~*~*~*~*~ Six Years ~*~*~*~*~

I loved driving. Ever since I was a toddler and knew what a car was, I wanted to drive. I used to whine and complain all the time, "When am I gonna get to drive!?!" I was constantly overwhelming my parents with a barrage of requests to drive, always getting turned down, of course. When I reached the age of eleven, my parents finally gave in, and started by putting me on their lap and letting me 'steer'. It was but another year before I'd sweet-talked my way further, and every now and then, for short distances, I was, with direct supervision, allowed to be alone in the driver's seat of our automatic (1979?) AMC Eagle. From the viewpoint of a fifth-grader, life was good.

So it was such that, on one of these heavenly mornings many years ago, I drove my mother to the house of one of her friends, on some errand of hers. We stepped inside a house I'd never been to before, and there on the floor, watching "Iron Eagle", were the children of the family. The oldest was a boy a year older than I, the next eldest was a girl one year younger than I, and the next was a boy two years younger than I. The mother, having divorced the biological father of all the children long ago, had remarried since, and now the family lived with a step-father, making a group of five. The eldest sibling, an older sister one year younger than my sister, lived with her biological father and a step mother in Southern California. It was thus that I met my surrogate family to be, all those long years ago.

There is not much else to say on the matter that I soon developed a crush upon the girl in their family that I met that day; I was in sixth grade, and there wasn't much very complicated about it. We all have had crushes when we were that age, all equally simple, innocent, and extemely shy.

Back in those days, the thing to do if you 'liked' someone, was to have your friends go across the playground and harass them, while you watched from a distance; there was no other way to approach Puppy Love, really. Even the most daring of gestures consisted of a note, passed across the classroom, reading, "Will you go out with me?" followed by the classic series of options, [box] 'yes', [box] 'no', and [box] 'maybe'. The recipient was to simply check one of the boxes as she gave her young heart away; how sly it seems now, making such a thing so easy. How I got crushed, though, in those days, so hard on that girl.

More due to our parents becoming nearly best friends, I think, than to any of us, our two families grew increasingly closer and closer. It wasn't long before their family bought a parcel of property next to the parcel my parents owned in the next valley, and the sum total of our parents had decided we were all moving soon. I didn't know it then, but this new family was about to be forever etched in the history of my life.

As chance had it, soon after our families had sold our homes, we learned that merely getting approval for the loans that would build the new houses was to be the most challenging aspect of the entire two or three years spent in house-building. As it turned out, both properties were a little beyond the reach of city power, and no bank would lend out for a house that couldn't possibly be lived in, having no apparent source of power.

Thus, we were all essentially ‘out of a home' for almost a year and a half longer than we had expected. Our family had no choice but to store everything from our house in a storage unit and live out of our fifth-wheel in a trailer park in town. Their family, in turn, rented a small, 50 year-old duplex in an industrial slum, just on the outlying edge of town. Their neighborhood, slummy or not, was, in actuality, not much different from the valley we had recently moved from, and it was certainly far better than our trailer park. Therefore, 'their' home almost became 'our' home, and we were not too unlike a big family that had four parents, in many respects. Between the trio of their family's siblings and my older sister and I, together we made a crew that all became, in all but the biological sense, brothers and sisters.

Within this new tie between the girl I was crushed on and I, lied the heart of a new problem. Still young and full of puppy love, I was all the more crushed on this girl that was fast becoming my new 'sister'. Our families were almost never without one another, and, the more often I saw her, the fonder of her I grew. Yet, at the same time, it became increasingly uncomfortable for me to admit, even to myself, that I was crushed on her. For one thing, any special affection I had for her, the fear of embarrassment overcame; her brothers were too much now my new best friends, and also my new brothers, and would have looked on the idea of my crush with most certain distaste. For another thing, I was too shy and too modest to even let the girl herself know that I had a crush on her. It was far easier, while I was in middle school, to keep my thoughts and crushes to myself, and to instead lavish upon her the same typical, brotherly maltreatment that her brothers gave her. And in such secret my crush survived, for I never did view her as only a sister; what was once puppy love graduated to a deeper adoration, attraction, and appreciation of her over time.

Our two families knew not much but each other, during that sorry period of our lives we all call ‘house-building'. When her older brother was in the eighth grade, I was in the seventh, she was in the sixth, and her little brother was now in fifth. I rode the bus home with her big brother every day, did my homework at their house every day, and played with their family with all the rest of the time that was leftover. We basically all hung out at their little duplex house until all the parents converged there later on in the day, and, more often than not, shared the task of cooking one big dinner for everyone. Then we hung out some more, talking and playing and whatnot. My family really only slept in our fifth wheel, most of the time. So, it was with a severe proportion that our two families were connected.

