“Road Trip—Pt VIII: Ever After”

This saga really isn’t complete without this last chapter.  Like most stories, though, the end is really just the beginning.  Even when I was a kid, I’d get to the “…and they lived happily ever after” and wonder what that meant.  Sometimes I’d try to imagine what kind of life Prince Charming and Snow White managed, or the charmed Prince and Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.  Did they live happily?  How?  Maybe he turned out to be Dorian, instead.

As for me, I knew I needed to find a way to make a living.  I had learned that lesson well from my parents.  I had always tried to make myself independent.  I had my grandmothers and my mother teach me to cook when I was very young.  I was making my own pancakes from scratch by the time I was six.  They also taught me to do rudimentary sewing.  Although I avoided laundry and housecleaning, it could be done.  It’s actually much easier than baling hay.

Mom and Dad were happy to see me home safe and sound.  I had borrowed a dime and called (yes, this was a very long time ago) the night before to let them know where I was and that I was safe.  The warm weather I’d experienced since the morning after my arrival in Atlanta had held in the Midwest, and all the snow was gone.  I got home the next day, gave Mom my laundry (see?), and went to find Dad to talk to him about school.

As I mentioned earlier, he had told me often that I should get my teaching endorsement.  It would only take me another semester, and that term would begin in a week or so.  I had time to hitch back to Tarkio and get registered.  Eight weeks of classes and eight weeks of student teaching.  He said he’d help me rent an apartment in Tarkio; since I’d graduated, I couldn’t get student housing any longer and only needed it for half the term.  During student teaching, if I could get somewhere close by, I could live at home.  Sounded like a great plan to me.  Mom was thrilled.

Not long after that decision had been made, I thumbed my way back to Tarkio.  Typically for the Midwest, the temperature had plunged and it was cold again, but not too bad, and more warm weather was predicted.  I headed for the Registrar’s office.  Crystal, the lady who had run the office for decades, I think, was surprised to see me, but helpful, as always.  I knew what I needed to do.  She gave me the forms, and I sat down in the hallway to fill them out.

I wasn’t surprised to hear someone say my name.  It was a small campus and everyone knew everyone.  What did surprise me, though, was that I looked up to see an old girlfriend standing there.  Nancy Fender and I had dated for about a month the summer before I started college and she began her senior year in high school.  I hadn’t seen her in four years.  She’d finished the two year course at what was then called Christian College in Columbia, Missouri, a fairly uneventful year at MU, and was at loose ends…so much so that she’d accompanied her younger brother to Tarkio when he was thinking of applying.  She had to remind me of all of this later because I wasn’t really listening.  I was lost.  I can still see her standing there in her mother’s old fur coat, a fuzzy brown stocking cap (she never wore hats!) and mittens.  The cold had made her cheeks ruddy.  Her blue eyes seemed to have light of their own, and just remembering her smile makes me warm.

I do remember that we talked at length and caught up.  I told her she should come to Tarkio and finish her degree.  She thought she might like to teach elementary school.  I had been a student advising assistant for my own advisor for two years, and I knew she could transfer all of her credits.  She could be finished in a year, maybe three semesters.  I didn’t know if I’d sold her on the idea.  I did know when she and David left that I sincerely hoped to see her again.

February 4^th was three days into the Spring Term.  Another warm front had moved in and almost everyone was out that afternoon, enjoying the sunshine.  For some reason I was sitting on the south side of the Student Union and there wasn’t anyone else around.  I swear, I think I knew, and I was just waiting.

A bronze Malibu pulled into the Visitor parking down the hill, and Nancy stepped out.  She’d decided to take my advice and had come to register.  From that moment on, we were together for just a little over two weeks short of forty-one years.  The trip to Georgia and back had been a good adventure.  My life with Nancy Jane was what “happily ever after” means.  Not always easy, but always worth it.

Excuse me.  I have something in my eye.

Happy Valentine’s Day.