Chapter 6: Reminder (Preview)

     Life can get busy. Work and extended family often get in the way, among other things, and sometimes this causes your relationship to suffer. When you don't focus on having fun together, or having conversations with each other, sometimes you start to forget why you married him/her in the first place.

     One night, my family came to visit us (I was finishing school in Provo, UT), and we had a game night. I never forgot why I married Josh, but seeing him with my family--so charismatic, funny, and loved by my parents and siblings--made me completely fall in love with him all over again. 

     This experience inspired me to start writing a story about remembering how wonderful your significant other is. It started out as one thing (hand-written, in the back of my notebooks while I wasn't paying attention in class) and then turned into something totally different. But, the message is still the same. 

     So, here is some background, for what it is now: I grew up in Corvallis, OR, and I always went to River Rhythms in Albany every summer with my family. These are outdoor concerts that feature local and slightly more famous musicians (I saw the Dixie Chicks there before they got big). When we moved back to Oregon, I wanted to share that part of my childhood with Josh, so we went to a Ricky Scaggs concert. The concert inspired me, and it gave me some variety to my previously-written stories, so I decided to take the game-night lesson and move it to a different location. 

     This location didn't work with the story I had already partially written, so I started from scratch, and now here's the first little bit of how that story ended up (emphasis on falling in love over and over again):

 Chapter Six:

Reminder

      Blake looked up from his book just in time to see a man in khaki shorts, sandals, and a zoo-keeper hat walk by, looking very granola as he meandered toward the stage where the blue grass band warmed up. Blake inwardly groaned. When Witnie got back from the Porta Potty, this was all he would hear about.

     “There are so many hippies here, Blake.”

     “Am I going to be offered pot?”

     “Is that hair under that woman’s arm?”

     He could hear it now.

     Witnie wasn’t exactly the out-doorsie type. She was from New York, where she wore little black dresses, tall heels, went to fancy dinner parties, and never attended outdoor concerts that featured Ricky Skaggs. Blake was a country boy who grew up on a grass-seed farm twenty minutes east of Albany, Oregon. Naturally, when they visited his family, Witnie often did nothing but complain.

     To be fair though, his family likewise did nothing but complain when he and Witnie were in town. They didn’t like Witnie much. Between the 40-minute showers, the wine at dinner, and her refusal to hold and coo over the pet duck, Pansy, they couldn’t have imagined anyone worse for their only son and brother. Witnie of course had many other wonderful qualities, but it was difficult for Blake to remember them when all he heard during their visits was “Witnie kicked at Pansy again,” “Make Witnie stop using all the hot water,” and “I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met who is so prissy as Witnie.” It was getting hard to defend her.

     “That was the least disgusting Porta Potty I’ve ever been in,” Witnie announced as she reappeared next to their blanket on the grass.

     Blake looked up at his wife. She wore white short shorts, a loose black tank-top with shiny, metallic, gold trim around the neck, and big black sunglasses. “Wow. That’s a huge compliment, coming from you,” he said.

     She slipped off her gold flip flops, pushed her glasses on top of her head, and sat next to him, flipping her dark brown hair over her shoulder. “So, when is this thing supposed to start?”

     Blake tore his eyes away from her and nodded toward the stage. “They just finished sound check. They’re due to start at seven.”

     She may have been embarrassing as soon as she opened her mouth, but he had to admit that he was proud of all the jealous looks college-aged guys threw his way as they passed by. A tall, dark haired, slim, tan beauty with ice-blue eyes was certainly something to gawk at. Yeah, that’s right, he thought. My wife is smokin’ hot. Just don’t stick around long enough for her to kick a duck or point out a hippie’s armpit hair.

     “Is there somewhere I can buy some food?” she asked, rubbing her shiny long legs. “You know, food that hasn’t been recycled?”

     Blake rolled his eyes. “Up the hill. Follow the smell of fried.”

     “Hmm,” she said as she got back to her feet. “I’ll be back.”

      Witnie was constantly on a diet. That was another thing that infuriated his mother. She had tried time and again to stuff more pie and mashed potatoes down Witnie’s throat than could feed a third-world country, but Witnie always refused the unnecessary carbs. He couldn’t imagine what she was going to find to eat at the Albany River Rhythms. Maybe a Diet Coke, if she was lucky.