preface part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11

“I just got off the phone with Joey,” Dad said.

My heart beat a little bit faster.  “Yeah?”

“He sounds like an excellent guy,” Dad said.  He went on to list several qualities of Joey that he found impressive (which, not surprisingly, were very similar to the ones I found impressive), and I breathed easier.

Dad beat around the bush for about five more minutes before finally circling back around to the point at hand.  “If Joey asks you to date him, and you would like to say yes, that is just fine with me,” Dad said.

“Thanks,” I said, releasing all the pent-up oxygen in my lungs with a giant woosh.

I knew going into it that Dad would like Joey, but it still wracked my nerves.  I mean….what if he said no?!  But, I chided myself, that was why I’d had Dad involved in the first place.  So he could say no!

I am convinced my father has way more brain cells than I have.  He uses them very well, too.

Our conversation quickly turned to the familiar: cows, news about family friends, and Mom and Dad’s upcoming trip to Des Moines for one of Dad’s meetings.  They planned to stay with me in my little brown house with the creepy basement.

“Can you look at my weed whacker?” I asked Dad.  The thing still wasn’t cooperating and I hadn’t been able to do any trim work since Joey had helped me a month before. Dad has probably got stock in Weed Eater, I think he has three hanging up in one of the stalls in the barn back home.  (That’s what happens when you have a mile of fencerow and three and a half kids who hate to weed whack.)

We ended our conversation twenty minutes after we had begun, my heart lighter.  The sky seemed bluer outside and I ventured outdoors for a walk before it got too dark.  I took my cell phone with me, just in case, and my latest letter from Joey.  It had arrived that very afternoon.

If I even admit to you how much money I spent in postage that summer, you will be ashamed of me.  And, when you combine that with how much Joey spent…there’s little wonder why the United States Postal Service is still in business.  They’re still existing off the profits they made on us that summer.

I re-read my letter, folded it, and put it back in my pocket.  I glanced at my phone and noticed the date:  July 1.  Just two more days until Joey came home for a visit!

Joey and his friend Joel had plans to juggle in a talent show and be in a parade in Joel’s hometown of Creston.  I, being the not-quite-Joey’s-girlfriend-but-almost hanger’s on, was planning to come along also.  Joel, Amber, Joey and I were going to stay at Joel’s parent’s house for two and a half days.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had looked forward to something with such anticipation.

When Joey called at 9:00, we had our traditional hours-long phone conversation (although, by this time, our record was six hours.  SIX HOURS, people.  I’m surprised I don’t have cell phone brain damage).

“What are you doing tomorrow,” he asked.

“Getting ready to see you!” I said, which was not untrue.  I was planning to go get some new clothes before the weekend, and get my hair cut.

“Do you have to work?”

“Yeah, a few hours in the afternoon.  I’m still working on that archiving project,” I said, tangenting off to describe to him the scope of my work the next day.

An hour later or so, we managed to hang up the phone.

I spent a lazy morning cleaning my house, getting ready for the day, and starting to pack my suitcase.  I glanced at the paper chain I had made the day after Joey went to Minnesota.  It hung from my curtain rod in my bedroom, and at one point it had been doubled up on the rod, going to the ground twice.  But it didn’t look so long now.  I reached up and tore off today’s link: July 2.

My doorbell rang.

Instantly, I got nervous as I always did when someone was at my door and unexpected.  I glanced out my window, but didn’t see a car.  Hesitantly, I tiptoed down the steps and glanced out the peephole.

Flowers.

A bouquet of orange lilies and roses greeted me.  Had Joey sent me flowers?  It was hard to tell, there was a giant lily right in front of the delivery boy’s face.  I opened the door.

“JOEY?” I gasped.  He wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow.

“Surprise!” He said, setting down the flowers and giving me a far more respectable hug than he had the day he left for Minnesota in the first place.

“What…when…I was on the phone with you not twelve hours ago!” I said.  (We had hung up early the night before, at 1:00.)

“That’s true.  I left at 5:00, so I’m kind of tired.  Do you have any Mountain Dew?”

