He cannot imagine what made him think it was even possible. He wanted to see her so bad. They had met for the first time at her mother’s burial. His mothers best friend’s daughter. She was simple, smart, and serious. Then again, it was a death that gave rise to their friendship.
He was 90 miles North at the university, she attended a community college, not by design, but rather by necessity. She worked in a pharmacy during the afternoon and read books in the evening, and wrote letters. She wrote him many letters.
He wrote back, no e-mail then, and he put much of himself in the words, the words into an envelope, and the envelope into a mailbox across campus, rain or shine. But this never seemed enough.
A couple of times she came to see him on the train. This was good but never easy for her to coordinate logistically. So when his second semester schedule let him out after three early classes at 11:10 A.M. on T & Th, he decided to just go and see her, now. He walked off campus to the highway and stuck out his thumb and planned to only take a ride that was going back close to the Chicago suburbs.
In actuality, he took a ride from the first car that stopped. He spent two or three hours to reach her door. He knocks loudly and stands there reaching for his breath after running the last three miles from the drop off. She opened the door with an amazing toothy grin and wrapped her arms around his shoulders tightly and just hung there as if gravity had no role to play.
They spent the allotted two hours together, talking, laughing, and in the end crying. It was always tough to leave, but he always did. He would jog back out to the main road and begin his trek back to Milwaukee. Often folks would laugh and even blush at his description of his day and would go out of their way to help him out. He always felt his efforts were gallant, but mostly he just wanted to be on the road, moving.
Unfortunately, the friendship never survived freshman year, but he still holds those days close.
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