Sometimes it hurts

Tonight I was outside putting the kids' toys away and I could hear the high school band practicing in the distance. The warm summer breeze and the aching of my legs from the 4 mile walk I took earlier, compounded with sound of the percussions in the distance made my heart ache a little. High school band practices are something of my very distant past. Days and nights spent with friends on the muddy practice fields and hot asphalt while learning music or baton routines and endless marching routines. I remember that one summer our band director began the "dot method" of learning marching routine. We put down color coded and numbered dots to guide us from position to position until we learned the steps. My friends and I had took great joy out of taking other peoples' dots and throwing them far off their mark into the steep grass or mud so that when the came time for them to march to their dot, there was no dot to be found. Band geeks can have a wicked sense of humor.

I came inside to check my Myspace page and came across Barrett during one of my stalkings searches. Barrett and I worked together at Cedar Point during the summer of 1996. I worked Ripcord and he worked the race cars which were located right next to Ripcord. I remember on night in late July I had worked a double shift and was feeling exhausted. I leaned against the fence waiting on the next group of riders while a breeze blew across Lake Erie and cooled my sunburned skin. The sounds of people screaming while falling 152 feet on Ripcord and people riding the nearby Mean Streak were punctuated by an "Amanda! Amanda!". I turned around and it was Barrett from his station highest on the race track that overlooked Ripcord's flight path. I yelled "hello" back and he called out "do you want to go out tonight????". I yelled back "sure!". He hollered "I'll meet you at your dorm when you get off!". All the riders who were standing next to me while waiting their turn were all like "did he just ask you out??" and I smiled and nodded yes and they were all like "awwwwwwww". Sometimes during the quiet of a hot summer night, I can hear the screams of fear and joy and the whistling of the Mean Streak and my heart does a pitter patter.

I talked to my best friend, Sarah, on Saturday. Her twin boys just turned one and as usual, I'm late getting their card and gifts in the mail. She told me not to worry about it. We talked about weaning her kids from the bottle and introducing cow's milk and then our kids started screaming and we had to get off the phone. I told her I loved her but there was so much more I wanted to say. The other day she sent me an e-mail and wrote:

Sometimes, I really miss those days of driving around Morgantown - few cares, no real responsibilities... throwing water balloons at pedestrians... aaahhh the good ol' days!

I miss those days, too. I miss our long drives throughout Monongalia County in her old Subaru. Some days she would just announce she was going for a drive and I would get up and go with her without saying a word. I miss the hour long drives by Cheat Lake when we would lose ourselves in the strains of Tracy Chapman and we wouldn't say anything. We didn't have to. The hot summer air would whip through the car as we rounded the country roads. Most of the time we never knew where we were going and it didn't matter. We had time. The comfort was in knowing that the other one was there. Friends, boys, classes, troubles, and everything else came and went for so many years but we remained constants to each other. She is still my constant but I miss the days when we didn't worry about who would watch the kids while we drove for hours or how do we afford the gas and who the hll has time for a drive? Never mind the fact we now live 7 hours apart.

This hot August night I put the kids to bed and reached for the keyboard.

Summer hurts sometimes.