Led by dreams (part 2)
Believe recklessly in whatever bright future you can imagine
This is part two of a three-part series. You can read part one here.
“Dream,” like many English nouns, doubles as a verb. In this form it refers not to an inspired, aspirational image, but the exercise of obtaining one.
If we’re free to dream — to grab and invest in any future we like — what does that say about our power over fate? We must be, at least, its co-creators. As we look to the future with our questions, it looks back at us with its own. We are more than driftwood in the flow of time. We can swim.
To dream is to create reality. We plan for our deepest desires to be fulfilled.
Days after I said goodbye to Jane there was peach cobbler at my door.
It was from Becca.
I confided in her when my hopes were high, and sent a text when it all fell down. She remembered my favorite dessert and ding-dong-ditched it on my doorstep.
I scooped the warm Tupperware up, plopped down on our apartment’s squeaky, student-proof sofa, and kicked up my feet. The cobbler was homemade, a bed of spiced peaches with big gobs of buttery dough pocking the surface. Despite the drama of the previous month, I let myself enjoy the ripeness of late summer and my newly unfolding romantic freedom.
At the time I couldn’t afford to confront the failure of my dream. I tried to quickly coax it through me, but my childlike confidence in the future was taken captive in the passover. I abandoned understanding for the peace of acceptance.
Fall arrived in the valley. Dying leaves cling so desperately to their branches but ultimately crumble before the chill. They trade their final strength for the dignity of the grace with which they fall.
The autumn scene up Provo Canyon is one of Utah’s greatest, and for many an annual pilgrimage. My childhood friend Caleb was preparing for an expedition himself and invited me to come along.
We’d make the journey in “Harold,” the retro RV he and his roommates had saved from the junk yard. The vessel was an eyesore and only marginally road worthy, falling apart in obscure ways that made Caleb the sole driver trusted to captain it safely. Of course, hauling a group of twelve up a mountain road for a group date would be no sweat off Harold’s back, he assured me. Probably.
I didn’t think twice. It would be my first date since an art gallery with Jane. I was bubbling as I rang Becca’s line. Things could be different between us now — in fact, I was sure they would be. She picked up and I jumped in. Beneath our casual discussion of the adventure’s details there was a more serious thread playing out.
“Let’s finally find out if we’re more than friends.” I was trying to say, “I choose you.”
“I don’t want to be your second choice.” She was thinking.
Becca said she’d check her calendar. Later she agreed to come, but wondered if there was room for a pair of her friends as well. My enthusiasm leveled out under her trepidation. There was a new wall between us, and I only had myself to blame.
It was a fun afternoon of card games and fire-pit steaks under flaming golden trees, bookended by a rickety ride up and down the canyon. But the distance between Becca and me had grown. She was farther away now than I knew how to reach.
That month, running started to make sense.
I broke my body all over and yet somehow felt good. The runners’ high was real and held me just above the burning quads, aching knees, and blistered toes. I smiled through stiff breezes at other joggers, their silent nods officially inducting me into a strange new masochistic cult. I was no longer forking around veggies. Every run was fast food.
Along the way I traded in my formerly thoughtful silence for the voices of others. Coldplay, The Killers, and Freakonomics accompanied me farther and farther up North University Avenue. The How I Built This podcast became a favorite of mine. Guy Raz ended each podcast episode by asking his entrepreneurial guests how they were able to build the businesses that others only dreamed of.
“How much of your success is due to your skill and hard work,” He’d probe. “And how much is due to luck?”
I looked forward to hearing each founder stumble over the unknowable question. The arrogance was obvious in those who took most of the credit for themselves. But I became suspicious of the “pure luck” crowd too. It takes a subtle kind of hubris to assume that you live with so much favor.
I celebrated my first 10K alone on a practice run, proudly hitting the milestone at the street light just in front of the Glenwood apartments. Weeks later I claimed an official half marathon medal at a record pace down the easy-breezy course at Mount Nebo.
“Atta boy!” Becca commented on my Facebook post.
On a bright, chilly day that Fall semester I met up with one of Jane’s friends to chat. We walked from the Wilkinson Student Center Jamba Juice to my car, reminiscing about adventures shared the previous summer and where the both of us had been since.
“So how are you handling it?” She asked suddenly. It took me a moment to realize she knew how things had played out between Jane and me.
“I had it all backwards,” I said slowly, still embarrassed to acknowledge the situation at all. But I was beginning to digest the lesson. “It’s so much more… romantic and beautiful to chose for yourself the person you will love.”
