Fate and the Golden Girl

Today was a big day. An important day. In fact, it could be one of those four or five days you have that change your life.

I don't remember where I first heard that idea, but it goes something like this -- throughout your entire life there are only four or five days that truly matter, the days when you stand at a crossroads. A decision looms. It may seem insignificant or you may realize its weight. Regardless, the path you choose shapes the rest of your life. And, except for those four or five days, everything else is just fate.

I'm a firm believer in fate. I can point back to times in my life where I was led to a destination, not by my own devices but by the overarching guidance of something else. I've thought something was meant to be in my life only to see it fall by the wayside and reveal something even better smiling at me. I've made sweet mistakes that turned out to be gifts. I've looked back on things that I wanted so badly at the time and been thankful that they weren't mine. Call it what you want my friend but it is true and it is real. Destiny. Kismet. Moira. She leads you where you don't know you're going.

Anyway, today could have been one of those four or five days. I'll let you know how it turns out. In honor of the day and of fate I thought I would share a story I wrote last year.

It's a story of love and wonder, dreams and connections.

And fate.

The Golden Girl Behind the Fence

My earliest memory is of a woman. Go figure. She was a little girl actually – the golden girl behind the fence.

My mom tells me that I couldn’t have been more than two. That sounds about right. We were living in Austin, Texas. My father was back from the war and attending the University of Texas on the G.I. Bill. Everything about that time seems golden to me. It was the early ‘70s and Austin was still holding on to Hippy values. Both of my parents worked at Garner and Smith, a college bookstore on the Drag. Like so many things of that time, I don’t believe it is around any more, certainly not the way I remember it.

My father did the books for the place and my mom worked behind the counter. My father would drive the bright orange Vega to work early in the morning -- the one that he purchased in Vietnam and was shipped to the states for him. My mom and I would ride the bus to the bookstore later in the morning. We had to change buses and almost always stopped in a park by the river to feed the squirrels a bag of nuts my mom purchased from a man that sold things out of a cart. If you’ve never seen a young boy feeding a bag of peanuts to squirrels in a park, then you haven’t lived. I can’t tell you how much joy that daily feeding gave me at the time and in the years since while looking back.

We entered the bookstore by the rear entrance. Everything was cool and glossy in the back. My dad’s desk was tucked back in a corner amid boxes of books. There was such a distinct smell about the place. It was the smell of new books, the spine yet to be cracked, the pages yet to be turned. It was a clean, crisp smell that makes me think of metal and knowledge, acrid to the nose but far from unpleasant.

It was a great time. We were surrounded by hippies and intellectuals, but I always just felt I was surrounded by love. My father, being a few years older than the average student, got along better with the professors than the students, something that has been passed down to me interestingly enough. There were always people around that embodied that peace and love value system. And I was right there with them.

I was walking and talking by then. I apparently had a pretty large vocabulary for a boy not yet two-years-old. Picture if you will a tiny little boy under two-feet tall walking around dressed in delicious leisure suits that my Granny had sewn for me, using words like “enunciate” and “cumulus clouds.” I was the hit of the party.

It was just my parents and I. A brother and sister would come along four and six years later, but then I had them all to myself and I relish those memories. It’s selfish and embarrassing to admit, but I would guess that most people with younger siblings secretly hold the time before the brother or sister arrived like hidden gold or the last piece of candy from Halloween. It’s not something to share.

Anyway, back to the golden girl behind the fence.

As I said before, it is the first memory that is truly mine. There are some memories that I call merged memories. You’re not sure if they are truly yours because you remember them or because you heard the story so many times that you convinced yourself that, yes indeed sir, I remember that. No this one is real, there was only her and I on that golden afternoon.

We lived in a small house, the kind a young couple in college could afford. I must have gone out back to play. As I ran around in circles looking for butterflies, a glimmer caught my eye from next door. There standing on the other side of the fence was this little blonde-haired girl in a flowered dress. Her hair was blowing gently around her face from the breeze, and the sun had her backlit so that this golden glow emanated from around her, shining through her hair like a simulated sunset through a theater scrim. She had something in her mouth. It could have been a lollipop or perhaps a barrette that she had taken from her fluttering hair for something to chew on. She didn’t say anything. She might not have even been able to talk; she really was only a toddler.

I walked towards the fence and she did the same. It was a chain-link fence, dull gray. I always associate the smell of chain-link fences with having a bloody nose, a combination of a metallic smell and taste at the same time. When you look at one, the wire squares always seem to be smooth, but inevitably there are imperfections on the surface of the links that surprise your hands with a prick or a scratch. I don’t like chain-link fences.

We met at the fence and stared at each other through the squares. We studied each other for what seemed like hours but was probably just seconds. She put her hand through one of the links and touched my shoulder. I put my opposite hand through the fence and held her hand. In my mind she smiled. At some point her mom or grandmother – whoever it was looked really old to me – came out to get her. She went in and that was the end of it. I don’t recall ever seeing her again.

It was years later, probably about 25, when I realized that little girl turned out to be my wife. Probably not actually the same person. My wife, Shannon, assures me she never lived in Austin. Still, throughout my life I seemed to be always searching for the golden girl behind the fence. She represented all that was beautiful to me. That little smile with a lollipop or something stuffed in her mouth, the flower print dress, the human contact and her ethereal glow; all out of my reach, beyond the chain-link fence. I often thought of my golden girl during times of depression, which I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve had more than a few times. It was one of those black periods that I made the connection between the golden girl and my wife.

My wife and I had been married for about a year and were living in Los Angeles. The week had been one of darkness and depression, the kind where I would slowly sink inward and tune out the business of life about me. I came home from bartending late, after 1 a.m. I was looking at a room screen that was actually a frame for fifteen eight by ten pictures that we had received for a wedding present. We had decided to display our wedding pictures in it.

Our wedding was a wonderful, happy day. We were married in an old Victorian house in Pasadena, California. It was a great party filled with friends and relatives and dancing children. Almost all the people that needed to be there were, and it still ranks as one of my three best days.

As I looked over our wedding pictures in the screen frame it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. The golden girl behind the fence and my wife were one and the same. It was the center picture, a black and white nostalgic looking print of my wife alone by a big window in the upstairs of the house where we were married. The dress was a simple, white, classic style. There was no flower print little girl’s dress but everything else was the same. Shannon is looking down at her bouquet, but you can see a faint smile one her face. There was the magical glow of sunlight coming in from the window and lighting up her veil like a halo. The depression fell off me as I realized I had found what I had been looking for all my life.

It’s funny how things work out. I married my wife because she is beautiful and smart and funny. I married her because she is a great complement to me. I married her because I love her, not because I thought she was the golden girl that first touched my heart. It turns out that I got both, which let me put to rest that need to find something I never felt I could.

I finally got over that chain-link fence.

Fate and the golden girl