Of Sketches and Separation

So after the ball game I was sweating bullets because Jennifer didn’t give me a straight answer one way or the other. I bounced back and forth with the old she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not all night. We met the next day to talk through exactly how the next five months would be played out. We met and sat under a tree in a very public place and set our boundaries.

A lot is coming back as I write. We decided To not speak what so ever for the duration of the internship. We would be as far from each other as possible when we were forced to be in the same place. I would sit on the left in the prayer room she would sit on the right (it eventually became opposite sides of an aisle and a few rows apart). She would sit in the front at classes and I in the back. We would find tables distant from one another at meals, etc.

As I recall we went a week without as much as a “Hi, how are you?” After that week (which was horrible) we decided to be a little more relaxed with our rules. We allowed ourselves the freedom to say “Hi” from time to time.

Hold the phone! I just recalled one of our best/worst pre-dating incidents. However, I will save it for Jennifer to tell. Look for that story next time in: The Grotesque Misadventures of Jennifer’s Colon. (You know the story I mean, dear)

Anyway, it was shortly after we stopped talking that Jennifer had a reoccurring dream. She dreamed of a house that had two stories, a tree on either side of it, crisscrossing lattice under a raised porch and a door that was slightly left of the center of the house. In the dream she knew she was in Kentucky. Every time she had this dream she would be standing in the front and begin to walk around the right side and she would wake up.

Being the artist she is, she drew this house. She knew I was from Kentucky so one day she broke our rules and showed it to me. She explained that she dreamed of this Kentucky home and asked if I recognized it. I believe I dented the table I was sitting at when my jaw dropped. I was looking at a sketch of my house. Two trees, crisscross lattice, off center door. The only difference was that my house has only one story.

I showed Jennifer a picture of the front of my house and Her jaw dented a different table. After I showed Jennifer the picture and we marveled together for a minute she left and Jake Ferrel, who had witnessed the whole thing put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Five more months, buddy” It was at this point that my head hit the table two, maybe three times.

Fast forward- it wasn’t until some months later when we were dating that we (and by “we” I mean Jennifer) made the connection that the second story might not mean “level” but a second tale. In other words, My parents used to live there and we might live there in the future.

Stay tuned, We have covered one month of a 17 month story.