"My mom gave me a ring. She said to pawn it if anything ever happened."
"Really? My dad gave me his cross for the same reason!"
My dad and his mom were so much a like and they were both so freaking cool.
He put the ring with my necklace and we both decided that night that no matter what happened, we couldn't pawn Jesus.
We woke up early that first day, our moms at the door. "Shannon, James, we got lost on our way home and ended up on the Kansas side of the city. We decided to stop somewhere for the night and we found this quaint little motel, Settle Inn. The guy at the front desk is a preacher or a prophet or an angel or something, his name is Samson. We told him how you were moving into a motel with a kitchenette temporarily beside the school. He told us, 'Bring your children here.'"
Mom 2 (James's mom) picks up seamlessly where Mom 1 (my mom) leaves off, "There's no bars on any of the windows and the gas stations don't have armed guards. And the weekly rate is half of what you're paying over here."
Mom 1 picks back up, "And they have a pool." Damn, she knows me too well.
I would never admit in a million years that the money was an issue. The room we were in was a little steep. I knew I had the cash for at least three weeks, but after that, the $600 a week would have required us both to have full time jobs plus the social security check mom would be sending me monthly. Unless, of course, we found an apartment by then. But when you're planning for something you want as bad as I wanted this, those risks are just minuscule in perspective. But I was very disappointed when our motel didn't have a pool.
So we packed all of our things that I unpacked yesterday and our moms led us to Samson. They said they were staying another night to help us get settled in but really they just weren't ready for goodbye.
Mom had never really let me drink up to that point, but I was an adult now. We all got so drunk that night in their room, three doors down from ours. We blubbered about his mom's cancer (thankfully in remission for the third time since I had known them). Their babies had grown up and they loved us and how did we get here so fast? My mom opened up like she hadn't in years. I had missed that side of her. And it was just enough to make it another difficult goodbye.
They left on the Fourth of July. I remember standing under fireworks like I had never seen that night, his arms around me. He pulled me close to him. And in that moment, the taste of his kiss and the tenderness of his lips against mine consumed me...and I was overwhelmed with knowing that my life had never been so right. We were finally here. Alone, together.
--
So I got the coolest job ever working in a rainforest-themed gift shop/restaurant with real-to-life animatronic elephants and a talking tree. James got a job he hated at "the ghetto Walmart" and I let him quit because I hated the drive. My dad called and woke me up every morning on schedule, letting me snooze for my requested five minutes before he would call me again.
School was less exciting than I had anticipated. I was going for web graphic design because I loved expressing myself through digital art but so far, all they had me doing was designing lame adds for a lame burger joint that doesn't even exist.
None of my cool classmates shared more than one class with me and, even though our Kansas motel was only 3 miles away from campus, the line dividing the states likewise seemed to divide the people.
We gave up on the apartment thing pretty quick. I don't think we found a single place for less than $700 a month, not counting the utility bills it would require. Besides that, I was only 17 and we weren't married. That meant I was a liability. And only a motel would rent to us. But it was okay because the maintenance guy at our motel hooked us up with alcohol by request and most of the motel crew would get us high on the side. They were our friends and some even our neighbors. Turns out quite a few people actually lived in that motel. We never really used the pool much, though. All of the vacationers and their loud children usually took full ownership of that area, completely oblivious that they were romping through someone else's back yard. Continental breakfasts were usually the same way.
If it weren't for Samson's presence inspiring some conscience, I can't imagine what Kansas City might have been like. He gave us father-like advice about life and love and relationships and living. He talked about God a lot and you couldn't help but be a little inspired by the unwavering faith that allows a man to spend his last penny on something he believes in. "God will provide." He said it with such assurance, you just had to believe him.
--
It seems like all of my best memories are in a car. The song in the background that particular day perfectly echoed my natural high of teenage ambition: "Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar, you're gonna go far. You're gonna fly, you're never gonna die, you're gonna make it if you try, they're gonna love you..." James makes a face at me when I obnoxiously make my best guitar squeal sound.
We got hair cuts that day.
I go on and on, and he just listens. He doesn't have to talk because our hearts beat as one and vocalize enough sufficiently for the both of us.
"It's a new city, we're starting a new life. We can be whoever we wanna be. There's no limitations, the sky's the limit!"
"Yeah!"
James had lost his ID and we had just finished the grand adventure across the world to order him a new one. Everything in the city is big. It was nothing like the small town DMV that would print you one just cuz you said you lost it. We had had to bring two pieces of mail, his birth certificate, social security sample, blood, DNA, and urine sample. Actually, the urine sample was a different trip but you get the point. Going downtown was always an adventure!
I flipped my hair as I cruised into QuikTrip, our home away from home, and I went in to buy some cigarettes with my college ID since James lost his.