I did not.  We walked to Randall’s, just about a half mile away to purchase some, Joey telling me about his drive down to Iowa, how he had been planning to surprise me for weeks now.

I smiled broadly at him.  “I’m awfully glad you did!”

With Joey back in town, I opted not to go into work that afternoon.  I left him on my couch to take a nap while I got my hair cut, and came back to pick him up an hour or so later.  We headed to Valley West together to do my shopping.

Here’s the real test…I thought slyly to myself.

Joey handled shopping with me like a champ.  Just one more thing to add to his “Good Qualities” list.

Oddly enough, even though Joey came home early, there was no talk of his conversation with my father.  Clearly we both knew it had happened, but since Dad had called me to go over its finer points, there had been no discussion of it.  This probably meant that Joey had (another) something up his sleeve, so I opted to hold my tongue and wait to see what he was up to.

That’s easier said than done, especially for me.
Joey drove home to his parent’s house Thursday night, calling me almost immediately under the guise of “I’m tired, I need you to keep me awake on the drive home”.

I was wise to him.  Always had been.  (He’d been pulling that trick on me since before school had been out for the summer.  I knew he didn’t suffer from narcolepsy.)

Friday morning, the next day, he arrived at my house by 10:00, his car loaded with a unicycle, unusual looking juggling paraphernalia I was not altogether familiar with and, oddly, a container of lighter fluid.

“It’ll take us about an hour and a half to get to Creston,” Joey said.

“OK,” I replied, hoisting my Nike duffel bag onto my shoulder and carrying it to the car.

We walked through my house, checking windows to make sure they were locked, and leaving some lights on for security.  While upstairs in my room, Joey noticed my paper chain.  “What’s this?” He asked.

“That,” I replied, “is a paper chain.  Didn’t you ever make those for your birthday or anything?”

“No…” Joey said.

“Well, I make them for anything I am anticipating, and this paper chain goes all summer until you come home.  See?  The ones that are highlighted different colors mean things.  Like this one, this is the link that I’ll tear off the day you head back to Minnesota, and this one up here is the link that I’ll tear off the day you go to camp…” I pointed out several more links on the chain before finally getting to the very last one.  “THIS is the one where you come home,” I smiled.

I think Joey secretly liked my paper chain, although as we walked back down the stairs I realized that it did strike me as something that could be misconstrued as creepy and stalker-like.  Fortunately Joey did not seem to think I was either creepy or a stalker.  He thought it was cute.

The drive to Creston was marvelous.

All summer thus far I had been worried, wondering if Joey was one of those types of people I could only talk to on the phone, or only write letters to.  Would it be weird in person again?  Would we find that we had nothing to talk about?

No, indeed.

There seemed to be no end to the things we could discuss…worldviews, future plans, pet peeves, favorite elementary school teacher and why…almost nothing was off limits.

I relaxed as we drove, realizing with each mile that whenever he did ask me That Important Dating Question, I would most certainly be able to say yes, and with no reservations.

Perhaps it strikes you as odd that Joey would have to speak to my father before asking me if I’d like to date him (rather pre-engagement, perhaps?) but that’s just how we did it.  I wasn’t willing to enter into a relationship that would be potentially as volatile and dangerous as the one I had been in before Joey, and starting off taking things seriously was the safest, wisest way I could think to do it.  Apparently Joey shared those opinions, because Dad seemed to think he was great.

As seriously as we had both taken the official beginning of our relationship, however, it was just that: a beginning.  Neither one of us knew where it would end, and neither one of us had committed to how it would end.  Not yet, anyway.  All we knew was that we wanted to be blameless, pure, covered with wise counsel and have our eyes wide, wide open.

With each passing mile as we drove to Creston, I knew my expectations were being met.  I sure hoped Joey’s were, too.

We arrived at Joel’s parent’s house and got settled in, Amber and I in upstairs bedrooms, Joel and Joey someplace downstairs.  I was unpacking my Nike bag, which didn’t travel very well – all my clothes got seriously wrinkled, when I heard a commotion in the garage.

