I published this a year ago for paying members, but I’ll share it with everyone since it’s the most important thing that ever happened to me.
With this being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d tell a story I don’t think I’ve ever told here. So, let’s begin.
Early in the year 1979, my parents informed me that we would be moving to California. I had lived in Louisiana my entire life, and I had lived in the same house in Baton Rouge as long as I was a sentient being. Moving across the country was scary for me, but also a relief, because I wasn’t exactly having a grand old time in the 7th grade. I was surrounded by nitwits and airheads, and a complete change of scene promised to be life changing.
Once the school year ended, my mother and I flew to the San Francisco Bay Area, where my father was already waiting for us. They had bought a house for us in Moraga, which is a pleasant bedroom community in the East Bay, and of course everything was going to be new. New school. New church. New Boy Scout troop. And, sooner or later, new friends. I was truly starting with a blank slate.
I began the 8th grade at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School. I was the new kid. I hated being the new kid. Almost everyone else there had known each other for pretty much their whole lives, and here I am, this kid from Louisiana whom others figured would be wearing overalls, walking around barefoot, and whittling a stick like some kind of hick. I mentioned 7th grade wasn’t much fun. 8th grade wasn’t much better.
There was one exception, though. There was a girl in my grade who was gorgeous and intelligent. She had incredible charisma, and I was instantly smitten by her. I always getting a little teary-eyed when I see the scene in Forrest Gump when he first lays eyes on Jenny. The voiceover is something like, “She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.” That’s exactly how I felt.
There was a problem, though. I knew she was way, way, way, out of my league. Hell, I could barely even make a few friends. Who was I to think this goddess would ever have any interest at all in me?
The thing is, though, she was very kind to me. We were assigned to do a project together in one particular class with another kid, and I was thrilled. Even getting the chance to spend any time with her, especially sitting close to her, was magical to me. I loved every single thing she said or did.
However, there was another problem. The school you go to depends on where you live. It just so happened that her house and my house were both in the same zone for the middle school, but after the 8th grade, she would go to one school (Campolindo, in Moraga) and I would be required to go to another (Miramonte, in Orinda). In fact, they were rival high schools, or as much of a “rival” as two schools can be in a little town.
Not that it mattered much anyway. It’s not like we were boyfriend/girlfriend. Hell, I could barely claim to call her a “friend” just because she was a fellow student and worked with me a little bit. As I said, though, besides that fact that she was endlessly cute, she was obviously very smart. The most advanced math class at JM was Algebra, and we were in that class together along with all the other kids that weren’t total dunces.
After May 1980, though, she went one way, and I went another. I figured I would never see her again, which was a shame, because I honestly thought of her as pretty much flawless. I proceeded to get into computers and writing, and here’s a picture of Young Tim signing copies of his first book. Observant Slopers will take note of the Apple Disk II 5.25″ drives in the lower left portion of this image.
Here’s a bonus image for you. Back in those days, I had this crazy idea that computers communicating with one another was going to totally change the world. Weird, huh?
I started my freshman year in high school. Fall turned to autumn, autumn to spring, and in early April of 1981 a card showed up in my mailbox addressed to me. It was a birthday card. From her.
I was completely baffled. Remember, this is decades before the Internet. How did she know my address? And how on Earth did she know my birthday? And, most mysterious of all, how come this girl that I practically worshipped took the time and trouble to remember me and write me?
It was a sweet card. I have it to this day. If I went into the details as to how this relationship blossomed, this post would be fifty pages long but suffice it to say I took the card as an opportunity to begin communicating with her. I never would have guessed it, but my enormous crush on her was matched by a similar crush in the opposite direction, and unlike me, she finally decided to do something about it, even though we hadn’t seen each other in ten months.
Fate can be surprising, and I often think we are living through a life whose path is already before us.
It was truly incredible, and in spite of plenty of obstacles and problems along the way, not the least of which was that we never got to be in the same school together with the exception of the 8th grade, we were married at the age of 23. That was decades ago, and she’s still this beautiful.
I wound find out, from time to time, that people would whisper to one another, “What’s she doing with him?” which is simultaneously insulting and flattering. They couldn’t believe I had landed someone like this, but, sorry, folks, this is how it turned out. I am also glad to report that our children got her beauty and intellect, which far surpass my own. My contribution was principally a quirky sense of humor.
The shocking thing is that we didn’t check in with each other about anything really important before we got married. I supposed intuition was enough, but all the huge stuff like where we wanted to live, and kids, and dogs – – dogs!! – – we never verified being like-minded. There are so many terrible differences in tastes and desires that could have existed which never did. We were exceptionally fortunate.
Of the many books I have written, none is so personal to me as the latest, which is at its core a 543-page love letter to my wife. The final chapter of my novel Solid State boils my feelings down to what i perceive as my essential truth:
As the images of his own history twisted and ripped their way through the flames in front of him, Wesley Williams somehow knew that he had taken the right path after all. Maybe the trail had been laid out for him all along from the day he was born, and it was simply up to him whether to keep marching forward in the right direction.
Wesley was here now. In spite of all his shortcomings, all his bad choices, and all the times he had missed the mark and felt ashamed, he knew in his heart he was still where he was meant to be.
Gazing across the distance at his wife’s eyes – those tender, loving eyes that he had fallen in love with when he was just a boy – he knew he had never left the trail on which he belonged, even though it was impossible from day to day to know for sure where the markers would be.
Somehow, he had managed to stay on the path where he knew he needed to be, even if his own foolhardiness had put his fate at risk. For reasons he could not comprehend, he had been spared his own oblivion by the pathway’s power.
This all sounds idealized, but it isn’t. There’s ample pain along the way. Much of my belief system, however, is based upon this extraordinary instance in my life, because anyone as idiotic as myself doesn’t deserve someone like that, and yet here we are. As I said in the book, I have been spared an oblivion that I richly deserve.
And yet we persist, because one does not take a mystery this unlikely and treat it with anything but reverence. Stay on your pathway. Do not give up. You can make your own choices, but the right thing to do is directly in front of you, if you have a little faith. God can work miracles if you just stay out of his way.
Keep moving forward, and Happy Valentine’s Day