"I can't take that without a date of birth."
"Seriously? Please? I just moved here from Arkansas for college and we're still unpacking and I just can't seem to find our IDs but we went to the DMV today." I really, really hated lying. But they estimated three weeks for his ID to come in and going without cigs would be like a three week itch you just can't scratch. I probably could have gotten Josh, the maintenance guy, to buy me some later but damn it, I was nic fitting now!
She still wasn't happy about it, but she sold them to me, anyway.
--
When I think about Kansas City, I almost think the world might have been spinning a little too fast sometimes. I think about fireworks. I think about how desperately in love I am with that perfect man. I think about getting rear ended at a stoplight by a distracted kid and just letting him go. We had adventures worth a lifetime discovering new parts of the world together every night - Guitar Center, Piano World, Game Stop. Every night ended with hours in the car, eating our cheddar jalapeño sausages and drinking frozen cappuccino from our 52 ounce QuikTrip cups, planning our next adventure. The motel was a block away from a QuikTrip and I told James every night, "Just you wait. When I turn 18, I'm so working there."
I'll never forget that one night that we went to QuikTrip and filled a couple of water bottles with gas. We huffed it all night, swimming in rivers of color in a world where time doesn't exist, our ears caressed by the soothing tunes of Pink Floyd's "If" and "See Emily Play." I don't think I have ever woke up more hungover in my life than I did that next day. I NEVER did that again.
Or the time someone gave James some shrooms and he ate the caps and I ate the stems. He told me I didn't have to do it with him and that he knew that kind of thing scared me. But the thing is, I wanted to. It was a thrill, it was bad. It was as far away from home as I could get. It was alluring because he was doing it. Because I remembered the romantic stories my mom would tell me of her young adulthood in the 60's and it was cool to be bad. And we had the time of our life. I sincerely never meant to drive under the influence, but they took so long to kick in for me and James had said that sometimes the stems don't work. He had seen this television commercial about Denny's and was convinced it was a magical breakfast land with pancake slides and he just had to go. And it was 3 a.m. and I was bored and disappointed and hungry so I humored him. And I tripped the whole way there. And everything was so...much! The good and the bad and the terror of seeing a cop and the heart thumping realization that I was doing something wrong. We never got caught, Praise Yah, and we didn't die. And we spent the night into the morning as two kids euphorically dancing and laughing the night away.
There was the one night we huffed air duster though, back when it still tasted good, before they put the "bitter-agents" in it...and James stopped breathing. I just remember feeling so good, lulled by the "wah-wah's," and everything I see is as though in a strobe light, and I have never felt so right. Like fireworks. And I hear him gurgle, and my heart catches in my throat. And I metaphorically wave my arms trying to cut through the fog, the fog that just moments ago held me so gently and now it was suffocating me. I knew what that sound meant, somewhere in my innermost being I knew what was happening and I knew I didn't have much time to get with it.
The rest of that was just a blur, I was just so overwhelmed with fear and loneliness and relief and the threat of goodbye.
And oh my gosh how excited we were when James got his first credit card! It only had a $300 limit, but it had his name on it and everything. I remember James would get carded for cigarettes and would huff in indignation, "Don't they know you have to be 18 to have a credit card??" He's so damn cute.
And the time the hotel accidentally over-authorized us and tied up our whole account. Or the time my radiator went out.
My mom and dad drove all the way up there that next day. I had called them, crying and crying. "My radiator is overheating and Daniel, my boss's husband, did all he could to it, and we kept having to use the ATM at this gas station that didn't take cards for hose clamps and screw drivers and it was hot and my car!! Dad, my car!! What do I do??"
We had a reunion and we traded cars. And I wanted them to know I was every bit of strong and independent and every bit of super freaking awesome (maybe not freaking) mature young adult they had ever raised me to be.
We took them to The Rainforest and all my coworkers made the moment perfect, that "I did it, dad!" moment that every adult looks forward to. They had such an amazing time and were so happy and proud to see how fine we were doing.
And they went home, them taking my piece of crap explorer home and leaving me the big white one. And everything was great and life continued on.
Dad would call me every day, he was doing good just not quite feeling the greatest yet but doing everything the doctor asked. And in the out-of-sight, out-of-mind way that I have, I believed him when he said he was fine. He was quitting smoking and he was in good hands.
I remember for his birthday that year, I sent him a Rainforest T-Shirt that said, "I wish you were here." He had called to tell me it was his favorite shirt. And James sent him a knife because, "Every good man needs to have a good knife." My dad called to tell him it was his best knife. I wish he was here.
And then we got THAT call. The call that makes terror just grip you because it's THAT would be the call - the call saying she didn't think she'd make it this time. It was mom 2 and they found another tumor. And we weren't going to get lucky this time because this one was the one and they gave her six months.
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