I ventured outside and noticed Joel and Joey practicing, passing juggling clubs back and forth, spinning around and, every now and then, dropping one.  They had won the town talent show the year before, and they wanted to win it again.

They practiced for several hours, we ate dinner, and then someone found a pile of old Bearnstein Bear books in the basement.  The four of us squashed onto a couch in the living room, reading the books to each other and laughing – there’s just something about reliving your childhood, I guess.

“It’s getting dark outside,” Joey noticed after awhile.  “Let’s go get our clubs.”

Everyone seemed to know what was going on but me, and in record time, the whole family was out on the lawn.  The boys had black-ended clubs in their hands, and Joey was pouring lighter fluid on the ends of them.  (Now at least I knew why he had brought it!)  Joel lit the end of one of his clubs on fire, and then let Joey’s.  They walked out into the street, stood in the darkest spot, and began passing the flaming clubs back and forth to each other.

I got super nervous.  He is going to set himself on fire, I thought.  Then I heard – “OW!”  Joey had caught the wrong end of the club, but had quickly dropped it.  Once I realized that he wouldn’t go up in flames immediately, I relaxed.  There’s something mesmerizing about watching flaming clubs passed back and forth in the dark.

Joel and Joey juggled for about half an hour.  By the time they were finished, I was completely worn out.  The next day was a big day, too.  There was the talent show, parade, and then fireworks in the evening.

When I woke up about 8:30 the next morning, everyone was already up decorating the wagon.  The guys had rigged it up with higher sides so it could hold their clubs, and they planned to ride it while Amber and I pulled the wagon and handed them clubs while they juggled and rode their unicycles.  (Yes, at the same time.)

“Wait, I’m in this parade too?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Joey said.  “Is that OK?”

It was fine with me, I just had no idea what was going on, so Amber was definitely going to have to be the one handing them clubs when they asked for specific ones.  I would be the wagon puller.

“We have a t-shirt for you,” Joey said, handing me one of the “JUGGLE” t-shirts that Joel had designed.

“Well, at least I’ll match!” I said.  I can fake it ‘till I make it any day.

An hour later the wagon was fitted properly, decorated, and ready to go.  We all jumped in a car and headed off to the park for the talent show where, I’m sad to report, the boys took second.  Some little kid weaseled his way into the hearts and rational minds of the judges, because clearly Joel and Joey were the best.

I survived the parade, too, by only pulling the wagon.

Caught up as I was with wondering WHEN Joey was finally going to quit beating around the bush and make this official, the next 24 hours flew by.  Before I knew it, we had packed up all the juggling supplies into the car, lighter fluid included, and were heading back to Des Moines.

We were going to stop in Joey’s hometown to see his parents before heading to my house, so we stuck to the windy, tree-lined back roads.  As we neared Red Rock Lake, we noticed that the rain from the morning was still hanging heavily in the air. The sun was catching the misty at just the perfect angles and the hills were full of rainbows.  Dozens and dozens of rainbows…we tried to count them as we drove, but lost track after twelve.  More were appearing around every bend.  It was the most unusual thing I had ever seen.

“See that observatory up there?” Joey indicated, pointing off to a tall, metal structure towering over the trees on the top of a hill overlooking the lake.

“Yes,” I said, sidetracked by the rainbows.

“Let’s stop there so you can see the lake.”

I hate observatories.  I hate heights.  I don’t like that they’re made of metal grating and I can see through to the ground.  I don’t like that they’re high in the air.  I don’t like the dizzy feeling that I get when I’m on them.

Joey knew this, we had discussed at length how I have a nearly debilitating fear of heights.  But he wanted to show me the lake and so I decided right then and there to suck it up and go up in that observatory.

“Sure,” I said.  A knot began to form in my stomach.  Heights freak me out so bad.

A few moments later, we pulled up in front of the tower.  It was a winding staircase around a thick circular pole, towering high into the sky.  Well, I thought it was high.

