Remember my Favorite Humanities Professor?
As we neared my 40th birthday, Adina and I had seriously considered getting a domestic partnership. I had begun having serious health issues. She was concerned that if something happened to her, her mother would have control of her life. We just wanted to make sure that we could take care of each other if it became necessary.
We had adopted a chihuahua puppy at the birthday party of one of my nieces. I’d never seen Adina just fall in love with something so quickly. It didn’t matter to me that we already had four dogs and three cats at home. If it made her that happy, I was all for it.
I had come down with a pretty serious case of pneumonia. I wasn’t hospitalized, but I was on antibiotics and steroids and pretty much bedridden.
I was laying in my bed one day, reading emails, when I realized I had one from Humanities professor. I’m going to call him Paul going forward. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time, so I was eager to talk to him. Among the things he shared was that he and his wife (whom he’d been dating when I was his student) had divorced. He had since been seeing a woman who broke his heart and he was really struggling with depression. Depression was something I had some experience with, so I was able to relate quickly.
He was so relieved to find someone who understood how visceral depression can be. I described it as a serious injury with a long recovery. You move so carefully for a while after for fear of reinjuring oneself. We began emailing back and forth multiple times per day. We exchanged our stories of depression and injury and I felt like something was blooming between us.
Because I’d had such strong feelings for him when I was his student, I thought that the chemistry I felt brewing between us was wishful thinking. Still, we made plans for me to come to Chico and see him. It was pouring down rain when I went. When I arrived, he flung the door open and shouted, “you’re crazy!” He threw his arms around me and hugged me tightly. I was trembling because I still had the feelings, but the face I’d seen when he opened the door was the face of a man who had a hard journey.
We sat down on the sofa and talked excitedly about this thing and that thing. I honestly can’t remember what we’d discussed. What I do remember is that he jumped onto my lap. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in for a kiss. It was a long and passionate kiss with a man the same age as my mother. The age didn’t matter to me. I actually had the thought that this was meant to be. This is why I’ve made all these dumb choices and done all these dumb things. So that I’d be ready for this moment with this man.
We slept with our clothes on. I should say that we laid next to each other with our clothes on. His bed was a futon, and I could have been sleeping on the floor for all the comfort I felt. In the morning we went to breakfast.
At breakfast, he reached over and took my hand and told me that he wanted to be honest with me. He told me how close he came to committing suicide. He knew about Dave and thought I should know that he’d been in that place. I squeezed his hand and told him that I knew that. But I also knew that he was getting help.
Because of the distance between us, we didn’t see each other every weekend. We still emailed each other regularly, and the emails were passionate and romantic. We had not crossed the bridge of sex – not physically and not in writing. Our messages were pure poetry.
I told him that I felt like we are all radio transmitters. When we love or care for someone, we’re tuned in to each other’s frequency. I told him about a time when I was in high school that I’d had a strange dream. I’d dreamed that my bests friend at the time had called me to tell me she wanted me to come over and read her diary. Her stepfather came over to pick me up. The only visuals that I recall from the dream were looking at the dash of the pickup and pulling up in front of a garage. When we parked in front of the garage, I heard people screaming and crying, “Oh my God! She’s killed herself! She’s dead!”
I woke up very upset. It was a Saturday morning. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, and I told her about my dream. She made me wait to call my friend until it was a decent hour. When I called my friend, she laughed at me and told me I was weird. Then she reminded me that she doesn’t even have a garage.
We laughed about it and I didn’t think about it again until Sunday morning. That’s when my mother was reading the paper and said, “Oh, no.”
“What?” I asked her.
“That little girl, Tammy was talking about,” she said, “She killed herself.”
“Who?”
My mother read the name and my heart hit the floor. It was a girl who lived a few streets over who I walked to school with. I burst out crying. My mother said she didn’t know I knew her. I asked her how she did it. She’d hung herself in the garage.
My mom said, “That’s why you had that dream. ” She’d killed herself the night I had the dream. That and many other less dramatic experiences lead to my radio transmitter theory. It seems logical to me that when something that powerfully emotional happens, those of us who are tuned in to that person would pick up disturbances in the force, so to speak. I also think that’s why people often know someone is going to call them right before the phone rings; or why we feel the need to call a friend when they just happen to need someone to talk to.
Paul loved that theory, and that became our thing. If we were misunderstanding each other, we’d talk about static on the line.
The next time Paul and I saw each other was the weekend of my 40th birthday. It was surreal. Adina, my sister, Audra, and my friend, Aimee, from work had planned a surprise party for me. It wasn’t really a surprise, though, because I had started trying to plan a gathering on my own and Adina had to tell me that something was already in the works. I was so high on spending time with Paul, I was just kind of in awe at the party. There were so many people. Friends from Renaissance Faire, friends from work, friends, and family, even Rick and one of our gaming buddies were there. I felt so incredibly loved, I can’t even begin to describe it.
While he was at our house, Paul and I were looking at Facebook so I could show him how to do some things. I saw a woman on his list named Alice. I asked if that was the woman who’d recently hurt him so much. It wasn’t, but then he went looking for that Alice, and realized that she’d unfriended him. I noticed a slight exhale from Paul and I got the sense that he was deflating inside.