61 EVIE
E VIE
I’ve always taken it as a bad sign when a person seems overly attached to their university days, and I found it intensely grating when middle-aged men, in particular, told college stories.
Behaving as though the peak of life came at the sad age of twenty-two is as depressing as a comb-over, clinging to something that once was.
I know it’s judgy, but I also know I’m right.
It’s as if to say that anyone they’ve met later in life, any experiences they might have, will never compete with “that epic night out when James caught his scarf on fire outside Professor Floyd’s house! ”
We’re meant to grow and meant to evolve, and it always seemed to me that people who kept that time of their lives on a pedestal, like a dusty award, never bothered to evolve.
So yeah, sometimes your dad would get on my nerves.
You know how much he loves those stories.
I’d married my high school sweetheart, yes, but the moment he’d start in on this or that from college, I’d inwardly cringe and tune out.
Which was completely hypocritical, of course, considering that a) I’m telling you all about something that happened in my twenties, and b) our entire relationship was linked to our times together growing up in this town.
“Hey, Waters,” he’d say (he always called me by my last name when we were kids), “catch!” A note would sail over the class from two rows away, folded like one of those little origami triangles.
Inside would be some sort of joke in his familiar handwriting.
Maybe a line that had made him laugh from his favorite TV show at the time.
Sometimes a question that required me to circle “yes” or “no.” Something like, “My house after school????? Nintendo death match.” Or later, “Homecoming? Xoxo.” He had this way of shaking his blond hair out of his eyes and a smile that was infectious to everyone around him.
The first time he saw where I lived, unexpectedly showing up one afternoon on his bike in junior high, I remember standing by the broken doorframe with my cheeks flushed crimson.
“Hey, Waters,” he said quietly, peeking over my shoulder when he heard my dad calling gruffly from the smoky interior.
“Wanna ride bikes?” I told him I didn’t have one, and he told me it was okay, that he had an extra one at home I could use.
He propped me up on the back, both of us all limbs and knees, and drove me away from that place.
After that, we were always at his parents’ house—a big four-bedroom affair with a wreath on the door that changed with the seasons and a Yankee candle perpetually burning on the stove in scents like spiced pumpkin or clean cotton.
His basement was half-finished with wood paneling and a remnant carpet, and as teenagers, we would all pile in on aging beanbag chairs and an ancient sofa after school, watching whatever was on HBO while the laundry spun in the dryer nearby.
It was a perfect adolescent lair that became a home to ruthless games of Truth or Dare and movie marathons.
His mom would order us pizza and send me home with the leftovers and a hug.
I must have slept on that sofa a hundred times as we got older.
When Steve and I were officially a couple, sometimes they’d invite me for Thanksgiving.
From the time I was little, whenever life felt like it was falling apart, or things got confusing, your dad was always there. Which I suppose explains so much about everything.