Joey jumped out of the car and went up to the gate.

“It costs money, do you have any quarter?” He asked, walking back to the car.

For a quick second I thought maybe I could get out of going into the tower if we didn’t have a dollar in quarters, but I obligingly opened my wallet and dug out four quarters.   I handed them to Joey and we began our climb up the tower.

Halfway up, I froze.
“I cannot go any higher than this,” I said.  “I am serious, I want to go down right now.”

Joey came up next to me, blocking my view of the treetops, took my hand and said, “We can do it.  I know you can do it, come on…keep trying.”

I took a deep breath, and stepped up one more stair.  I surprised myself by only flipping out one more time before we finally reached the top of the tower.  But finally, just a few moments after we started up in the first place, we arrived at our destination.   Joey angled me over towards the lake and stepped behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders.

We enjoyed the view for a few moments before he began to speak.

And, unfortunately, because I was so scared about being so high in the air, I cannot remember his exact words.  I do remember that he said he was proud of me for overcoming my fear of heights to enjoy the beautiful view.  I remember he said something about relationships being something like that, but I can’t remember exactly what. I remember that he said he had talked to my dad and gotten permission for us to date.  I remember that he asked me if I would be his girlfriend.

I didn’t have to pause or hesitate; I said yes. (I know!  We’re so old fashioned!  But I loved it.)

My next words were, “Can please we go down now?”

Joey laughed, took my hand again, and led me down to solid ground.

“I don’t think I will  ever be able to forget that!” I laughed, once we were walking on grass again.

“That is exactly the way I planned it,” Joey said serenely.

And you know what?  I never have.

preface part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10

My phone rang.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s me,” came Joey’s voice from the other end of the line.  “I miss you already.”

I melted.

Although Joey had left for the summer without defining our relationship, it was fairly obvious we had something going on.  Although Joey didn’t have much access to the Internet over the summer and his cell phone didn’t work out of state, we had a communication plan.  It felt kind of old-fashioned and romantic, but we had exchanged snail-mail addresses before he had driven off that Thursday night.  I felt silly on Friday afternoon when I dove for my mailbox, rifling through the junk mail to look for a letter from Joey.

There wasn’t one, of course.

He hadn’t even been gone for 24 hours.

Friday evening, though, began our telephone routine.  At nine o’clock, my cell phone rang.  (Verizon has unlimited minutes after 9:00, you know.)  Joey used a phone card to call from where he was staying in Minnesota and he gave me a number to call him back.  We hung up after the briefest exchange of information, and I directly dialed the number he had just given me.

We usually talked for three to five hours.

The conversations ranged from his days as an intern, my house and general safety, work, friends, school…and life.

It was when the conversations turned to the serious stuff, LIFE!, that I tended to get skittish.  I kept waiting for the bomb to drop, for the bottom to fall out, for Joey to discover something he didn’t like about me and start acting like X had – which, unfortunately, I still expected that to be “normal”.  But, the more Joey learned, the more he seemed to like me.

It was weird.

For the first two weeks of June, I was a total jitterbug.  I would sit on my couch watching CSI reruns and staring at my cell phone, just sure that this evening’s conversation would be The One, the last one.  (Honestly, I’m not sure how Joey put up with all this, but he did.)

When I wasn’t stressing myself out about when Joey would stop calling, I was spending hours (and hours, and hours) praying and seeking wise counsel.  (I was a busy girl!)  I’m not really sure when it happened, or what happened exactly, but one day I woke up after a particularly significant phone call with Joey…and I felt peaceful.

It was fantastic to not see X behind every bush anymore.  Frankly I didn’t like seeing him anywhere, but especially not nasty vestiges of his influence in my blossoming relationship with Joey.

I think Joey could tell when I finally got things figured out.  I think he had just been biding his time, waiting for me to get myself sorted out.  And once I realized that, I realized I liked Joey even more.

During these two weeks of indecision, Joey and I had been exchanging letters with lightning speed, probably 3-5 a week.  They weren’t short little letters, either, they were three page tomes.

