My parents backed off the all-out assault and tried a more subtle, psychological approach. They left a few college applications on my desk, University at Buffalo, SUNY Geneseo, St. John Fischer College, MCC. At least they were realistic enough to pick schools I could get into.
They began making casual offhand remarks like;
"It's good to get applications in early."
"You ought to apply to a few schools, so you have a choice."
"You may not get your first choice so keep your options open."
Mom even promised she'd buy me a car when I was accepted into college. I could have probably even gotten something nice, a brand-new Lexus or BMW.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't want a fast car, let's be real, I was a male teenager and loved driving as much as the next guy. The thing was, I just really, really didn't want to go to college. I resented the way it was dangled in front of me like a carrot. I liked to make decisions on my own terms, not because my parents worked their master plan from every angle until they found the right leverage to gain the necessary traction to make me conform.
My parents were used to getting things their way and never gave up. They were always right, and they were relentless. You couldn't talk to them like adults. If you didn't see their wisdom and conform, the conversation quickly broke down to argument, shouting and then personal insults and name-calling.
It's funny, everyone thinks a lawyer is so smart and so perfect at everything, but my dad can be a real jerk and frankly a big baby and a sore loser if he doesn't get everything exactly his way. Especially when he's drinking. He drinks too much, and even more so at times when he's already having an attitude problem. Alcohol certainly didn't make him any nicer.
All I could think of all week was Sophia stuck dating a jerk she didn't even like. How tragic would it be if she ended up married to him? I hoped she'd find the will power to stand up to him. But mostly, I hoped I could win her over for myself. She was so beautiful; I barely knew her, and I'd totally connected with her and was already falling hard for her. Not only was she gorgeous, and extremely talented, but once you got to know here, she was kind, sympathetic and understanding.
Saturday rolled around and I woke early. I had butterflies in my stomach wondering if she'd be there. I hopped on my bike with my guitar strapped to my back and pedaled strenuously. It was about an hour ride, and I was anxious to get there as fast as I could.
I rounded the bend at Mendon Ponds and looked for her.
There was nobody there.
The grassy hillside was empty. My spirits sank.
I leaned my bike against a tree and locked it up.
I took a relaxed stroll through Woodchuck Hollow, then doubled back around to check if she'd come. Nope. Eight am came and passed. I followed a muddy trail around Hundred Acre Pond. I kept walking, one trail after another for several hours, returning frequently to see if she'd made it.
Maybe she wanted to come but couldn't get away. Maybe she'd show up the following Saturday, I feebly attempted to persuade myself. I was already so smitten; I'd come back looking for her every weekend until the end of time.
I wondered if I pushed too aggressively to get her to dump her boyfriend. I shouldn't have told her what to do, presuming I knew better. I hated when other people told me what to do. I should've respected her enough to let her live her own life. I got that sinking feeling once again realizing I might never see her again.
At least I knew her name. If I were desperate enough, I could find her at Mendon High School. But if she stood me up at Mendon Ponds, I should probably take that as a sign she didn't want to see me. If I came looking for her, that would make me a creepy stalker, then she'd definitely be turned off. Besides, I was a hopeless romantic, not a predator. But if she didn't want to see me, she shouldn't have led me on by suggesting we could meet again. Maybe she felt I was being nosy and prying, asking for her phone number and felt pressured to placate me with a lie to leave her alone.
The forest had a fresh earthy smell from a recent rainfall. I learned once there's a weird name for that smell. It's called petrichor. Occasionally the wind or a squirrel would shake a branch above me and release a momentary shower of raindrops.
The trail emerged from the forest and led across a narrow neck of land separating Hundred Acre Pond from Deep Pond. At the midpoint a short stream connected the two. A small wooden foot bridge crossed over it. I stopped on the bridge and leaned against the rail to rest.
A gathering of ducks approached in hopes I might offer food. They looked at me with anticipation, but like seemingly everyone, they quickly lost hope in me, disappearing back into the marshy cattails and swamp grass from where they'd come.
I felt lonely. No, lonely wasn't the right word. I felt alone. No one in the world understood me. I wasn't like everyone else. Even my friends suggested I should go to college if for no other reason, than just for the car. Greg thought I was nuts not to take it. He thought I was so lucky to have such wealthy parents. Everybody did. It didn't seem so great to me, but I didn't know what it was like to grow up poor. Maybe the alternative was worse, and I did have it good. I don't know.
