Saturday was a hell of a day. My mother and I had been
planning this trip for several months. Well, not so much planning as
anticipating. It was the date of the wedding of my best friend for many years,
Seth.
The normally two-hour trip took over three hours from a
combination of a terrible detour of highway 52 and a traffic jam that went for
miles, and a stop in Rochester to tour the upcoming superstar restaurant, Bleu
Duck, on the outskirts of downtown. I’ll write much more about that place once
it’s opened up and I’ve had a chance to eat there.
We weaved our way through the corn fields and cows into the
small town of Fountain. A five-mile trip down a dusty gravel road brought us to
“The Campground”, the place I have spent years of my life, enjoying the great
outdoors. Essentially, it’s my favorite place in the world. It’s an open grassy
area surrounded on all sides by woods.
We were greeted by Seth’s uncle and told to park alongside
the road and we would be brought into the campground by a tractor with a
trailer with benches in it. I thought it was a classy, if not delightfully
redneck touch. My mom and I were alone for the two-minute journey on the path
through the woods, but I could see already there was a gathering of people.
For the first time in in a while, I started to feel a bit
nervous. There were going to be a lot of people here that I hadn’t seen in
ages. These were the people that treated me like family before I did my magic
trick. You know; now you see me, now you don’t. I figured they had all known by
now what happened to me, but would they treat me differently? Would they look
at me with suspicion? Would they even want to talk to me? Well, no, no, and
YES! I stepped one foot out of the trailer and was greeted with one of the best
hugs I’d ever received. In an instant, I felt the love and warmth of the Arnold
families surrounding me.
And then I saw Audrey. I have never written much about her
because she’s a kid, and she’s not my kid. But for a while, I mean many years,
she was a huge part of my life. Almost from the moment I was rescued from my
first bout with meth addiction and transplanted to Fillmore County, I became
friends with Seth, Chelsey, and their one-year old daughter, Audrey. That was a
decade ago, and the past three years I haven’t been around, but for seven
years, almost without fail, Seth, Audrey, and I would spend our days off
together. When Seth and Chelsey split up, I moved in with Seth and we became
gay lovers…. Or, maybe that last part isn’t true, but Seth thinks it’s
hilarious when I claim that’s how we choose to live our lives. We became the
standard household of small-town America; two guys and a kid.
The point is that I became very close to Audrey. She is the
closest thing I have ever had to a child, and she, of all people, even wrote to
me when I was whiling away the time in prison. As she ran over toward me and
smiled at me and looked at me with those big blue eyes, I could feel the
emotion and love of years welling up in my eyes. I hugged her the first of many
times then and I remembered why I missed it so much down there; the people. It
seemed like I couldn’t go five feet without getting a hug and a smile. Have you
ever had a dream where you know everybody in a room and they’re all happy and
smiling at you and you just feel like you’re a part of something much bigger
for the first time in years? Well, I haven’t, but that’s what I felt yesterday.
And there was a wedding, too. Seth must have started dating
Jordan (a female) about the time I was getting deep into the meth world, but
still living in Fountain. I remember they came over once and I was passed out
on my couch. My power had been turned off, my furnace was not working because I
had taken it apart, and I was using the oven as a heater. Even though Seth knew
I was doing hard drugs, he invited me over to his house. I mean we were solid
friends. I think maybe he was hoping somehow he could change my ways before it
was too late. That’s a good friend right there. It didn’t work. We had a couple
beers at his place and something triggered in him, and he told me to leave, and
I did. I don’t think I saw him for a couple years after that night. But Jordan
wrote to me a couple times while I was away. And that’s how I learned of the
engagement.