Honestly, I don’t know what we found to write about, what with those five hour phone conversations every evening, but puppy love does strange things to one’s communication skills, ain’t so?

I’d get a letter from Joey one afternoon, then I’d read it four times while I sat on my blue plaid couch watching the TV that I had moved closer to me by putting it on the piano bench, VCR player precariously resting on top, DVD player on the floor below…my makeshift entertainment center.

I wish I didn’t have to admit how much CSI and Law and Order I watched that summer in the evenings.  When I wasn’t mowing the lawn (and subsequently getting catcalled by the creepy neighbors, so I usually tried to rearrange my schedule so I could do it in the early afternoon before everyone was home from work or school), sitting on the grass in the back yard, whipping up something delicious in the kitchen or waiting for Joey to call, I was definitely watching TV.

“What were you watching,” Joey would often ask me right off the bat when he’d call.

Usually a cop show.

Those things scare the pants off me, but I love them to death.  I have to watch them with an afghan over my head, squeezing a pillow to death and with one eye closed (especially if I’m home alone), but I’m willing to make those concessions.  And now I’m off track, we’re supposed to be talking about how Joey’s awesome, not how much I like cop shows.

Toward the end of June, I drove in my driveway and noticed a little brown box sitting on my porch.

A package?  For me?!?

Yes ma’am.

I turned off the car, bounded up the stairs and sat down on the porch, using my keys to tear through the tap.  Inside was a letter (of course) and three matchbox Mini Coopers – from The Italian Job, the movie Joey and I had watched the night before he had driven up to Minnesota.

Written in Wite-Out was “I Miss You!!”, one word on each of the different Minis.

“Oh my gosh!”  I breathed, thinking that Joey was probably the sweetest, creativest, most thoughtful boy (who still was not technically dating me) in the entire world.  I sat there, leaning against the yellow siding, and read the three page letter Joey had written me.  The last page very thoroughly emphasized how much he missed me; I got butterflies in my stomach like any self-respecting girl would.

I read the letter about two more times between the time I received the package  and 9:00, when I knew Joey would call me.  (I could set my watch by Joey’s impeccable accuracy.)  Sure enough, as I was sitting on the couch fiddling with my Rubik’s cube, my phone rang.

“Hi!” I chirped.

“Call me right back?” Joey asked.

“Yep,” I said, and clicked END on my phone.  I redialed his number, and one ring later, he picked up.

“What’s going on?” He asked.

“I’m just working on my Cube,” I said.

And when I said “working on my Cube” I meant that I was sort of trying to follow the entire sheet of algorithms he had written out for me before I left, so I could “practice” while he was gone.  I had (sort of) solved the thing “by myself” once before he left, but we both knew that Joey had given me several key suggestions while I was working on that last side.  No way could I solve one of those things on my own.  And that sheet of algorithms?  They were written on a sheet of college rule paper, single spaced. I have enough trouble memorizing long Bible verses, people.  It was nothing but the severest of puppy love that induced me to even attempt mastery at solving a Rubik’s Cube.

“How are you doing?” Joey said.

“Oh…good.” I said.  I was stuck on getting all the four corners part near the end, and I’d even followed the algorithms to a T.  “Actually, not good.  I’m stuck.”

I explained to Joey what my Rubik’s Cube looked like, and he thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Oh, here’s what you need to do.”

If he didn’t solve that Rubik’s Cube over the phone from 600 miles (this was way, way before iChat) then my name wasn’t Jenna Laird. (And it definitely used to be.)

“You did it!”  Crowed Joey when I told him it was solved.  We both knew that wasn’t true, but I just went with it.

“I got a package today,” I said, about half an hour later.

“Oh?” Asked Joey.

“I did!”  I went to the trouble of explaining in great detail what the package had contained, and how it had come with a very, very nice letter.  I will spare you the majority of the sentimental, schmoopsy stuff.  (It always gives me the willies after I write it down, and I just wind up backspacing it anyway.  Yes, I actually do have a TMI limit, and it’s that.)

