Life's Crooked Mile

Nearing thirty my heart told me I was ready to meet my soul partner. I had had several long term relationships and thought I was deeply in love. After each break up, however, the missing pieces became visible. Friends laughed as I confided my confident belief: “I will know when I meet him that he is the one.” Even now as I write these words I am mystified by the magical coincidence of love. But then as I have continually reminded my dear husband: I believe there are no coincidences.

We met at a private, residential high school up in the hills of Ojai, California. We were both substitute teachers for the Spring Break week. Most of the students were on a school-sponsored ski vacation. Our job would be to “entertain” and “possibly teach” a group of male foreign students who chose to remain behind. The Friday before my assignment began I drove up to the school to meet with the lead teachers and the director. As I walked through the main door I spied a rather tall, blond, curly haired, slightly bearded fellow strolling towards me. Dressed in a red plaid wool shirt, jeans and heavy hiking boots, his kind blue eyes and inviting smile immediately drew me in. Like in a Broadway musical my heart went zing and a quiet voice inside me spoke: Here He Is!

We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Dan told me later he had no idea why he made the next move. But as we stood frozen and entranced by each other in the middle of the hallway, he spied a small, open room with a piano inside. As if being reeled by a fishing line into this room, suddenly we were sitting together on the piano bench and Dan was playing me a song he wrote: “On My Life's Crooked Mile.”*

“Maybe a thousand people have passed through my life
In the last few years
Ther've been friends and enemies and lovers
But the distinctions are no longer that clear
And time it always passes, and they come and they go
like opening and closing doors
it gets harder and harder to remember all the faces...
But I'll always remember yours...”

I was smitten with him from the very beginning. But as we were to work together for a solid week, I deferred thoughts about our potential relationship until the following Friday. Almost immediately we discovered we worked well together. Over coffee we planned several activities and lessons we thought these students might enjoy. The lessons flopped; the outings to parks and games of basketball and tennis received a lukewarm reception. During one of Dan's tennis matches, I unconsciously walked too close behind him and with his racket swinging back for a serve he hit me in the mouth. Apologies flowed freely but this event has become a humorous touchstone for the beginnings of our romance.

What our foreign students truly wanted was a field trip to Hollywood. We secured two vans and set as our educational destination the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. We left early in the morning for the several-hour journey. The museum only appealed to a few of our students and we finally agreed to cruise Sunset Boulevard and stop at Grauman's Chinese to view star foot and hand prints. Afterwards, we found a small and delightful ethnic restaurant and it was this meal that brought the most smiles to our guests. When we made it back to Ojai we sighed with relief: no one had gotten hurt and no one had gotten lost.

Friday finally arrived and we were both exhausted. My head rambled with thoughts: What's going to happen now? Will I ever see Dan again? Isn't this relationship meant to continue? Like shy and gangly children we both kept alluding to the end of our teaching job and wanting to do something to celebrate our success. Dan mentioned a unique restaurant up in the Ojai hills and a date for dinner became a reality.

Since Dan was renting a room from one of the teachers in Ojai, I drove to his place and then he drove us up through the mountains and canyons of Ojai to Casa Landucci. This restaurant is by far the most romantic place I have ever been. Nestled in the midst of a wide ravine and surrounded by rugged and lush hills, we sat on the deck sipping our wine and feeling nature's blessing upon our meeting. We talked and talked, ate and drank, as if we were the only survivors of our species at that time and at that place. We found ourselves totally comfortable in each other's presence and as many lovers before us have exclaimed: we felt as if we had known each other for years.

“Get you to the highway
anyway away from here, I raced
from Oregon to Guatemala
sweet liberation I've chased
and with all the hard lessons that bought me
I stand before a thousand more
but of all of the friends' loving arms that have caught me
I'll always remember yours...”


And today after our first hikes through the Ojai terrain and after our first runs through the California orange groves, and after packing all we owned in two vehicles and moving to Oregon and after raising our now twenty-one year old daughter, we have known each other for years and those thirty-four years are only the beginning.

“There is so much I wanted to say to you
before you touch that dial
but it mostly amounts to thank you, for being,
On my life's crooked mile.”

*“On My Life's Crooked Mile” song lyrics by Dan Fuehring

© 2011