Treasure

Cyndi's best friend, Tressa, is getting married today. Cyndi met her when she was four years old. They grew up next to each other, and have remained close ever since. Cyndi always tells the story of how she got Tressa's name wrong when they were little. She thought her name was "Treasure." It's been a running joke for over 30 years. Relationships between men and women, themselves, can be treasures. And if you find the person you are really meant to be with--"The One--"you are lucky.

Prior to Cyndi, I had a pretty sordid past when it came to the ladies. Especially right after high school, right after I moved to Arizona, and right before I moved back home. It's interesting when you meet someone and start thinking about compatibility. I've been in a couple of long-term relationships. Four to be exact. I was actually engaged once before, too.

I think I have written about Debbie before. I call her "The First Debbie." I was working at a pizza place sweeping the floor after the lunch rush when Debbie walked in with my brother’s first wife, Jenny. I had attended my high school graduation ceremony the night before and was working two jobs to save money for college. I finished high school early and had over $5,000 in my savings account that was quickly spent on her that summer. Debbie was a hair stylist and worked with Jenny at a salon in town. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but someone else had a plan for me of which I wasn’t aware. We spent the entire exhausting summer together; exhausting, because I would work either the job at the pizza place or the job at the bank and then spend my evenings hanging out with Debbie until one or two in the morning. The routine was the same, but we were falling in love and love makes you forget about essential things like sleep. When I left for college, it was hard because I had grown so used to our routine. I contemplated leaving college and the solution I came up with was quick and not thought out. We got engaged basically because the financial aid office sent me a check for $800; the overage in my financial aid package. We went to the mall one night and I found myself surrounded by the salespeople at JB Robinsons Jewelers. Debbie had her eye on the more expensive ring, but my budget dictated the smaller one which, I told her, would be replaced someday by the ring she really wanted when I was making a lawyer’s salary. I bought the ring and we went home to her place so I could “do the right thing” and ask her parents’ permission. Her mother quietly agreed and Debbie came downstairs so I could officially propose and she acted as though it was all a surprise to her. There was no love in our relationship, but I thought she was “the one.” Two months later, Debbie gave me the ring back because she had found another. He was a mechanic she met at the roller rink and he told her he loved her the night they met. Several years later, I ran into Debbie at an open house at the fire station. She was excited to see me and wanted me to meet her husband and two children. She was fat and unappealing and I looked up at the sky and said, “ha…I got you this time!”

Then there was Lyn. She warned me the day we met she would be trouble. It was a Thursday and she was on a cold call; barging in on someone at work, unexpectedly, to sell something. In her case it was hospice services, pain management, or as she liked to call it “comfort care.” I wasn’t dying, but the people I worked with were, in a sense. I was an outreach worker at a senior center. It was what I had decided to do with my life, at that point, right out of college. While most of my classmates were taking entry level jobs with Fortune 500 companies, I had passed on the “opportunity” to be an insurance salesman for Country Companies and chose instead a full-time volunteer position with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I wanted to save the world, one senior at a time, and wasn’t looking for a relationship, which I later learned she was also selling. After she gave me her elevator pitch on the many advantages of referring terminal senior center members to her company, she began openly flirting with me and invited me to page her sometime to go out for a beer since we were both new to the area and could keep each other company. She wasn’t alone, however, as she had just left her second husband and had three children, ages seven, eight and nine and was living in a small two bedroom apartment in Gilbert. Five minutes after she left, I sat at my desk, staring at her pager number and called her. We went out on Saturday night, drank heavily at the bar at Houlihan’s and slept together on an air mattress she pulled out from her kid’s bedroom. In the morning, she felt guilty for the carnage we shared and repeated over and over, “I’m not even divorced yet.” The relationship would last a year and a half; through seven moves, sometimes together, but mostly alone. It was the first adult relationship I had and was filled with more fighting than loving. We would purchase a home together, in my name, because the divorce was still “in process” and one month after I caught her in bed with her boss’ son, I would quit claim the property to her so I could move on with my life. I have no idea what has happened to her and the trouble she promised was the only one she would keep and the only one I constantly remember.

Finally, before I left Arizona, and shortly after I moved back, there was "The Second Debbie." During his or her lifetime, a person must experience a stalker. Debbie was supposed to be a rebound relationship; the kind of relationship that is based purely on the notion of getting over someone else, nothing more, nothing less. We worked together in a nursing home in South Phoenix. She was a Physical Therapist and I was a Social Worker. Although her job was to heal people and provide a better life after some catastrophic event, she was far from the definition of a “healer.” Debbie had a problem trusting men in her life due to a lifetime of disastrous relationships. I was her latest victim and the distrust she had in me was immediate and brutal. She needed to know where I was, who I was with and what I was doing at all times. When I wanted to do something with other people that didn’t involve her, she would go ballistic. Why was I doing this to her, she would ask; why couldn’t she go out with me, was I out fucking other women. Her other game was to call me and tell me she was going to kill herself because I was neglecting her. She must have gone through a dozen phones because she would smash them to pieces during her many outbursts. Early on in the relationship, I had contemplated moving back to Chicago to be closer to my family and to go to business school. I wasn’t sure if I had accomplished the goals I had for myself in the two years I was in Arizona, so I was undecided. After a severe blow-up which resulted in ruining my friend, David’s, bachelor party, I decided the only way I could rid myself of her negativity was to make the decision and move. To my horror and disbelief, Debbie followed me to the Midwest. She took at job at a hospital in Kenosha, Wisconsin and would show up at my door or meet me at the front desk at the gym begging me to come back to her. She never came to see me empty handed and thought gifts of clothes would bring me running back into her arms. Eventually, her desire to be with me wore out. She stopped calling me and moved away to California to take a job at some other nursing home. She called me late one night and told me she had met and moved in with a social worker who worked with her and that they were going to get married. I think I actually saw Debbie last year at a trade show. We were in Nashville, and I was a little hung over from the previous night's entertainment. I was walking through the exhibitor hall on my way to the bathroom. My head was killing me. I looked over to my left and saw her. It took me a second to make the connection. It was one of those, "I think I know that person...but where from" moments. Then it hit me. My heart starting pounding. As we approached one another, we locked eyes. She knew it was me and I was almost certain it was her. We had a decision to make. Stop and pretend to care about one another, or keep walking. As we passed one another, and it was clear what decision I made, I heard her snicker. "Figures," she said. "Surprise, surprise." The old me would have reacted. I just kept walking, went to the bathroom, and told anyone who would listen that I saw Crazy Debbie.

As the day moves on, and it gets closer to Tressa's wedding, I keep coming back to how lucky I am. As a man, as a father, and especially, as a husband. When you are in a relationship, good or bad, you most often think "this is the one." I may have thought that with Lyn and the Debbies. But I never believed it until I met Cyndi.