Chapter One

Who would have thought it would have come to this? It seems like a lifetime ago when I nervously changed clothes for the second time trying to select the right outfit for our first date. The week leading up to that first night was filled with anxious excitement. The nightly phone conversations that lasted for hours (but not past 10:00pm) were leading me to believe that there was so much more to this woman I met that Saturday before. You wore a funny green bucket hat and talked reservedly about your life and your feelings. I persuaded you to join us for dinner afterwards just to get to talk to you more. After rehearsing my call to you a million times, I asked you to spend a romantic evening with me discovering who I was and me discovering your beauty as well. I gave you the opportunity to pick any restaurant in town and you left it up to me. We talked every evening leading up to that night including Thursday when you called to announce that you wanted Reatta to be our first date. I drove to your house that first night trying to picture your face in my head. We had only spent a short time together that first evening and my mind wondered through its files trying to picture your face again. After fixing my shirt one last time at your doorstep, I pushed the doorbell to announce my arrival. In a moment that seemed like an eternity, you emerged into the front room and answered my call. As the door swung open and the light of your face shown through, my breath left me as I started to speak. You were so much more beautiful than I had remembered. As the evening progressed, you talked excitedly about your life and showed great interest in mine. Each time you spoke, your eyes sparkled with youth and enthusiasm. Your words were like a pen writing their message on my heart. I was feeling something, but what was it? When the check came for dinner, my only thought was “please don’t let this night end.” I convinced you to linger on a moonlit walk along the Trinity River. As we strolled, I continued to regale you with stories and life philosophies trying my best to be humble, but at the same time impressive. I spoke about the “pow” that I have spent my life searching for - that feeling you get every time that special someone enters the room - the chill that you get when she touches your arm or her hair brushes up against your cheek. And then I got my first rush of emotion for you. I slowed my pace along the pathway to keep our time together from ending and when you turned to find me, the moon lit the curves of your face with the highlight of a Hollywood movie star from a 1940’s film. At that moment, for the first time, I felt something – I felt the “pow.” Finally, that first evening had to end and I surrendered you to your door reluctantly. As I backed away from your handshake good bye and watched the door slowly hide you from me, I remember uttering the words, “good night, my sweet princess.” That was the first time I said that. The next morning after a restless night of sleep, I fought my desire to call you. This is too quick I tried to convince myself. Don’t let her know how you feel already. What if she doesn’t feel the same way? But how could one person feel the pow and not the other? This was my rational when I finally dialed her number. Getting her answering machine, I hung up quickly not having the perfect message ready. I continued to call her number hoping she would pick up until, against my better judgment; I left my first message on your machine. And then there was a great silence. I must have checked my voice mail on all of my different numbers a thousand times during the next 24 hours hoping for her call. Hoping for her to return my sentiment of our first night. I even ran by the house to scroll through the caller id just in case you had called, but were afraid to leave a message like me. On Sunday morning at church, my thoughts soon turned to her. I couldn’t concentrate on the message that morning and I took my faithful pink pen and scribbled some words on the back of my bulletin. It was a poem, an accounting of my feelings for her and the emotions I felt that first night. Later that day, I stopped by the store and picked up a card and transferred the message into it to give to her next time we met. Finally as I was leaving on Sunday night for church, her call came. It was the worst call of my life. She started out so complimentary of me and the time we had that it was obvious she was building up to something else. And then out it came. She didn’t feel the pow; in fact, she proclaimed that she would never feel the pow and that, although she would be thrilled to be my friend, there would be no more dates.

Not the best start in the world, but it is ours. We will call this chapter one. Click here for our next chapter