Soulmates

 

I was rather alone. I had just travelled across the country to eastern Idaho to go to college. I had been given a partial track scholarship, so I knew the track coach (sort of), but I knew no one else in the city. My parents had helped me move into an apartment and had left to return to the Oregon Coast. I was alone. But I had my music. My recently acquired Pat Benatar album kept me company. Pat, And Tom Petty, and Pink Floyd, they were all my friends and helped me while away the time and made me forget that I was alone. Soon I would start attending classes, start getting together with my fellow track team members, and start my part-time job in the cafeteria, but until then, the hours were empty.

I had scarcely been there a day, my stereo blasting away, when I heard a knock at the door. It was a pretty, dark-haired woman with a kind smile. She explained that she lived directly upstairs and the previous tenants had been known to play their music at all hours of the night, and could I keep it down after 9:00, because she worked at the campus Post Office early every day. I told her that would not be a problem. She asked me what classes I was taking. When I said one of them was General Ecology, she said I could borrow her text book from last year.

As it turned out, I could not use her textbook, as the professor said we had to use the new edition. But it gave me an excuse to return her book to her. When you meet someone, you never know if there will be a connection or not. I found this girl attractive, but then, I found a lot of girls attractive. That did not mean I would ever talk to them again. Relationships may or may not take.  Something must have connected with this one. She invited me to go mushroom hunting with her. I did not know a thing about hunting mushrooms, but I went with her. Why wouldn’t I? As you have probably guessed by now, a connection was made. She eventually became my wife, and we have been married over forty years.

I don’t really believe in soulmates in the classical sense, that there are people we are fated to be with. What brought my wife and I together was luck. If my parents had found a notice for a different apartment or if I had not been playing my music that day, or any one of a hundred random events had been different, we would not have met. So, I believe we make our own soulmates.

Star Liner