Black Eyed Susan, Joseph Devon [the giving tree read aloud .TXT] 📗

I don't know if stalking is the word I'd use to describe it. Stalking is pretty harsh. I mean I called her every now and then, and I wrote her letters at college. And I tried to get her to invite me to come visit. She was going to school in Maryland and I was in Georgetown. It's not like I was asking to swim across the ocean for her. It's maybe a twenty minute drive. No, stalking isn't the right word by a long shot. I just called her too often and wrote her too many letters. Pathetic is probably a better word.

After awhile I realized it was time to be a man and that I had to put all of this behind me. That lasted about a day and a half. Then it was right back to being in love with your mother.

I saw him once or twice during those years. He was going to school so close to Maryland and he offered to help me pack one year and I let him. You have to realize that I'm joking somewhat when I say he was stalking me. We call it that now but I'll give your father credit for knowing how to give someone their space while staying a part of their life. And he really wrote very lovely letters. For an English major that means a lot. You should remember that. Get your English grades up; it might help you some day.

And your father was sweet, he really was. But he felt more like a puppy I couldn't bear to leave than someone I might actually consider dating. I've already outlined how ours wasn't a real relationship. And the years went by and there were other guys. Don't let your father fool you, either. At this point in the story he likes to play the long-suffering saint, but there were other girls in his life too.

But then I was graduating and I it was really time to end this. I was going back to Michigan to start my life and he didn't know what he was doing and we weren't going to be right next door to each other in Maryland and DC anymore. It was crazy to keep this up. I knew I had to set him straight and to let him know that this wasn't anything serious and that maybe he should move on with his life. So he had written me his usual casual year-end letter asking if I needed help packing up my stuff and how he was right next door to Maryland and it would be no problem and on and on. So I said yes, he could come help me pack and I told myself that I was going to make a clean break of things and then go on and start my life.

This is where things get a little strange. I don't buy into your father's view of magic, but things really do get sort of strange.

Your father's car ran out of gas down on a little county road I had never heard of. You could take the interstate right up to my campus but your father had to take some back road. And I had told him that I would be at the student center at a certain time and he should meet me there. This was before cell phones you have to remember. And your father didn't want to leave his car on the county road and didn't want to miss me either so I'm sitting there and two people, one right after the other, come up and ask me if I was waiting there to meet your father and when I said yes they handed me a note he had written asking me to come out to where he was stranded and to bring gasoline. Of all the asinine plans.

He had my address. I know I was supposed to move out that day but surely he could have hitched a ride into town then back out to his car and still tracked down my house and met up with me then. But, no, he flags down two strangers on a Maryland back road who were heading into campus and has them deliver notes to me asking me to lug gas out to him. He knew I would do it too. Your father knew how to give me my space but he also knew how to use an advantage when he had one.

What can I say? I was running some very large risks that day. I made sure I got at least two different people to agree to deliver my note. Outside of the overall lesson of how magic can affect our lives and all of that, you should take away the lesson that it's good to run risks but that you can always find ways to minimize them. No way was I letting all of this rest in the hands of one stranger. As it turns out they both found her at pretty much the same time, but still, it didn't hurt to be safe.

So I go to the gas station and I buy a gas tank and fill it up with a few gallons and get into my car and go driving out on this middle of nowhere road and I remember I had to put my head out the window because absolutely everything stank of gas. And I follow your father's directions and finally I pull up and he's sitting there on the hood of his car. He doesn't hear me pull up behind him, no, of course not, instead he's staring out at this field and I took one look at his face set again the backdrop of that field and I fell in love with your father.

I mean, I say that now. It probably wasn't that abrupt. But when I think back to that moment, when I got out of that car and your father, oblivious as usual, finally heard me behind him and turned and he gave me that cute smile and behind him was entire field of Black Eyed Susans dancing in the late afternoon sun. Like I said, looking back it's easy to pinpoint, but at the time I don't think I consciously knew I fell in love with him then. What I did know was that I was struck with a profound sense of wonder that I was still pushing this boy away just because of how we had met. I mean that field behind him, it was so beautiful, and his smile and watching him hop off the hood and get the tank of gas out of my car and fill up his tank and thanking me and apologizing and there in the middle of nowhere was an entire field of Black Eyed Susans. I decided at that moment that maybe I owed this boy a chance. And since that chance turned into lingering a few days on campus and a few dates and then a few more chances and on and on until...well...I suppose it's okay to say that was the moment I fell in love with him.

If you listen to him tell it he'll go on about how magic was involved and how it was the magic that let everything unravel like that. But really it was just chance where he stopped and me finally realizing that maybe this boy was for real.

She still doesn't believe in magic. I suppose from her point of view that's okay, but that's the first lesson I want you to take away today. Magic happens; you need to have faith in that. And if you've got that first lesson learned I'll tell you the second lesson. Sometimes magic comes along in strange ways. Your mother has no idea what I mean by magic, she never has. Sometimes you can create magic by moving a twelve pack of beer to the playground. And sometimes magic operates by letting your mother spill some gas down the side of a gas tank she's filling so when she shows up she doesn't notice the length of garden hose in my trunk or that everything reeks of gasoline.

But that's all nothing. Not really. Maybe that is all chance and luck. But I swear what really was magical was that your mother, who is a very smart woman, and who had been going to college in Maryland for four years, had somehow never once learned that the Black Eyed Susan is the Maryland state flower. Pick any county road and drive down it in spring and you'll be able to find a whole field full of them. I mean, they grow absolutely everywhere out there.

http://josephdevon.com/2007/09/06/black-eyed-susan/

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