[First Draft!]
The next month, I prepared for the Hawaii Ironman, mid-October. Following that, back to the triathlon grind for Ironman Arizona, mid-November. My brain had no bandwidth for the past, only the immediate future of finishing my Ironman career on a high note. I won my age group in Tempe for the 4th time, securing a ticket back to Kona for what I planned as my absolute last and final Ironman.
Returning from Arizona, I plopped in front of the TV, and watched the latest Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime. In it, John Kasinski and Wendell Pierce traveled to Venezuela, CIA agents trying to return democracy by ensuring a female candidate for President would stay alive and win. As she leaves her house the night of her victory, Gloria Bonalde stares in wonder as her driveway fills up with supporters, cheering the overthrow of the defeated autocrat. Her two children trail behind, shepherded by her chief aide Valentina, played by Columbian actress Paula Castaño. They are seen out of focus in the background several times for a split second as the camera shifts from Bonalde to what she sees. Then, another quick take features Valentina and the kids, in full focus, smiling and nodding in wonder. Castaño appears ready to cry with joy. She is wearing a simple white top, covered by a gray pants suit. Her dark, wavy hair is parted on the left. At the instant of her mouth opening, I caught a sudden rush of Susie’s image careening back into view. The eyebrows, the shape of her cheeks, the set of her hair, the smile of wonderment and knowledge – she was there once again in my mind.
And she wouldn’t go away this time. As days went on, I kept remembering who she was, how accomplished she had been, how lucky I was to have known her, to have her teach me. I didn’t know it right away, but she began demanding more and more of my attention.
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In the winter, Cheryl and I spend many evenings in front of our Vermont Castings Reliant stove, warmed by a fire from the logs I have split the year before. In early December, we began discussing love, how it happens, why it leaves. I remembered a poem I had written about that, five decades before. I searched for the box and folders which preserved the writing I had done in highs school, college, five years after. First, I checked under the sink in the mud room – I had not stored them there.
Next, down in the basement, on metal shelves next to my collection of old skis and discarded Christmas decorations, I found the yellow cardboard container, and brought it back upstairs.
I found it filled with forgotten memories. Not only poems, but papers I had written in college, sporadic attempts at journaling, a few newspaper clippings, and other detritus of my past I refused to discard.
I had burned the letters Susie had written before we parted, but discovered several I’d saved from we split up, along with one or two which escaped the fire. And a letter from her mother to mine, after Susie’s death, sketching her last few years. These, along with the journal entries, ripped off the encrustations my brain had placed over Susie, and she escaped fully into my consciousness.
I began to think about her, unbidden, at all hours of day or night. I began to see bits of her in any woman with long dark hair. I began to wonder, What am I supposed to do with this, these poems I wrote to and about her, these letters she sent after we ended our love, these message I scribed to my future self about what happened and how I felt back then, November 1965 to September 1970.
I found a birthday card she had created, a sheet of colored construction paper. She sent it from spring break in Cincinnati, 1970, after visiting me while I spent that winter skiing in Snowmass. He tiny writing filled every inch not covered by a collage of pictures cut from ski magazine. She seemed to list every secret phrase or joke we’d shared, seemed to still wonder about her love for me, even though I knew we were already separating.I’d saved other little tidbits from her. Four poems she wrote to me when we first got together. Comments on a clipped “Ask Ann Landers” column. A ticket stub or two from plays we’d seen. It was all too much, and I started crying, not knowing I still had those feelings left in me. It was not nostalgia, it was the actual return of her into my life.