Come in, make yourself at home. I’ve been expecting you.
You found my business card right? I left it at the bar, you came in about 5 minutes after I left it. You drank two beers before you looked down and saw it on the bar, rung with condensation fro the beer. My name was smudged, but you got here just fine I see.
What were you expecting to find here? Were you taking a chance? Were you scared? Were you excited?
What if I were to tell you that I never felt an ounce of fear in my life? What if I were to tell you that I never took a chance?
It sounds remarkable, to you it must. It was only natural for me, if I were to tell you I knew every outcome of every decision I’d ever made, you’d probably think that I was lying, I was full of shit. If it wasn’t for a week of chances, I would never know that my knowledge was strange, to be honest. I wouldn’t be telling you what knowing the repurcussions of every action was like.
I never knew what a butterfly effect was. I knew not to tread on delicate wings.
Let me tell you a story. It’s a little long, we have to start at the beginning. It’s a story about knowing as much as it is about not knowing. But I guess most of the story, is about Serendipity…about…finding things when you didn’t expect to find them. It’s a lot about Serendipity.
Part 1: Knowing.
“Eli, what are you up to?” Mom placed her hand on my back, leaning over my shoulder to see the flow-chart graphed on a piece of construction paper on the kitchen table. Construction paper because I couldn’t take printer paper from Dad’s office, if I did, he wouldn’t have enough paper for the fax that would come in from the firm tonight, if he ran out he wouldn’t be prepared for his case on Thursday and he would lose. The construction paper was from my room.
“Planning.” I said matter-of-factly. I was six, everything was matter-of-factly. Everything had always been matter-of-factly because I always knew better. I pointed at the chart with my finger, careful not to touch it with the tip of the marker, because that would cause confusion when I was 36 and still referred back to this very plan. “This is everything I have to do from now, until I’m….” I looked at the chart to find how far I had gotten in the span of my life. “…48”
“Oh yeah? You’re gonna join the army?” Mom asked inquisitively. I hadn’t been exposed to war or anything militant at that age, her question was valid. Sure, cowboys and indians was like warfare, but it wasn’t anything that referenced armies. Dad wouldn’t even let me watch programs such as MASH with him. I had no clue what the army was. Or shouldn’t have.
“Yeah huh.” I nodded affirmatively. “And then I’m gonna marry Caroline Montgomery.” I informed her in the all knowing way that I knew. “And then she’ll be Caroline Cosgrove.” I grinned up at her, proud of how much I knew was going to happen with my life.
“Oh yeah?” Mom sat down in the seat beside me and stared into my eyes. She had bright blue eyes, like mine, and she was blonde like me too. I took after dad’s muscle structure, I was told anyway. “What’s Caroline Montgomery look like?”
“Well.” I touched the paper to push it away, but stopped myself as soon as I felt it beneath my fingers. If I pushed it towards the cut in the table between where the extra piece came out to make it longer, it would fall to the floor, then when mom picked it up, it would get snagged and tear. I took my hands away from the edge and folded them on the bare dining room table, leaning in to eagerly tell my mother about my future wife.
“Caroline has long dark brown hair that is kind of curly but not really. Not like…really curly, but pretty, round, big curls that bounce kind of. She’s got big green eyes like grass in the springtime, or like trees, they’re big and pretty…and she’s got a nice round face with a little chin, and she likes to run around houses, she does it so she can keep skinny I guess, but I don’t know what that means, and she always wears sneakers except when we get married or go out dancing. I’m gonna hate dancing but I’ll do it for her because I love her. And…” Mom stopped me there, I was talking too much, and she covered my mouth with her hand just to get me to shut up. “she’s tall!” I blurted against her hand.
“Eli slow down.” She giggled, pulling her hand away. “So I’m gonna be looking out for little girls with curly hair at kindergarten huh?” She grinned.
“No momma, I’m gonna meet Caroline when I’m in the army.” I explained. “I’m gonna be on my first leave and we’re gonna meet after I finish boot camp at a bar. And then we’re gonna talk all the time on the computer and stuff, and then we’re gonna start dating and she’s gonna fall in love with me, and I’m gonna fall in love with her, and I’ll engage her on the second time I’m home from war, and then we’ll get married when I’m back.” I saw the look of fear in my mom’s eye. There was no sign of the country going to war yet, in fact, the towers had no risk of falling. Life was good in the United States, especially in New Jersey. It was 1988.
There were times when mom chalked the things I said, up to just creativity and imagination. Mom didn’t know, or understand my gift, and I didn’t’ know or understand it enough to tell her what happened in my brain every step I took. Every decision I made had a natural weight of the world, of my future, relying on it. I had known my plan since I knew how to think, and the plan said at six, I write down the plan once I learned how to write in kindergarten.
The things I was saying to my mother in this moment, scared her. I was talking of a war that I would be involved in, in the midst of the US and Russia still being on uneasy terms. Things were improving, but the world still watched with baited breath to the interactions between Gorbachev and Reagan. I ha no knowledge, of course, what the Cold War was, and wound never know the fear that my mother had of me talking about a war that would start when I was 19, that I would fight in during my early 20’s, right to the day I got married.
My mother also didn’t know what ‘talking through the computer’ meant, or how I could keep a relationship active through the army, as letters weren’t truly efficient, and phone communications were, although reliable, often costly when conducted over long distances (the concept of calling anywhere in the country still hadn’t caught on, and if you called anywhere outside your town, you would pay exponentially as a result.)
You didn’t marry anyone that you didn’t know from the time you were 12. Mom and dad met in middle school. Caroline was from Kentucky, but was in college at Rutgers. I would meet her in a club while I was on leave and she was just taking a night off from studying.
“Eli, you watch too much television.” She smiled, brushing my hair out of my face. That was all she ever said, and that was all she really could say. She kissed my forehead and slid out of her chair, pushing it in. Her hand stayed on my head for a moment or two before being pulled away with her as she walked off. “I have to start making dinner before your father gets home.”
And I went back to making my plans, working right up until suppertime, and able to get right to age 98, where I died of a stroke and in my sleep. As I looked through the long list of lifetime goals, achievements and milestones, spread across 5 pages of red, orange, green, yellow and white, all in black marker, I couldn’t help but feel proud. I was going to have a good life ahead of me. I carefully stacked my list and carried it, and my supplies, back to my room before settling down with my parents for dinner.
I put the list in the back of a photo-album, a place where I will reference it time and time again for the next 13 years, until I have it laminated so I can bring it with me to the army.
I take off my socks so I don’t slip down the stairs when I run back to join my parents for dinner. My mother informs my father of the story of my life that I had told her about. Dad approved, but still took me aside to talk to me as Mom mandated. I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned that Caroline ran to be skinny.