“You’ll have to keep your eyes open, you have another one coming in a few days,” Joey said.  “I think you’ll like this one better.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I pressed him for details, but I was unsuccessful.  He knew how to be coy when he needed to be.

The next morning, I woke up hard.  I had gotten about four hours of sleep the night previous, it had been a long phone call, and I grumped around my little house, making breakfast and stubbing my toe on the bathtub until I remembered Joey’s words about the package.

I rushed off to work, eager to get home and check the mail.

There was no package yet, of course.  For four days I repeated this, until on the fifth day, there it was on my porch waiting for me when I got home.  I drove recklessly into my driveway, jammed the parking brake on and flew out of my car and up the steps.  I picked up the package and shook it….it was very, very light.  Tucking it under my arm, I unlocked my front door and dumped my bag and shoes inside.

I sat on the couch and tore back the brown paper and opened the box.

It was filled with dozens of white packing peanuts, and each one had something different written on it, very small in black permanent marker.

OH MY GOSH, I thought.  I knew exactly what this was…my hands were shaking as I took out the first white foam blob.  It said “I miss Jenna!” on it.  I smiled and laughed and shook the box.

This could take awhile.

I pulled out dozens and dozens of packing peanuts.  They read innocuous things like “Jenna is nice!” and “My hand hurts from writing on packing peanuts!” and “4th of July!” (the next time we planned to see each other, just two weeks away!) and “I like Jenna”.

The one I was looking for I could not find.

There were about ten packing peanuts left in the box, aside from the attached letter, which read “DO NOT READ FIRST” on it, and I was beginning to think that my original assumption of the box’s purpose was incorrect.

But then…

The next one I pulled out read, “Will you be my girl?”

I screamed.

Fortunately I lived by myself and no one was home to hear me, or see the packing peanut mess I had all over my couch.  I went ahead and read the remaining few packing peanuts in the box (they said very similar things to the previous hundred I had read) and ripped open the letter.

I shall not here detail the contents of that letter.  (You don’t even really care, do you?  Hehehehe.)  Considering the box only contained about a hundred white packing peanuts and a single letter, I was flying high as a kite until the 9:00 phone call later that evening.

“I got your box,” was about the first thing out of my mouth once I had called Joey back.  Gotta maximize those free minutes, you know.  (Frankly I’m surprised Verizon didn’t go under that summer.)

“Oh did you?” Joey said.

“I did.  And I found your message.”

It was here that the conversation got a little awkward.  “Yeah?” Joey said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He was quite for a few minutes. Then – “Do I need to talk to your dad or anything?”

“Yes, you do,” I said, rather relieved that he had brought it up.  My family really thinks it’s important to be involved in significant relationships from their earliest formation, and sometimes that’s a little bit foreign to the potential “significant other”.  Once I got to college and grew up a bit, knowing that I could screen potential guys through my Dad’s wisdom was really encouraging.  Dad knows a lot more about boys than I do…he’s the one who helped set me free from X after all.  I trust my Pops’ judgment implicitly.

“OK, can you give me his phone number or email address?”  Joey asked, snapping me out of my reverie.

I gave him both, and he wrote them down, promising to call my dad tomorrow or the next day.  The plan was to get this worked out before the Fourth of July, we were going to Creston so Joey could juggle in a contest and be in a parade with his friend Joel.  I was going to tag along and hang out with Joel’s girlfriend Amber.

As was our habit, we talked until 2:00 a.m. before calling it a night.  The next morning, I made a call to my dad to warn him that Joey would either be calling or emailing, depending on his ability to access technology.

Dad was ready.

Dad and I had done this drill before, but this time was different.  I had my brain engaged this time – I was not going to screw this up twice…not after the mess I’d made the previous year.

Later, about 7:00 that evening, my cell phone rang.  It was my dad.  My heart began to race; this likely meant that he had just gotten off the phone with Joey and was going to relay the conversation to me and ask my opinions.

“Hi, Dad!” I said.

“Well, I just got off the phone with Joey…”

To be continued…one more time