Four Years

Every year, about the same time, I do this thing.  I get really introspective and emotional.  I acknowledge the people in my life.  I hold close the people I have loved.  I reflect on the friendships I’ve cherished.  I try to acknowledge how those friendships have enhanced my life.  I do that.  Every year.  About this time.  I know it makes some people uncomfortable.  I know it makes me seem volatile to some. To others, it makes me appear overly sensitive.  I can’t stop it though.  Every summer since I was 18, I have had to say “goodbye” to people I have loved, only to greet people I never knew I would love.  After a very emotional week, I started to think about the cycle.  It’s a four year cycle for most, but for me, it’s lifelong.

It’s a four year cycle.  Usually.  Sometimes it’s a three year cycle.  Sometimes it’s a five year cycle.  But, as rule, it’s a four year cycle.  At the beginning of year one, you arrive.  At the end of year four, you depart.  The cycle is the same for most.  When you get to where you are going, you are greeted by unfamiliar faces and dynamic personalities.  You never know what to make of those faces or personalities.  Inherently, you want to assume that they all have good intentions and want to welcome you into their circles, their homes, their families.  But after you have made so many transitions, you begin to question the motives behind, such seemingly, genuine acceptance.  You have had some good experiences, but you also remember the bad experiences.  Because of the bad experiences, career transients have established two rules to the “four year cycle.”  Only two rules.  The first rule is “never trust the first person you meet.  They made themselves the first person you meet for a reason.”  The second rule is “never get too attached, eventually, they will be gone.  And so will you.”  Those are the rules.  I didn’t make them up, but they are rules for a reason.  You should probably abide by them, after all, everyone who came before you said they were the rules to follow.  This is the military.  We abide by rules here. 

For many years, I did just that.  I followed the rules. I held them as gospel.  I accepted them as unfortunate side effect of service.  For years, I believed that you couldn’t trust friendly faces.  I also believed that the friendly faces you learned to love, would eventually leave, so it wasn’t worth it.  I did through the years I spent on active duty, then the years I spent as a military dependent.  I believed the worst in the first people I would meet when I transferred.  Then I believed that the good ones weren’t going to be around long enough to love anyway, so I didn’t love them.  Those are the rules. 

Then there was this day, more than seven years ago now.  In one of those perfect transfer seasons.  The kind that you start driving from Virginia.  While pregnant.  In one car.  Then you drive through Canada.  (I know most people don’t believe this, but Canada is, in fact, a different country.)  Then you drive through the Yukon.  Only to have to drive through more of Alaska.  So that you can get on a Ferry with two cats.  This isn’t the Puget Sound, people.  This is the Gulf of Alaska.  It’s overnight.  In a part of the ocean that is notorious for being inhospitable. Still, somehow, we drove off the Ferry. with the same two cats we started with and nobody was dead.  We were met by a guy who said he was going to be there.  We went to housing and they gave us keys, same day.  We went to TruValue and bought paint. 

We’d been in the house for a couple of hours, both exhausted from long hours on the ALCAN and of each other, I allowed Mike a beer and smoke break.  A BRIEF break.  “We’re painting,” I told him.  How either one of us survived that pregnancy, I don’t know.  But I am digressing.  I allowed him a reprieve from paining.  I let him sit for a minute, then I followed him outside.  That’s when I saw the most beautiful face I had ever seen in my life.  I heard this tap, tap, tapping.  I looked around and didn’t see anything.  Then I heard a pounding and a girl I had never imagined to see, struggling to open the window in the house next door.  She held up a finger.  One finger.  I could see her mouthing the words “DON’T LEAVE!!!”  I looked at Mike and raised an eyebrow.  He just held up his hands, as if he was as confused as I was.  Before too long, Erin busted out the back door, spilling Capt’n’Coke all down the front of her shirt.  Out of breath when she made it to our gate, she said “We’ve been waiting for you!!  Sorry I’m late.  Just had to make a cocktail.” That was the days that I broke all of the rules.

 Because of Erin’s “tap. Tap. Tapping.” on the window, I smiled for the first time in weeks.  Because of that smile, I was more willing to welcome other people who made me smile.  Because of my smile, more amazing people made their way to my door.  I learned, because of Erin, that more is merrier.  We had fire pits.  We had parties.  We played Mexican Train.  I had never been so connected to any group of people before.  I’d never celebrated so many holidays or sunny days before.  Most certainly, I had never celebrated a snow day before.  But, one night, in the midst of a blizzard, I held Radley, only months old, against my chest, sheltered from a howling snow.  I walked him, through the snow drifts, at least 100 feet to Erin and Jeff’s.  Pockets full of batteries for the radio and wine for the soul, we all sat together, in the dark, grateful for the connection. 

The first time I broke the rules was the first time that I had been hurt by the rules. Before I knew it, I had completely embraced it.  Dinners.  Firepits.  Drinks.  Snow plows.  Then, one by one, all of the people I had loved, left.  Just as soon as I had learned to believe in the power of our connection, they were gone.  Savannah. Syracuse.  Pensacola.  Galveston.   Places that I would never go!!!    Just as quickly as they had become a part of my life, they were gone.  I was so upset.   I had fully prepared to move to Kodiak and isolate myself for the next three years.  I was ready to live in my house and never leave.  But on my very first day there, a beautiful, jovial soul appeared in my life.  And she changed it all.  She reminded me about the four year cycle. 

Where have you been in four years?  I know I have been a lot of different places.  Four years ago, I took my two year old to Galveston when I had nowhere else to go.  I was ready to leave my husband. I saw Erin pregnant with her first child. She has had a second, since then.   I spent a lot of nights there, drinking wine and asking the universe for some relief.  I asked for some answers.  For some direction.  I remember, very clearly, the early morning that Erin dropped me and Radley off at the airport, she was ready for me to go, as I was ready to leave.  She said, you always have a place here. I knew she was sincere.  But, as I looked down over the Houston lights, from 10,000 feet above, I realized that I couldn’t let go.  I couldn’t let go of the places I had been or the people I have loved.  I couldn’t let go of the past or forfeit the future. 

And I'm glad I didn't to either of those things.  If I had, I would never remember late nights, ending at the break of dawn.  I would never remember the pork shoulders and the pasta salads.  I would never remember tall guy jumping the fence or the way he looked when his shorts got caught on the chain link.  I would never have enjoyed 74 degrees in Alaska.  I would never understood what a heat wave actually means.  I would never have allowed strangers into my home while I was pregnant.  But if I hadn't have done that, I would have lost some of the best memories of my life.  And if I had have given it up after four years, I would never have known what it was like to meet strangers who accepted you as their own.  I would have never known the unconditional love and courtesy that comes from those who subscribe to a mutual love of people.  I would have never met patients and providers, who have changed my outlook on socialized medicine.  

If not for Erin, I would never have known the beauty of reunions.  I would never have known the pain of separation.  If I had never broken the rules of the “four year cycle,” I would never have understood the beauty in acceptance and love.  I would never be able to talk about where I have been or where we are going.  I wouldn’t be able to hug the people, who unexpectedly, walk through the door.  I wouldn’t be able to share life and love and heartache with others.   It’s the four year cycle.  You can either embrace it or escape it.  If you manage to embrace it, you will find more value in life than you could have ever imagined.  If you escape it, you lost it all. 

-Inner Peas