ways in which he could get.  His love for his family was already there, even though the actual people weren't yet.  It came from inside him someplace and, in all actuality, had nothing to do with anyone else.  He was alive inside.  And my genuine surprise about that pointed very deeply to the fact that I wasn't.   
  
"Wow," I finally said, "My grandpa would've loved you."

And that's when I remembered holding the roses.

I realized that my picker wasn't broken at all.  He was right there next to me in the car.  I mean, if you're not in love with this guy just from the little bit of information I've provided here then there's something wrong with your picker.  But here's the interesting part.  He was my friend.  And an old one at that.  It makes me smile to think I thought I had such old friendships at twenty-two years old!  I knew him back in the days of being a kid, well before the days of anything that even resembled maturity.  He made me think of things like sunshine.  Dirt.  And chew spit:)  So it didn't occur to me to want him.  What occurred to me was that I wanted to be like him.

All the way home I thought about the fact that I'd always been so focused on the being loved (or not) part of it that I'd never really put much thought into what it meant to actually love someone, to be someone with something to give.  I realized that my problem wasn't on the outside of me at all - wasn't about settling for "the wrong kind of guy" although that was sort of a side effect of it.  My problem was on the inside of me and had more to do with my own expectations of myself, or, I should say, my lack of them.  My problem was my tendency to settle for being less than who I really am - that instead of trying to find the "perfect him," I needed to be looking at how to become the "perfect her."

This wasn't an over night matter obviously.  In fact, I think at the time it had more to do with growing up than anything else.  It was just a beginning.  And it's been a work in progress ever since, not so much in my relationships anymore (thank God those days are over), but in every area of my life.  So my problem, I'd discovered that day, was me.  But, just for good measure, the loser moved out as soon as I got home.  And that time he stayed gone.  Not even two weeks later, I met Shane.  And I think I recognized the man in him and the woman I could be because of the truth I'd remembered.  Although, I have to tell you, I still think there was something wrong with his picker:)

This brings me back to today.  Trying to live up to my own expectations has always been an issue for me.  I think it's because of the nature of high expectations in general, that things don't always turn out the way I think they should.  Sometimes I fail.  But the only real failure, I think, is not to try.  Because normal or not, realistic or not, and whether things turn out the way I think they should or not, the "want to," according to my grandpa, is "the mark of a real man" or "woman" as this case may be.  And I'd like to become someone with something to give away regarding this Autism deal.

My friend (who has that family now:) struggled on bad roads with them at Thanksgiving time this past year.  It seems to be a reoccurring theme for him.  They made it back safe.  And another friend of mine got robbed at gunpoint in a park at 8:00 on Saturday morning not two weeks ago.  Some money was stolen, no one got hurt.  But God DAMN.  It's probably silly that I worry the way I do, and that I send such thick, heavy prayers out to everyone all the time.  But this life we have is so precious.  So fragile.  And so short.  Tony will always and forever be gone.

My plan is to spend my first fifty years in heaven telling Tony to call me whatever he'd like, the next fifty thanking my friend for telling me his dreams on the way through the snowstorm, and the next two thousand, at least, thanking Shane for the excitement, the intimacy, and the closeness.  For his courage in being with me and for his fearlessness in being the father of one regular and two disabled children - not so much that he's not afraid inside.  He is.  And so am I.  But for his fearlessness in all of his actions irregardless of his fear inside, in all of his showing up and being a lover, a husband, a father, an employee, for all of his attempts to support one hell of a difficult family through one hell of a difficult time, even when his wife wants to spend more money to go back to school.  For a long time.  It doesn't even occur to Shane not to bring out the best in me.  I'm going for the doctorate by the way, for no other reason than that it excites me beyond belief.  Because, after all, it's safe to move forward, the door is opening, and there's not one single reason in the whole entire world why I should settle.

Thanks Reminders.