Mixed-Up Messaging

Jim was enthused. He said he had a surprise for me and couldn’t wait to take me to a special place to show me.

This is it. This is the “special” day I had been waiting for.

He led from the cabin to his Jeep Comanche, an old white pickup truck that had been used on many fishing and hunting trips, and politely opened the door waiting for me to climb in. He then went to the driver’s side and jumped in behind the wheel. I loved riding in his Jeep pickup.

He drove down the dirt driveway to the main road that all the cabins in the area used to get to the lake. He turned off to the right on another, more rugged, dirt road that led to the private hunting area for the Cabins in the Mountains residents. I have mild claustrophobia, so it bothered me to see a mountain on my side of the road and a slope on the left side of the road, but I hummed to myself to get past the unease.

Jim said, “This is going to be a great day for you and me. A defining moment. We’ve been together for almost a year and it’s time to move forward in our relationship.

Oh, my God, is this really happening?

I was enamored of Jim from the day I met him at the singles club at the local Catholic Church. Neither of us were practicing Catholics nor were many of the others, so we felt comfortable with our new middle-aged friends. Jim and I hit it off right away. He was a tall ruggedly handsome outdoorsy man and me, a white-collar worker at a local electronics company, was immediately besotted. We both had adult children who had moved away from us, which meant we were sculpting our new lives as single people. He had approached me right away.

At the time we met, neither one of us was looking to form a permanent relationship. We both just wanted to enjoy our personal freedom at the same time be around congenial interesting people close to our own age. I chose that singles club because the members had to be older than fifty to join.

There were many meetings to attend with very interesting presentations, some dances, dinners, and get-togethers with other members at their homes. We also had some social projects such as sponsoring a spaghetti dinner to raise money for an immigrant family who had escaped a communist country to start a new life in our town.

Jim had a cabin in the hills of Monterey where he spent time hunting and fishing. I was not into those activities (I hardly call them “sports” when the animals and fish are not armed), but I went with him to the cabin to get away from my city life and especially to get away from my work and overbearing boss. I was grateful for a peaceful stay at his cabin anytime I could get it.

After almost a year of being with Jim, I realized we had been together more than I had expected and were considered to be a couple. Did I want to be a couple? Well, no, not really. But there it was…accidental couplehood.

Now he was going to “surprise” me by taking me up the mountain to a special spot. Oh, no. What was I going to do? It was exciting and also very scary. I enjoyed my self-sufficiency. I found that I liked making my own decisions about, well, everything. My money, my home, my food, my activities, when I took a shower, how long I slept, what I watched on TV, staying up until 3am watching programs that only I would like, talking on the phone if I wanted to, or not if I didn’t.

I wasn’t sure how I would react to the upcoming surprise and fell silent as we drove to the spot on the hill.

Jim made a sharp right turn and started up an even steeper dirt road as I grabbed the door handle and slid away from him. I trusted him to know what he was doing but that didn’t mean I had to like it. I looked out the passenger door window and saw the hill climb slightly up to my right (not good for a claustrophobe) and slope slightly down on the left.

At the mid-point of the mountain that looked to me like it went on into the clouds and beyond, he came to a halt at a cleared out flat area. On the left side of the truck was a stand of trees and he moved slowly along the now narrower path to the other side. He then turned left and stopped on a flat piece of land where we could see the canyon below. The view of the canyon and mountains on the other side was stunning but not as beautiful to me as the sight of flat road far below.

Jim jumped out of the truck and reached over to pull me to the driver’s seat. He shut the door and walked around the back of the truck. What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the back tires?

He moved to the passenger side, opened the door, and jumped in. He turned toward me and said, “Here you go. She’s all yours.”

“What? What do you mean? You’re not serious!”

“Yes, yes, I am. It’s time you learned how to operate a four-wheel drive truck, and this is the best road to learn on.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

He wouldn’t budge and started giving me instructions on how to slowly drive down the road that looked like a roller coaster on the steep downward track. Shaking, I took the wheel, and he told me how to put it in the lowest rock-crawling gear. Shit!

He reminded me to go very slowly and sometimes take my foot off the gas to let the Jeep do its thing. We bumped along going over small rocks, then small boulders, then I don’t know what because I was so terrified I was only looking one foot over the hood.

It seemed like forever before we came to the straight flat road at the bottom where I braked and turned to look at him. He was smiling. “Good job!”

Yeah, I didn’t kill us, so I guess it was a good enough job, but I’m a basket case right now so I’m not sure what he thought he accomplished.

Jim looked at me with approval and said, “So, now we are officially a couple. You have shown your abilities, and I think it’s time we made our partnership permanent, right?”

I looked down at my shaking hands and felt the muscles in my upper arms still jumping from clenching the steering wheel, and said, “Uh, well…”

As soon as we got back to the cabin, I packed up my things and left in my Subaru, a car I loved and knew would get me home safely … and alone.