3 Years Ago...

I was single. I was the co-chair of a church Activities Committee. I was living in a house in Lake Oswego on Seville Street with my three goddess roommates. I was a paralegal. My life was more or less consumed with dancing salsa and swing. My superpsychojealousfreak boyfriend didn't like me to go dancing. Bless his heart, he tried to manage even though I would usually bail on him Friday nights about 10:30 or 11:00 to hit the dance floor (that part, I understand. It's the other stuff was nutty). Among other things, he also forbade me to talk too much to certain people. One person in particular, actually. There was this one guy at church who went to law school with one of Boyfriend's buddies, and Boyfriend thought that if I talked to Law-School-Guy that Buddy might hear about it and Boyfriend might be embarrassed or something. I don't know, I never quite followed the logic, but I tried to respect his feelings about it. Thing was, I happened to really like the guy he didn't want me talking to. Not in a sexual-attraction kind of way, but just in a he's-really-cool-I-like-talking-to-him kind of a way. Three years ago I remember talking to him and another guy briefly in the hallway one Sunday.

Anyway, Boyfriend and I broke up shortly (duh), and a few months later I did, in fact, become better friends with Law-School-Guy. We had lots in common. Our minds thought similarly, and he was fun to talk to. Our friendship steeped slowly, and became more and more intense as the next several months wore on.

I think it's so funny to imagine, now, what would have gone through my head then if I had known the future. What if I could go back and say to myself, "Hey self! By the way, three years from now you will be pregnant with Law-School-Guy's child. You will be living in a great old house in WestSlope with a beautiful backyard. You're working on remodeling your kitchen. Today the two of you picked out a light fixture and then raked leaves together off your front lawn. You have a kitten, and Law-School-Guy always cleans the litter box so you don't have to. He loves you and cares for you like you never imagined anyone would. And you love him in a way you never thought possible. And you're happy. And it's all with THIS guy! This one you just chatted with in the hall for 2 minutes. The one who can't laugh because of a scab on his lip from a basketball accident this week, which will become a scar, which will become one of your favorite features about him. And right now in the three years' future he's playing the piano in your living room with a fire burning and baby in your tummy and a cat sleeping at your feet."

HA! Would I have believed myself? I would surely have gawked and been shocked. The real question is.... would I have been happy to know that? I mean, there's a reason you don't know the future. If I knew I was going to marry Jared in advance, would we have had the magical and suspenseful union that we did, that created the spark, that made it all possible? Without uncertainty, would I have had the humility and ambition to love him? I'm not sure. And for all the frustration involved in not knowing the future, it sure seems it would have taken the fun out of it. I love Our Story. It's so full of each of us thinking various things and accidentally falling in love and not knowing what was going on. It's funny and suspenseful and torturous in a chick-flick kinda way. Without all that, what would it be like?

I'm glad we only live in one moment in time, and that we can only see one direction from there (backward). Whatever benefits knowing the future has to offer, they must certainly be outweighed by the adventure of finding your way.

And so I'm also glad, I guess, not to know what this child will bring to my life. It gives me the room to dream and hope and imagine things that may or may not ever be. It leaves room for surprises. And it spares me the pain, from this end at least, of many things that will inevitably come to pass, because those things are known only from the other side of time. And hopefully they are easily forgotten, just as the torment and sorrow and loneliness of so many lost loves has paled and softened with with time and with Jared and with my selective memory. And the joy and excitement and fun of the adventures is only magnified with each passing day, as events' significance is added to by their rippling and repeating effect over time. One special moment can remain just that and be forgotten. Or it can become a fond memory, a moment of enlightenment, a step forward, a tradition, a new beginning, a shared understanding, something that pops its head into the present over and over and adds to itself. Like that chat in the hallway that day. I can't think of it without smiling, remembering the brief and seemingly meaningless connection, which eventually contributed to the blossoming of the most beautiful and powerful thing I know: Us.