Feels Like the First Time (21 page)
Read Feels Like the First Time Online
Authors: Shawn Inmon
Two days after Tommy died, his mom, Terri, died of a massive heart attack. Losing Tommy was more than she could bear. She was eighteen years older than me and was always more like a mom than a big sister. She was also my best friend for most of my adult life. I trusted Terri with my innermost thoughts. Now there was no one left to trust.
Both my mom and step-dad had passed away in the last three years. It was starting to feel like there was no one left, and that was not a good feeling.
I looked forward to the fifteen minutes each night when I walked Jenny because it was my only time to be completely alone. I crossed Bondgard Avenue and walked along the empty lots Jenny loved to explore. I turned up the volume on Boston’s
More Than a Feeling
on my iPod.
We walked to the dead end of the road and she sniffed around the retaining pond. I climbed up a small hill of dirt the builders had left on the last vacant lot, turned toward Mt. Peak, and looked beyond it. Facing south toward Centralia, I relaxed my mind and let thoughts of Dawn wash over me. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the night she had been so cold to me two and a half years before. A normal person would have forgotten her and gotten on with life. She lived in my thoughts every single day.
Things had been better when Terri was alive. I had talked to her about Dawn and she understood. She listened, asked questions, and cared. In early December 2008, Terri called me with an unusual request.
“Little brother, I need a favor.”
Terri had done me more favors in my lifetime than I could count, so I didn’t hesitate.
“Name it, and it’s yours.”
“I want you to publish your story with Dawn.”
“Now why do you want to ask me to do something like that? That’s private. It’s personal.”
“It’s too late. You already promised.”
I agreed to try and find a way to get it published someday and quickly forgot about it. Two weeks later, Terri was dead. In a moment, that promise became a vow I would do anything in my power to fulfill. I went online and looked for a website that accepted submissions from unpublished authors. Getting my story published seemed daunting, and I had no idea where to begin. My first search took me to a website called WritingRaw.com. I spent a few hours reading the stories there and liked what I saw.
I took a chance and sent off the first chapter of my story to Weeb Heinrich, who ran WritingRaw.com. I was surprised when I got a quick response, telling me he liked my story and that he would publish it on the site within 24 hours.
I wanted to write the story as a serial and send off a new chapter every other week. Weeb was open to that idea and it gave me incentive to keep writing. I hoped that writing and publishing the story might finally exorcise the demons I had carried inside for thirty years. But it wasn’t that simple, and here I was staring southward toward Centralia thinking about Dawn.
A year earlier I had tried to reach her one last time. She joined Classmates.com, and I sent her an email hoping to inspire a conversation.
Dawn,
I’m sure it seems a little out of the blue to get an email from me, but I would like to have a chance to talk with you. I'd like to see if we could be friends. When I left you in 1979, I was counting the days until I could talk to you again, and now over 10,000 days have passed and we haven't had a single conversation. That seems wrong to me.
I don't have any way of knowing where you are in your life right now, but I'd like to catch up with you. It's possible you’re happy with not having spoken to me for the last thirty years. I wasn't sure if your first reaction at seeing me again was happiness, horror, or just shock, but I admit it was a little deflating when you looked at me and said, "Shawn who?!”
I would like to get to know you again, but if you don't have an interest in that, just drop me a line and let me know, and that'll be that. I agreed not to see you until you were 18 all those years ago because I thought that was what was best for you. My regret now is that I didn't talk to you about that decision. That was wrong, and I'm sorry.
I hope to hear from you…
Shawn
Like every other time I tried to contact her for the last three decades, it was a dead end. I never heard from her.
Dawn. Please. Come to me. Find me.
I repeated this thought over and over, putting my entire being into it. I don’t know how long I stood on the dirt pile, but I looked down to see that Jenny was eyeing me curiously. I climbed down the hill and patted Jenny on the head because she was such a good girl. I walked slowly back to the house.
I went upstairs, climbed into bed and lay listening to the crickets serenading me through my open window. I was asleep in less than five minutes and had an exceedingly strange dream. I had dreamed about Dawn ever since we had parted. Those dreams always stayed with me for a few days. Sometimes, it felt like I had actually been with her. Those dreams would leave a hole in me every time, stirring up all the old feelings–longing, pain, love, guilt, and regret.
They always had a similar theme. Dawn and I were close to each other, but not allowed to talk. The settings of the dreams changed, but the theme of separation lived in each of them. In three decades worth of dreams, we never had a conversation.