As I got older, I began respecting this girl more and more. We grew to become very close friends, she and I, and I cherished the time we spent together alone, talking about everything under the sun. Of course, there wasn't anything she and I couldn't talk about (save my crush on her), since we were just as close as brother and sister, but had the desire to be friends as well. She confided in me, and I in her, about the passions and troubles of our lives. It was not an easy time for our families, being that money was extremely tight, and that our fates hung from the whims of the banks that perpetually turned down approval for the loans to build our houses. But this, in addition to the typically rough age we were all at, only contributed, I think, to our families growing closer. I loved everyone in their family, and it was hard to be sure I was correct in calling the eldest brother my best friend, because I think I was equally close with all of them, in different ways; I had more in common with the older brother, and of course I was crushed on and close friends with his sister, and I glimpsed a little of what it was like to be a big brother to her younger brother. We all had fun together and amazingly emerged from our virtual ‘homelessness' with a lot of really great memories.

As it turned out, in the fall, my family got approved for a loan to build with before their family did. We moved our trailer to the building site, out in the hills far north of town, and both of our families endeavored to build our house, beginning in the middle of winter. Under the terms of the loan (that was barely enough of a sum to build the house with), we only had a certain amount of time to finish building the house. Of course, the bare materials of the house would take up most of the amount of the loan, which left us with no money to hire a contractor and get the thing built in a hurry. So, while their family was waiting to get their loan, they helped us build our house, and eventually bought a small trailer and moved in next to us on the site, so that we could get it done in time; looking back, without their help, I doubt we would have made the deadline in time.

My dad had studied architecture (among other things) in college, and had designed our 3000 square foot home himself; he had also worked in carpentry for a good portion of his life, and became the contractor and one of two experienced carpenters that built the solar-powered house from the ground up. There wasn't much for us kids to do, way out there during those days; we all had to go to school every day, and when one of the parents came to pick us up from the furthest bus stop there was, we were really too small and too slow to make much of a difference helping build the house itself. Sure, we helped, but our situation accounted for a great deal of free time with which we had nothing better to do but play with each other. We went for hikes in the barren territory surrounding the house; we had fights with the berries that grew from the juniper trees everywhere; we made interesting dinners for the parents who eventually came inside from working all day on the house; we played games, hunted scorpions, and slept together in our tents every day. It was no wonder our families grew so close.

All the while, my crush on her only deepened; the lack of practicality of the two of us getting together romantically made it all the more wonderful to imagine. None of us kids had much of a life outside each other, as our parents couldn't spare much more time than to pick us up from the bus stop everyday. She was all I knew, it was that simple; I learned to love from being crushed on her, and I consider her my first love. It must have been more obvious than I thought, at the time, that I had a big crush on her; as I grew older, I was more inclined to be her close, special friend than treat her like her brothers did. Even so, she never showed the slightest romantic interest in me. I would often catch glimpses of the intimate details of her life, that only a ‘brother' could know, and catch myself beaming down at her. I remember once, when she became very sick, I couldn't help but deliver my attention to her, in subtle forms of fetching things she needed and expressing concern for her health. At heart, I was, as you might guess, a writer and an artist, and I often spent my time alone typing journals of my thoughts about her on the computer that took up significant space in our trailer. I dreamt fairy-tale-like dreams that the girl I had grown up with would become my wife someday, like some eventuality of destiny would surely see our two paths in life combine.

Life went on, as such, with my liking for her maturing all the time. Soon, about the time my family's house was finished, their family was approved for the loan to build their house. Consequently, the nine of us moved into the one house that was finished, more or less, and both families combined efforts again to build their house next-door; it was ‘house-building' all over again. I was beginning highschool during this time, and saw a little less of her through the course of my day, but we still remained great friends, she and I.

Their house was a ‘kit' home, and subsequently went up much more quickly than ours had. It was early in the year when it became finished, and finally, after some three years, time for their family to live in their house, and for us to live in ours. I can't describe how strange and empty our house seemed, the night they all moved into their new house; it was the first time, in that entire year since our house had been finished, where it was just my family living there. For my parents, it was a sigh of relief to finally enjoy the dream they'd fought so hard to achieve; for all of us kids, it was merely the geographic difference of a run through the eighth-mile of sagebrush and juniper trees between our houses. Our families were linked together in a very strong way by our experience, and I, at least, would be forever changed by this. Now, I had a second mother and a second father, and a whole new house and set of siblings that I was an integral part of. All of us kids, at least, still did everything together; went to school together, rode the bus home together, and remained good friends.