Whether fate had a role to play in my life or not was no concern of mine. Actors may be bound by their lines but the magic we see at the movies is created besides, beyond — and even sometimes in spite of — the script.
The writers tried pitching new love interests.
It was a new season. Our relationship arc had dodged its climax for a second time, so Becca and I were split up to screen test with other potential flames. We studied hard and dated other people. Communication between us trickled away into the rare cadence of a bygone era, a time when talk traveled by horseback one envelope at a time. It was strange to go long stretches without seeing her.
“Sometimes you just click with someone,” Becca explained to a boy pursuing her, frustrated at not feeling the connection she wanted. “Do you know what I mean?”
He shrugged. “No, not really.”
I enjoyed my time getting to know other girls, but felt restless. My mind locked up when trying to project each relationship into the future. Nothing ever came. I cherished moments with others, but found the present alone could contain all our shared substance. There was nothing to unfold into an entire lifetime. There was no fuel for dreams.
Every so often Becca and I would cross paths on campus. We’d trade waves like extras in the background of a movie scene or stop for a few minutes of throwaway dialogue. Before moving along we’d share a laugh and search for something in each others’ eyes. Walking away we’d wonder... but let the moment pass.
The frequency of our interactions increased as the natural gravity of our friendship exerted its almost imperceptible influence. But there was fresh intention too, a momentum we both spoon-fed in texts, on social media, and occasionally face to face. I invited her to help with a recurring community service project and she was one of only a couple people who came every month. When I completed my marathon she was cheering at the finish line.
Still, we never quite made it into the same pictures.
In the brief interlude between final exams and the long roadtrip home for Christmas, Becca reached out with a summons to the tennis courts. It was our old kingdom, the place where we first got to know each other during a summer as Freshman. I grabbed my racket and headed over.
A mysterious illness was already sapping away at Becca. Once a state championship contender and more than my match on the court, she now rallied from the baseline, sent up soft lobs, and let my shots scream past. After a few points we decided on collaboration over competition. The new goal was simple: place the ball where the other could hit it.
Becca stalled as we packed up and walked out to the parking lot.
“Why did you ask me on that date?” She finally asked as our cars came into view. We both knew the answer; It might as well have been a rhetorical question. But she needed to hear me say it. The previous hour was a ruse, only cover for this pre-planned line of interrogation.
“When things changed for me I thought we’d be on the same page.” I said, “Honestly, I thought we’d start dating.”
“I wasn’t ready then... But the past few months I keep thinking to myself: ‘I miss Stephen.’”
Our conversation ended on a positive yet indefinite note.
The clamor of medieval warfare greeted me back at the apartment, my last remaining roommate preferring the murder of peasants on a PlayStation 4 to holiday time with family. I stared through the TV into the wall, lost in thought.
Am I going to let our relationship die?
I rolled Becca and myself around in my mind, weighing every shared conversation, adventure, and feeling. Then I stood up. I had just this one last chance.
Two days later I got my ticket punched early at a local Cinemark.
Unfortunately, from the perspective of onlookers I must’ve seemed a super-fan of a movie I had less than no interest in seeing. As the “Pitch Perfect 2” title card flashed on screen, Becca’s friends — my co-conspirators — pushed her to the front of the line shuffling down my row. She settled into the seat next to mine, shocked I was there instead of on the road home.
The movie ended and, with knowing smiles, Becca’s friends abandoned her. We exited the theater playfully arguing over whether Pitch Perfect 2 should exist.
We sat in my car for a long time talking. My gaze alternated between the moon hanging in the clear winter night just outside the windshield and the silhouette of Becca cast in its glow. I sat in a bramble of emotion, halfway content in the stillness and prickled all the same with nervous energy. Over the course of an hour an unspoken commitment solidified between us. It was time to try on the formal label.
“So we’re going to do this for real, right? Will you be my girlfriend?” I asked.
“Yup, let’s do it.” She replied.
To the chagrin of a couple underpaid employees, we celebrated the occasion in our typical juvenile style: A sushi dinner from inside a makeshift box fort at Walmart.
That Christmas I breathed new life into a day dream I’d had on and off for three years, the dream that maybe Becca would be the last girl I ever dated.
We burned bridges no new couple should.
Becca flew out to spend that New Years with my family and me in Arizona. We enjoyed four days together feeding ducks, watching family home videos, and hiking the state’s sunbaked plateaus. The possibility of a messy breakup felt so remote that we rearranged our Winter course loads to take three classes together.
