Back Up North

I had arranged to make a trip north for my Mom’s birthday, when they rescheduled the next shoot for the movie, this time in San Diego.  There was some confusion over whether I was supposed to go, but I eventually declined, in favor of my first trip back home since that summer.

 

I hadn’t talked to P since I left camp that summer.  I hadn’t gone out of my way to resume our dialog online, and thought that maybe decreasing our level of communication would help me align my emotions toward her with the type of relationship she wanted us to have.  I can’t really say that worked, but it was worth a try.  At the end of my journey north, as I was driving into town, I passed her on the freeway.  It was the first time I had ever seen her anywhere besides at camp.  Once I realized it was her, I had a totally different perspective on my approach the last few months.  It felt like I had been running from the issue, which is something I usually pride myself on not doing.  It was not like our paths weren’t going to cross.  We were from the same small town, knew a lot of the same people, and she even lived at the camp I dreamed of moving to.  It wasn’t like not talking to her was going to improve things.  So that incident prompted me to resume our conversation, and I made a point of seeing her when I went to visit all my friends out at camp that week.

 

I stopped by camp one afternoon that week, and spent a few hours helping Sunshine clean all the windows and screens in the lodge, while she gave me a detailed story of the circumstances surrounding her aborted wedding.  Her perspective on the events led me to question how one could ever try to get married if something like that could randomly happen at the last minute.  She also suggested I look up D, a mutual friend who now lived down near me.  After that, I headed over to talk with P for a few minutes, and then up to Wild Oak, to hang out with Buddies, Eclipse, and Doodles for the evening.  Camp was not in session that week, so it felt very dead there, and didn’t have the vibe that I was accustomed to during the summer.

 

We celebrated my Mom’s birthday, and then I headed back down south, to be ready to receive footage in the office from the shoot in San Diego.  Our next shot was going to be two weeks out in the desert in Southern California, so I would finally get a chance to take advantage of the trailer that I had built.

Shortly after I got back, I connected up with D, and joined her and her friends at a movie down in Long Beach.  It was good to see a friendly face in LA, and I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year.  About that time, a newly married couple joined our Bible study in LA.  Greg and Jen had an interesting story about how they had ended up together, that shifted my mindset a bit.  They had worked in the same ministry together at UCLA, and commuted together every week to volunteer at some location in downtown LA.  He told us he had been trying to get her to date him that whole year.  She had declined every time, and they were just friends.  It wasn’t until the next semester that she finally changed her mind, and agreed to give it a try.  Her perspective was that she wasn’t ready then, but eventually she came around, and a year later, there they were.  It was an interesting story about how initial repeated rejection eventually had a happy ending.