My pal Jamie over at Duward Discussion has brought back a great meme called Take This Tune. It's easy to play. Jamie provides a musical prompt each week, usually a video with the song lyrics. The task is to write something inspired by the song or something in the lyrics.
The prompt for this week is If I Were the Man You Wanted, a song written by Lyle Lovett and released in 1989.
I didn't know if I was the man Pam wanted when we met six years ago. I knew she was the woman I wanted, but she was cautious.
Or, I should say that I thought she was cautious. I misread her behavior back then. She was in the middle of planning her best friend's engagement party and wedding, as the maid of honor. And although it had been about 22 years since she lost her parents, she was still struggling with the loss and anger.
You see, Pam's mother died of breast cancer in June 1985. Her dad committed suicide just a month later. Pam had just turned 18.
Her plate was so full, but I didn't know any of that at the time. So after our first date on 11 June 2006, when she told me she would be in touch and asked me not to call her, I was confused. Did she like me? Did I screw up somehow? Did I completely misread the signals? Was this some kind of test?
What was the right answer? Was she telling me not to call, but wanting me to call? We weren't kids. This wasn't junior high, when you said the opposite of what you wanted and got bent out of shape when the other person did what you said instead of what you wanted but were too immature to actually say.
It was tough to follow that simple instruction...don't call me. I was already on the hook hard. And yet she was keeping her distance.
I managed to get through it. I picked up the phone several times a day and punched in the number. But I didn't hit send. It's one of the most difficult things I've been asked to do...or not do. Don't call.
As it turned out, we met just before her annual pilgrimage. For those 22 years since her parents died, she had gone home to be as near to them as she could get, and try to work through her anger. I didn't find this out until we had been together for a couple of years. It took her time to trust anyone else with those feelings.
I would do anything for Pam. She is my Lady, my love, and my life. I knew it when we met. She tells me that I was the man she wanted, and she knew it when we met. But she had baggage, and so did I.
So what we did for the sake of love was to give each other what we asked for...space when we needed it, and time to learn how to trust, and above all, a simple understanding that there was nothing we could say to each other that was going to make either of us run.