I dreamed of her again on this night. We were back in Mossyrock. I was standing on one side of the fence my step-dad had built and Dawn was on the other. As always in my dreams, she acted as if she couldn’t talk to me. However, this time she gestured for me to follow her as she walked away. By the time I got around the fence she was gone, but I could see her standing inside her old bedroom. She was at the window, looking at me and smiling. It had been so many years since she had smiled at me–even in a dream–that it warmed me clear through. She remained silent as I approached the window. She pointed to a bulletin board on her wall. There were pictures of the people she had known and loved over her lifetime in the shape of a circle. The middle of the circle was empty, except for a picture of us. She pointed at the picture, looked at me and smiled again.
I woke up early the next morning thinking about the dream. While I had slept, my subconscious mind had given me the first poem I’d written in almost thirty years:
gone for so many years
alive in my dreams
hidden from the world
safe in my heart
now you are here
not a dream
in my sight
awakening me
if you touch me
in this harsh world
let me fall into your eyes
who would I dream of then?
Despite the poem, the thought of magically summoning Dawn into my life was a distant memory. I left the house before anyone else was awake and sat down at my desk to check my email. In my inbox was an email that had been sent at 10:14 the night before. There was no subject, but the sender was Dawn Johnson
.
An hour passed after seeing Dawn’s name in my inbox, and I still hadn’t read her email. I had dreamed about being in contact with her for thirty years, but it had never happened. I hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from Dawn for all those years.
Now, with her name staring back at me unblinking from my Hotmail account, I thought about how badly I missed Terri. If she had still been alive, I would have called her and read the email aloud to her. She would have understood and supported me. She was gone, though, and I was on my own. I steeled myself for the rejection I was sure was coming and opened the email.
Well, hello.
I don't know if I am fated to contact you or what. I logged into Classmates.com and saw the message you sent how long ago? I haven't been there since I signed up over a year ago. Then Connie, the daughter you met, called me to let me know some odd dude wrote a story about me and you can find it if you Google Bill & Bea’s. I was mortified. My daughter now knows that "my first" is still in love with me.
I'm happy, in love, and my two daughters are happy. I am a supervisor for Verizon Wireless customer service, which means I get called terrible names all day, every day. The only difference between that and my marriage is that now I get paid for it.
Sorry I didn't recognize you at Bill and Bea’s. I was what, 15 when I saw you last? I don't remember a lot of that time. In your message you asked if we can be friends. Well, there’s no such thing as too many friends. However, my daughter thinks you are odd. I wonder myself.
Dawn
I re-read it three times, trying to absorb it. Most people would interpret her email as a punch in the gut. I was oddly exhilarated. There were a lot of negatives, including saying she was mortified by the story I had written that had somehow found its way into her hands, and that she thought I was odd. But then again, I am odd. I couldn’t dispute that. I focused on two things. She wondered if she was fated to contact me, and she seemed to leave the door open to possible friendship. Those two things put me closer to having a real conversation with her than I had been in thirty years.
It struck me what a fantastic chain of coincidences had conspired to result in that email. The odds were incredible that Dawn’s daughter would stumble across my story on WritingRaw.com, especially eighteen months after I had met her, but it happened. To have that happen at the same time Dawn logged back into Classmates.com seemed like the hand of Fate. It also felt like this chance to talk with my lifetime mystery girl could disappear at any moment, so I wrote her back immediately.
First, let me apologize for the fact that your daughter stumbled across that story online. I thought I had changed enough information so it wouldn't pop up on a Google search. Obviously, I was wrong. I really am sorry. It was never my intent for anyone you know to see it and embarrass you. I contacted the site where the chapters were posted to have them taken down. They're already gone, so nobody will accidentally run across them again. Anyway, please accept my apology for any embarrassment I may have caused you.
In your email, you said that you were in love, and I'm glad for you. When I knew you thirty years ago, I thought you were the best person I had ever met. You deserve happiness, and that's what I hope you find.
I know that you said in your email that you don't remember much of anything from that time, but there are a couple of things that I would like to talk to you about. Would you mind answering a few questions some time?
I hope that everything is good with you and that we can be friends going forward. It was good hearing from you...
Shawn
I wasn’t quite as thrilled as I claimed that she was in love with someone. Above all, I hoped to find the answers to questions I’d been hauling like excess baggage for too many years.
