The End of Summer

The End of Summer always makes me a little sad.  I guess I wait for the season to start for so long - I'm counting down the last few cold days of Spring and Winter - and the warm breezes of Summer hit and I'm excited for a bit.  Inevitably, I take it for granted - and before I know it, Summer's gone.

And when all the Summer places start to close up, I sigh and realize another year of my life has gone by and I'm going back to waiting for it to come around again.  I do love the life that breathes back into the town when Summer comes.  And for the past four years, I've always hoped that Summer would come and I'd be free from dialysis again...

I met Jordan in the fleeting steps of Summer in 2006.  I'd come off of a mildly rough Summer - I'd been depressed about the end of a previous relationship and thusly been kind of a grump during that Summer.  I'd recently got back into playing my guitar, though and I joined up in a little cover band with my friend Ron and our friend Holly, who owned a local Karaoke place.  Holly was about to celebrate one year in business so we wanted to put together a set of songs to play at the party.  It was a lot of fun for me - I love to play music live, and it was a low stress, just for fun kind of thing.  So I was coasting on a pretty good music high around then - during the set break, I was outside getting some air and there in the crowd of people, was a girl I'd seen singing at the place before.  I always thought she was so pretty - and had a helluva voice.  When she grabbed the mic and sang, she did so with such force and gusto.... just having a good time.  But she was always there with this guy, who I assumed was her boyfriend, so I never thought about her that way.  But outside, she was talking, and telling a story about an embarrassing moment from her childhood.  So I did what any third-grade boy would do: I made fun of her.

Don't worry, folks.  It was only some light ribbing.  We ended up just hanging out a bunch more that night, talking and talking like only young folks can do on those waning Summer nights.  It was just nice to talk to someone, and genuinely enjoy myself.  I found her smart, funny, lucid and articulate (which is honestly hard to find these days!) and she laughed at my stupid jokes.  Which, if you know Jordan, is a pretty amazing feat because she can be Captain-Not-Amused.  I also mentioned that I had kidney failure, and had a transplant(it was still working at this point) and she didn't run away in abject terror.  Which really made me feel good.  Anyway, I'll never forget sitting out on a small stoop outside that place, talking and talking to this girl.  I was captivated.  She gave me her phone number, and told me to call her.

I, of course, took the number and didn't call her for, oh, weeks.

I never said I was a genius.  Or am I, because, hey... I did end up marrying her.



~Steve