Rob said we could be roommates; it would be fun meeting women and going to parties. My other friends told me to play music at night or on weekends. They thought I should go to college to make my parents happy and suggested I could simply get a degree in something really easy as a back-up plan if a music career didn't pan out. Maybe they were right.
Except a back-up plan gives you an easy out. Just having a Plan B is sort of inadvertently planning to fail at Plan A by implication. When things aren't immediately working out, it's too easy to give up, bail out prematurely and turn to Plan B.
You'd live the rest of your life with regrets wondering what might have been if only you'd stuck with it a little longer. With no plan B, every time an obstacle arises, you're compelled to find another solution until you ultimately realize your dreams. I didn't want to be a quitter—it wasn't even an option. It'd be such a shame to give it all up when success might have been right around the next corner.
Life is tough--full of obstacles to overcome. When you fail, you have to reevaluate, tweak your game plan and jump back into the fray. When you get bucked off a horse, you get right back on it. Right? That's what Thomas Edison did. I heard it from a motivational speaker. I think Babe Ruth and Abe Lincoln and a bunch of other famous people failed and failed and never gave up, then eventually won.
I had to go all in, knowing I wasn't a quitter. If I channeled everything into it, and still failed, at least I'd know I tried my best. But persistence and determination were omnipotent, as the saying goes. Or was Plan A an unrealistic pipe dream? A lot of people failed trying to make it in the music business—or in any business. But some didn't. There had to be a way.
It was my dream, intrinsic to me, to who I was as a person, an integral part of my soul itself. If I wasted ten years trying, at least I could honestly look myself in the mirror and admit I'd given it my best shot, exhausting every conceivable effort until painfully clear it wouldn't pan out. I had to have the satisfaction of knowing I tried. Then I'd be ready to move on and I could live with myself for giving up. There was no Plan B.
At noon I ate my sack lunch alone, sitting on the grass, resting my back against the flagpole where I'd seen Sophia the prior Saturday. I finished my lunch and threw the paper sack and soda can in a trash bin by the street when Sophia pulled up in a candy apple red Porsche Carrera.
I smiled and waved. She did the same, then pulled the car into a nearby parking spot.
She climbed out and locked the door.
"Hey stranger."
"What a coincidence, running into you here like this."
"I know, crazy, right? Sorry I'm late by the way. My dad made me clean my room and do my laundry before I was allowed to go."
"Oh, that's alright. I brought my guitar, if you want me to play a song."
"Yes. But let's go for a walk first. It's such a nice day."
It was. The sun came out and the overcast skies cleared up and it was cool, but with the warmth from the sun it was perfect.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Somewhere you've never been before."
"I've been everywhere in this park."
"Where's your favorite place?"
I knew instantly where to take her. We headed out along the shoreline trail of Hundred Acre Pond, then up a long, steep hill my cross-country teammates nicknamed, Coronary. We followed a trail along a winding, mile-long ridge of a narrow glacier-carved moraine hilltop in a deep forest. At one point there was a small track leading away to the left.
Sophia pointed it out.
"Where does that go?"
"That goes back to Hidden Pond and some boggy swamp areas. I don't usually go that way because it's so muddy. One time I actually lost a shoe. It's like quicksand. I sunk up my waist."
She smiled.
"Let's go."
"At least we'll be alone. Nobody ever goes down there."
"Privacy is good."
For an instant I got a little excited thinking about what she intended to do requiring privacy. But then I remembered all the drama in her life and realized Mendon Ponds was a pretty popular place, in all likelihood, she simply didn't want to risk the possibility of running into anyone she knew that might freak out seeing her walking with a strange guy. Don't be an idiot and screw this up by reading more into it than is actually there.
We walked for a half hour. The trail at times became soft and squishy. In several areas, we carefully placed each footstep, testing to see if we'd sink in or not. Eventually at Hidden Pond the trail came to an end. She pointed toward a thick wall of foliage on the other side.
"What's over there?"
"I don't know. I've never been over there. It just looks like a wall of trees and bushes."
"I thought you'd been everywhere," she teased.
"OK, you got me. I haven't been over there. Doesn't really look like you can get through it though."
"It looks like there's an opening. Let's go explore."
"OK."
