She's My Hometown

It's Valentine's Day, and I find that I'm thinking of the only time I've been apart from my wife and true love for any real length of time in the last eight years. It was a long time ago, and I was in Albuquerque for reasons that are mostly inexpressible now and were even more so then. I was there with the saddest, soggiest heart. I suppose I was there to write and to meander the desert which I did with the help and company of a few friends, some cousins, and a pink mountain bike I called Barbie. I guess I was also there to listen.

One of my cousins and I had a ritual. We'd buy two six-packs of Bud pounders, ride across town and up onto a golf course in The Heights, and sit on the sixth green hanging our legs off a ledge that fell into sand. We'd show up near dusk, certain to be alone, and talk into the night finishing the beer. He always wanted to talk about growing up. He wanted to make sense of his alienation from his father, of all the difficulty they'd had that resulted in his being sent off to military school. He thought he would never comprehend it. I only wanted to talk about my girlfriend, Lauren. Any time I thought about home, about growing up -- it was as though the subject involuntarily changed to this incredible woman who had stayed behind in Boston to finish school -- who I'd promised so much to, and who I loved so deeply. I wanted to make sense of why I was away from her, what had brought me out here, and what it really meant for her and I. My cousin sat there and took it on the chin. He is a generous soul.

Over the course of these talks, I began to realize that my thoughts jumping from my hometown childhood to my life with Lauren up in Boston was no change of subject. For the first time, that old homesick feeling I was used to wasn't churning for the home and stomping grounds of my youth. I was homesick for her, and when I thought about growing up, it was her I was thinking of.

It wasn't long thereafter that I finally knew being apart from her was just wasting time. Six years later, I can see that I began to change while sitting on that golf green with my drunk cousin. And even now, thinking of the old hometown -- she's still what springs to mind.

Happy Valentine's day, Lauren.