My favorite part of the vacation was the lazy afternoon we moved unbothered from couch to couch — inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs — sinking into each for a while to toss get-to-know-you questions back and forth before a snack break or rising stretch led us on to the next. We freely uncovered layers of each other previously left untouched.
The exercise spilled over into our roadtrip back to Utah. For the better part of ten hours I steered us straight up I-15, tempting fate with near-constant cruise control so I could focus on the flow of conversation. Somehow when I dropped Becca off at her apartment that night I still longed for the feel of the road, left hand on the wheel, right hand in hers.
In the next few months we drove over our fair share of bumps, but stayed committed. The transition from friendship to romance took time and effort. I capitalized on every occasion I had to show Becca that she meant more to me than anyone or anything ever had before. My surprises on Valentine’s Day and her birthday in particular broadcast the message loud and clear.
“Starting to kinda like this Stephen kid.” Becca wrote in an Instagram post.
It’s a well known, albiet unproven, fact that Provo park managers hate the young couples that besiege their grasses come sunset. At precisely 11:00pm each night a sprinkler symphony erupts across every lawn, expertly conducted to douse flames and send lovers packing.
From the mouth of a playground’s spiral slide, Becca and I watched the Godfather-esque massacre unfold. A sprinkler technician somewhere was no doubt about to be fired for missing us. Short bursts of water pattered across our refuge, sending up a mist that formed droplets on the plastic just beyond our feet. Huddled together in a blanket like kids hiding from Mom’s call home, I asked Becca a serious question as casually as possible.
“So where do you think you’ll be living next Fall?”
Should we start apartment hunting? Do you think we’ll get married this summer?
“Sarah and I are planning to renew our Stonebridge contracts!”
Not likely.
I tried to hide my disappointment. Was I doing all I could do? Or maybe too much? What was I doing wrong that made me such a small part of her dreams of the future?
I fell faster, but she said the words first.
We kissed a lot but I stayed otherwise tight-lipped about my feelings. I hoped Becca would arrive at the same conclusion I had, that we could build a beautiful life together. Insisting on my dreams, however, would have the opposite effect. She needed to see it all for herself.
On a busy weeknight like so many before, Becca and I finally shut our books. We would continue cramming our heads with resource maps of Sub-Saharan Africa the following day. For now, we’d simply be together, even if it meant letting a few test answers scurry out of mind.
“I had a dream about you last night.” Becca said. I straightened up a little. “You wanted to tell me that you loved me, but didn’t. You didn’t want to scare me.”
A momentous pause followed. The feelings I’d bottled up had found their own way out, reaching the person for whom they were made by slipping between the folds of her sleep. It was a relief to be known. But there was no telling if Becca would accept me. And no longer a path of retreat. I wrapped my arms around the judge and waited for her sentence.
“I guess I just wanted to say… I love you Stephen.”
At last, “love” became part of our shared vocabulary. Goodnight texts and goodmorning hugs took on new colors. Becca continued to struggle with unusual aches, pains, and fatigue but experienced a momentary lift in her symptoms.
“It’s you. I think it’s because of you.” She told me.
One night we merged our workout plans into one, a shared three-mile jog around the block instead of our typical more individual routines. We took off down her apartment stairs and set out on a loop. It was a similar route to the one we’d taken nearly a year before, the night when we decided to give up on us. Becca’s phone announced the completion of our final mile and we slowed to a cool-down stroll.
“How do you know you love me?” Becca asked as we stretched. Our shared future gained certainty each day — and healthy skepticism. With the weight of an altar looming over us, Becca routinely cross-sectioned our bond and mounted it under a microscope where she could inspect each and every flaw.
Is this really real? She wondered.
The scrutiny didn’t bother me. My feelings for her were easy to explain, although they surprised me. I had spent so much of my life gauging the promise of relationships based on the warmth they brought me. With Becca I discovered a more accurate measuring stick. My affection for her was most easily measured by the time I was willing to spend in the cold — by the things I was willing to endure.
I answered with unnatural conviction: “I have a feeling about you that I’ve never had with anyone ever before. I know without a doubt that I would do anything for you. Literally anything.”
Only years later when Becca was dying did I internalize this truth: Skeptics can’t act. Actions are preceded by faith. Every great feat is performed in the wake of absurd belief.
If I had any chance at all of bringing Becca back from the brink, I’d need visions to match her nightmares.
It would all hinge on our faith in a dream.