I was pretty confident there wasn't anything there. There wasn't anywhere to go, but I didn't want to be a contrarian. I would've gone anywhere with her. Anywhere.
We walked painfully slowly around the pond. There was no trail, we had to bushwhack our way through briars and bramble patches, in between dense shrubs for several hundred yards then sure enough, she was right. An opening in the trees suggested another pond in the distance.
"You were right. You know what, I think I do remember someone saying there was another pond out there. I think it's even called Lost Pond."
We went over a small rise then dropped down into an emerald, green valley beyond. We cut through ferns and under tall pines, then through a grove of tall Oaks, Maples and Sycamores.
She seemed content.
"It's beautiful."
As we drew closer, a pond appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It was easy to miss with all of the tall forest trees surrounding it. I'd walked in the area many times and never seen it. We were way off the beaten path, and it was concealed in a remote valley.
The dark pool was teeming with frogs, turtles and fish. The shoreline was thick with water lilies and tangles of bog vegetation. An enormous fallen log bridged across the murky waters to a small island. I gave Sophia my arm and helped her across the half-rotten tree trunk.
Once across, we pushed our way through thick cattail reeds. On the opposite side of the island, half a dozen tree trucks popped out of the water surface like a trail of zigzagging steppingstones. We cautiously jumped from one to the next to avoid falling into the deep murky water. We didn't want to fall in because the bottom of these bogs was a deep layer of mud like quicksand, and which reeked of decomposing organic matter—an overpowering odor like rotten eggs. Somewhere deep in the mud at Devil's Bathtub was a shoe I'd lost forever.
On the far side of the logs another island arose into view. It was smaller; more of an impenetrable cluster of cattails growing out of a dense mound of peat moss and algae. Each footstep sunk several inches deep into the squishy moss like walking on wet sponges.
A dozen steps later, the reeds gave way and opened up a line of sight to another island–just across another crisscrossing fallen log bridge. The island was bigger, and although ringed with tall reeds, two Eastern Redbud trees stood side by side and towered over the reeds forming a gate. In the Spring, bright, almost neon purple blooms would profusely cover the branches. I pictured it in my head but couldn't wait to return in the Spring to behold it in real life.
We carefully crossed the log bridge and pushed our way through the reeds and the Redbud gate toward the center of the island where I saw a Korean Spice Viburnum bush. It was an innocuous looking shrub--the blooms were small, white and not very showy, but what it lacked in color, it more than made up for in fragrance. In the early Spring it would give off a powerful sweet floral fragrance. I couldn't wait to experience it.
The gate opened into a small meadow of wildflowers. In the center of the island, five trees grew in a circle. The gnarled old trees were only twenty feet tall and tangled in vines of wisteria and clematis veiling the interior space. We pushed our way inside through the curtain of vines to find an old stone bench. We sat down.
Sophia's cheeks were pink. She looked so graceful, so beautiful sitting there. She looked happy.
"It's a secret garden."
"These trees are Flowering Cherries. In the Spring, they'll be covered in hot pink blossoms."
"We'll have to come back again in the Spring."
"Definitely."
"You think anyone else knows about this place?"
"Someone put the bench here obviously and planted the trees and flowers. But everything is wild and overgrown. It appears to be abandoned. I don't see any footprints or signs of recent activity."
Sophia glanced around.
"I love it."
"Me too. I can't believe all the times I've come to Mendon Ponds and never even knew this was here."
"This place is amazing. It's our secret. You have to promise not to ever tell anyone about it. It'll just be our special place."
"I promise."
"Me too."
"We have to give it a name—like a secret code word."
It pleased me thinking she wanted to keep secrets with me—the good kind of secrets. We were forging ever deepening bonds.
The only thing that came to mind was Terabithia which was a horrible name associated with an unhappy ending.
"What should we call it?"
"How about Avalon?"
I would have agreed with anything she said, but Avalon was a great name. According to the legend of King Arthur, it was a magical island where the sword Excalibur was made.
"Perfect."
"It's just our secret, you can't tell anyone."
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
She unfolded a blanket and spread it out on the ground and laid down on her back glancing up at the sky. I laid beside her, and we watched the clouds and fought playfully about what they looked like. It was so relaxing I fell asleep. I don't know how long I was out, probably about an hour when she gently shook me.
"I have to go."
"Oh yeah, me too."
"Will you meet me here again next week?"
"Absolutely."