At first he thought he never wanted to see it again, the little gazebo on campus.
How perfect it was when he last saw it.
He couldn’t have orchestrated things better than they’d played out: the June sunlight just beginning to wane after dinner, shining in a deep, golden slant through the magnolias, the fragrance of the last blooms heavy in the air.
And her.
At last, and again, for they’d broken upon once. This time he knew it was meant to be. Side by side they sat, and he gave her the ring.
She started to cry.
“Will you marry me?”
She wiped her tears, laughed, hugged him. “Yes!”
Perfect. That one afternoon, in the whole of his life, was perfect.
In two weeks she was gone.
Not ready, she told him. They were too young.
That’s it then, he told her. Not now, not ever.
His friends consoled him: “You ARE too young. Just enjoy life before you worry about getting tied down.”
Trouble was, he didn’t know how.
For days, all he wanted to do was sleep. He slept the rest of the summer away. He ate his way through autumn into the winter until he decided (while standing on the scales) that enough was enough.
He started walking, counting his calories. He lost seventy pounds.
He reconnected with old friends.
One asked, “Whatever happened, exactly?”
He told her all of it, just as they were driving past the campus. On the spur of the moment, he said, “I’ll even show you the gazebo where I gave her the ring.”
It was getting dark. He parked the car. They got out, walked the magnolia path. Lights in the lampposts flickered on. It was chilly; he hadn’t thought to wear a coat but he hadn’t planned on strolling to the gazebo tonight, or any night. He shivered as they stepped into the clearing . . .
The gazebo wasn’t there.
For a minute he thought he was dreaming. He looked every which way—yes, this is where it was. This is where it stood.
“It’s gone!”
“Gone? How could it be gone?” asked his friend. “Are you sure this is the right place? That you haven’t made a mistake?”
“I made a mistake here, all right, but it wasn’t forgetting where the gazebo is. Was. I even used to ride my bike past it when I was little. Right here.” He scratched his head. “This is like something out of the Twilight Zone.”
His friend laughed. “Well, it’s twilight anyway. And maybe that gazebo didn’t disappear. Maybe it never existed at all, and maybe you never made that mistake because it’s been erased. It just never was.”
To this day, he hasn’t asked anyone who might know what happened to the gazebo, because, as far as he’s concerned, his friend is right.
Although he still occasionally checks, when he happens to think of it, which is less and less often.
Once upon a time, long ago, I drove to work in tears. I couldn’t see a way out of a certain situation. Worry had consumed my thoughts for days. Like a moth desperately fluttering at a light but never landing, so it circled round and round my brain. Like the Grinch, I’d puzzled until my puzzler was sore, arriving at no logical resolution. The weight just grew heavier and heavier.
A sudden movement on my right startled me – a white pickup truck zipping by. That’s not the passing lane. I scowled at it, then nearly ran off the road in astonishment.
The bed of the truck had a tall, wooden rack on top, and on the slats was a white sign meticulously painted with black, Old English letters:
This Too Shall Pass.
I blinked, looked again. Yes, it was real. And it was literally passing me.
I looked around, half afraid I’d see these same words on barns and road signs like something out of The Twilight Zone, in which case I’d have to consider getting help with my state of mind.
But no – This Too Shall Pass was only on that white sign, on that white pickup, passing in the wrong lane to my right.
It was there for a few seconds, then on it went, out of sight.
As did the weight I carried. It melted away in the wake of that truck. I couldn’t see the future, but I understood this momentary trouble was just that, momentary. It would pass.
And so it did.
Whatever it was.
I said it was long ago.
I cannot even remember what I was so worried about.
At all.
But that truck is vivid in my memory. I can see those Old English letters, still.
I like to think that the driver painted them because he had a great sense of humor about his edgy driving. It’s too good, really . . . .
Except that I never saw the driver, nor have I seen that truck since. I hoped that I would – I watched for it on the roads for a long time after, but it’s the kind of thing that happens only once.
