If one never had to leave these quiet, tree-lined suburban backstreets, there would be no reason to ever wish for anything more. But, the reality is, all those streets either end at wide, ugly commerce-edged suburban atrocities, or they widen and become them themselves. I once lived on Field Street, but where I lived it was not so beautiful. It was near a busy intersection and the freeway.
It was the first place I lived in Dallas. At the time, it was everything I dreamed of. The last conversation I had with a friend back in what we'll call Sandstone, Utah, went something like this:
"Yeah, in Dallas we're going to live in an apartment. It will have a pool, I bet. And I bet there will be a beautiful blond living next door. There are two of them, maybe three. They sort of look like Kelly. (Notice, in my mind, they'd multiplied) Not quite as pretty. How could anybody be that amazing? But they wear bikinis and hang out at the pool and drink cold sodas all day from Coca-Cola glasses beaded with condensation."
I always had a hard time staying in the same verb tense when I told stories. As I entered the hypothetical situation I was telling about, it became so real to me that I'd always switch to present tense. My stepfather, Joe, was also my eighth grade science teacher back in Sandstone. That year we had a science fair, and we had a couple of months where we were supposed to be working on our projects, and each week we had to report to the class on our progress. I had decided to create two model houses--one with passive solar with earth berms strategically placed around it, and one conventional design without regard to the environment, and then I'd compare the energy use of each home. I would use a heat lamp and fan, and place a thermometer in each model home. My dad said each week, when I'd report out, the students would be taken through this gorgeous, energy-efficient, light-filled modern masterpiece, their mouths open in awe at the stunning beauty and completeness of my project. The only problem was that as my father he knew all I did each day after school was go home and watch reruns of Gilligan's Island. I hadn't so much as cut up a cardboard box. It was all a figment of my imagination. I did, however, at the last minute get to work, and I guess all that daydreaming paid off, because mine was one of a dozen selected to go to state, and it earned an honorable mention there. Not bad for a C student, who, other than daydreaming, started the project a couple of days before it was due.
For whatever reason, for much of my life, what at the time seemed like small day-dream fantasies later became true. When I was kid, living on the avenues of Salt Lake, my mother would walk me down a couple of blocks to the babysitter's. On the way, we'd pass this beautiful white house with the most amazing flower gardens. I was four at the time. My mother was divorced and we were on church welfare. Perhaps that is why the fantasy went this way, but I remember thinking, "Oh, how I'd love to live next door to that house!" I guess I never dreamed we could actually live in a house that nice, so instead, I dreamed we could live next door. But, here's the thing. The next year, when I was five, we actually moved next door. It was a small wish, but it came true. Those flowers, in a way, became mine, and I loved them very much indeed.
Later, living in Sandstone, my parents watched Dallas each week. I'd watch it with them. I cared less about the actual show, but oh how I loved the beginning. Those slick, glass buildings reflecting back only sky. I studied it oh so carefully. I noticed the downtown blocks were small, some being nothing but parking. I noticed many of the streets were one-way. I noticed two gorgeous gold buildings that seemed to rise out of the plains. I noticed a sleek blue-black glass one by the railroad tracks with a high glass ball in the sky. Amazing. Oh, how I wanted to live in a city like that. In a place like that one could get the knowledge one needed to become a world-class architect, which is exactly what I wanted to be.
Not more than a year later, we were pulling out of the driveway in our 1972 Lincoln Mercury Cougar, U-Haul trailer behind us, headed for Dallas.
What is amazing is that although some of my small dreams have come true in this life almost exactly as I dreamed them, my life itself has turned out nothing like I imagined. I clearly failed to follow some grand plan--at least not a grand plan of my own making. Yet, I feel I'm almost exactly where I need to be now. So, I don't think it is so much that God stepped in and granted me my every wish. Rather, I have this crazy idea that I knew much of my life's mission in the preexistence, and that in this life, I was drawn to that part of life my soul already knew I would be experiencing. The reason I dreamed I would be living next to that pretty, white house with the amazing flower gardens is because there was a part of my four-year-old self that already knew it would happen. The reason I was drawn to Dallas as an eighth-grader watching a prime-time soap opera I cared absolutely nothing about was that there was a part of me that already knew we would move to Dallas.
These thoughts, of course, are totally unscientific, and there is no way to prove them. But they could explain why what seems to be little, inconsequential, yet remarkable dreams do come true, and yet the big, overarching concrete plan elude us. Perhaps we dream enough to support what is already planned out for us. Perhaps we are drawn to where we need to be so that we'll be in the right place at the right time to meet all the people we were sent here to meet. Perhaps what feels random in the moment is planned out in the eternities. I don't know.
Anyway, we did end up in an apartment by a pool. That is not so remarkable. It is the most likely outcome for the family of a small-town school teacher moving to the city. However, that I'd be so drawn to that white house with the flower garden or Dallas just from the beginning of a prime time soap opera, still amazes me. Especially when both came true about a year after that initial utterance of the wish. And those weren't a couple of random thoughts. Each involved a deep yearning, a magnetic pull, daydreaming that was intense.
I have two minds--a logical, scientific one. I want facts. I want things proven. I don't want to be misled. But there is also part of me that knows there must be more to life than meets the eye. That part of me is open to allow things to unfold, to actively engage on some mystical journey with the firm faith it all leads to some deep understanding. That is, after all, the very act of writing. The next word could never be put down if ultimately the writer didn't intuitively know it would eventually lead to something worthwhile.
My dad liked to tell the story of my first day of school in Dallas. He had asked if I wanted him to walk me out to the bus stop. I didn't, but I said yes because I thought he wanted to. He was my dad, he had been my teacher, and I had helped him work on houses he fixed up to flip. I was very close to him. Years later, he liked to tell the story because when he walked me out to the bus stop, there were three girls who were excited about the new boy on the block and were giving me lots of attention, but I would have nothing to with them. "They were cute," Dad would say in his animated way, "Oh, they were good looking, and all you did was turn your head, and stare the other direction." I liked most his stories, but I hated that one. Shyness is an incredibly painful thing. It's self awareness on steroids. I didn't even like him telling that story after I was a married with children of my own. So, I'd try to defuse the story with the truth.
"Dad, you best be glad I was too shy to talk to those three girls. They were very naughty. Especially the two twins."
That they were. All three smoked. That's not what made them bad though. Outside Utah, back then almost all teens smoked. My high school had a smoking lounge for the students. It was outside, but students were allowed to smoke on campus. It was as much a part of youth culture accepted by adults as soda. No, what made the twins naughty was that they were very promiscuous. We had an ex-con living in our apartment complex who they especially liked. He must have been in his early thirties. The twins were in ninth grade. They were pretty proud of their conquest.
The other girl was their friend. She was quieter, very pretty, with piercing blue eyes and wavy blond hair. She was probably a nice kid, but as I was too shy to ever talk to her, I don't really know. I just stood at a distance on those few, rare frosty mornings and watched her cooly drag on her cigarette and blow out clouds golden smoke into the brisk morning air.
I never did see any of them in bikinis hanging out at the pool, although I'd see one of the twins occasionally just inside the laundry room, making out with some boy, and never the same boy. I have no idea if it was the same twin or not. I couldn't tell them apart. Both had strawberry blond hair, very womanly figures for ninth-graders, and mouths that spewed the English of a truck driver. I don't know how you fit the f-word that many times into a sentence and still have it hang together well enough grammatically to retain some meaning, but somehow they did it. Their descriptions of their sexual exploits were vivid enough to catch everyone's attention; they were very popular. I was both repulsed and drawn to them. And I never said a word. Shyness slithered over me like a python whenever they were around.
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