The older sister of the family that lived with her biological father in Southern California (who we knew well as she had come to visit many times), was to graduate from highschool in the summer following my freshman year. My crush traveled with her family down to California to see the graduation with everyone else, during which time, she spent a good amount of attention examining the city's educational programs, which were incomparably better than that of our hometown in Nevada. For this reason, as well as others, my best female friend and life-long crush decided to stay in California with her biological father. She had high hopes of becoming a veterinary doctor, and saw her only chance at achieving the dream within the promising reality of Southern California's prize educational system.

So it was that I was left to start my sophomore year at my highschool without her becoming a freshman there. It certainly put a damper on how much we saw each other, but she claimed to miss me as much as I missed her, and we wrote letters and talked on the phone often. She came to visit her family many times during the next two years, and my crush on her remained as strong as ever; distance, it seemed, only made my heart grow fonder of her. We would often stay up all night upon her visits to Nevada and talk for what seemed veritable eternities, about anything and everything that was going on in our lives. She and I were extremely close, and she was surely my most beloved and intimate friend. This was an ironic thing in itself, since she was all too often the farthest away of all my friends, but when things got tough here at home, I often took comfort solely in the fact that at least I still had her friendship. I felt a connection with her unlike that in any another relationship of mine; she and I could understand each other's viewpoints and feelings and thoughts more readily and easily than any other two people I've ever known. There were times, during our conversations, that we both found ourselves having to describe our feelings less with our words, since we both just seemed to already know what the other was thinking and feeling. It was a most beautiful and special relationship that we had developed, and, despite our separation of 600 miles or so, I secretly still hoped that one day destiny would bring us together.

The summer following my sophomore year came. I wasn't just a kid anymore, and neither was she. The feeling I had for her became extremely intense, such that I have no idea how I fooled myself into believing that I did not outrightly display it, and ruin the secrecy of my crush. And although still very much my good friend, she still seemed not to have the slightest inclination toward a romantic relationship with me. While I cared for her more than any other, I was still too shy and too modest to really do anything about it. The predicament that developed (as an effect of the crush that I could not admit to her) personified itself that summer, most memorably upon one camping trip we all took together.

Basically, the trip was me and their family. Their Aunt, who lived about two hours away from town, also lived close to the lake which was the destination of our camping trip, and joined us as well. The entire trip, I was either following close behind her, relishing just watching her and being with her, or I was depressed near the point of tears because she did not notice me and did not seem to share my feeling at all.

That summer holds memories I'll never forget, still vivid and clear and real now, but it was also a difficult and disappointing position that I put myself in. I was caught ‘between a rock and a hard place', as they say, and I finally, near the end of that summer, tired of chasing her. I remember deciding to give up and move on, one day, sitting out on the balcony of the house. I picked up my writing stuff and began to write the longest, most glorious poem that was to be the symbolic ‘goodbye' to put an end to my crush, and my hopes of loving her.

I have never in my life endeavored to write such a lengthy poem as this. It was to be a representation of my entire history with her, my feeling for her, why I decided to give up hope of loving her, and my saying goodbye to those dreams. Poetry was never easy for me in the first place. I had to be inspired a great deal in order to write anything at all, and then often spent hours poring over thoughts and word patterns to produce only a single page. Even by the ‘ordinary' circumstances by which I usually wrote poetry, this declaration was to be grandiose; twenty-five verses, four lines each, for a total of a hundred lines of my mind, saying goodbye. The unusual thing was that, symbolic as this poem was supposed to be, it was an especially hard thing to write, since solidifying the idea meant saying goodbye to everything I'd known for years. I worked for days upon the effort of this poem, and eventually found that it was something I could not finish. That August, I could not bring myself to put the end to my hopes then and there, while she still lingered in her visit next-door. I had yet made the decision to give up on her, but admitting it all at once was to difficult a thing to do.

Therefore, the poem remained started, but unfinished. I made my attempt upon page after page, and then stashed them away together in safekeeping shortly thereafter. Since that day, my eyes haven't rested upon the words I wrote, as they've been buried and lost for nearly four years now. Reconstructing this great unfinished poem will not be easy to do, since everything was left unorganized as it was, and there never was much of a definite layout to it. Yet, from the best of my understanding, I will try to piece it together for the very first (and last) time, with all the entirety that can be derived, for the sake of the story:

...The Second Floor...

...An Unfinished Poem...

TenSenses@JustFuckingAround.Com

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