Passenger

And so the snows of winter are finally melting, and spring - though still shrouded in fog and chill - is on her way. We were in Florida a few weekends ago, and I said that if I had to live there, I would miss the seasons: the quiet bowing-out of the winter that seemed like it would last forever as the blooms of the spring slowly make their debut, the cooling of harsh summer as autumn erupts in gold and red. Our constant example of change, the sureness of those transitions. The reminder that change is a good thing.

It was about this time last year that I was anticipating a visit from an unexpected friend - a tall boy with red hair that I had met the summer before but had only chatted with, texted, written, and Skyped in the eight months that followed. Without laying eyes on actual him in eight months, I had started to feel a pull in my heart toward him, a feeling that I had never felt for anyone before. He was different: he was funny, intelligent, talented, creative, and kind. And in the months of exchanging off-the-wall questions, music, and clips of comedians' routines, we became closer and closer - he was slowly becoming my best friend - while only being in the same room for no more than a few hours last summer.

He came out to visit me at school the following April, nearly a year after we met at a wedding where he was a groomsmen and I was the pianist. We hadn't talked much then: we were both there with friends we hadn't seen in forever and were more interested in catching up with old friends than making new ones. But I remember noticing his laugh, his quirky sense of humor, when he and I were the only ones who saw a little girl face-plant in her pretty dress across the room during the father-daughter dance. And I knew even then that he was different.

When he visited it wasn't awkward, like I expected it to be. Our first outing - you could call it a "date" - was to the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum, where we spent five hours looking at the old airplanes. He's a mechanic for an airline company, so he knew what he was looking at while I thought, "Wow, that one's big," and "Wow, that one's a pretty color." And while there was never any talk on that first visit of what our relationship was or where we would go from there, I knew that he was one of my closest friends, and I couldn't wait to see him again.

He's told me since that he knew, even on that first visit, he was hooked.

In May we decided to drop the facade and admit, "Hey, I like you, you like me," but it wasn't until July that we officially became a couple. He took me to a waterfall near his parents' house and turned around the symbol on my claddagh ring. For those of you who aren't up to date on your Celtic symbology, the claddagh is a heart held by two hands with a crown on top, representing love, brotherhood, and loyalty. If the ring is worn on your right hand with the point of the heart facing away from your body, it means you're single; he took it off my finger and replaced it with the heart facing toward me, meaning I was taken, that I was his.

Our situation has been certainly unorthodox: for our entire relationship we've commuted, either to his parents' house in Pennsylvania or to mine in Ohio. But that has made us purposeful in our communication and our short visits. We started Skyping three months after we met (I told him I liked face-to-face communication, and though he didn't have a webcam, he went out and bought one so we could Skype) and have made it a nearly-weekly thing since; I tried to count up how many hours, and I lost count around 80. I have a box in my room full of the letters he's written me. He has the tree-shaped air freshener that I decorated for him when he told me he didn't have a Christmas tree. I wear the heart-shaped necklace he gave me for Christmas nearly every day. He still has the letter I gave to him when we became official at the waterfall last summer.

In February he told me he wanted to go back to that waterfall: in the winter it's frozen over, and while you can't hike down to it without risking a broken neck, it's still spectacular from the overlook. And it was there that he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. It was there that I said yes. It was there that we each had our first kiss. And it was there that he slid another ring onto my left hand - the one with the diamond from his grandmother's wedding ring that was designed to look like my great-great-grandmother's.

For two hopeless romantic, such a love story couldn't be more perfect. We're still a year out from a wedding, but every day we're one step closer to living closer together and having a "normal" relationship, where we're not separated by an eleven-hour drive and it won't seem so out-of-the-ordinary to go to dinner or a movie. And even though our set-up has been a little difficult at times, I wouldn't have had it any other way: we got to know each other as people and develop a friendship before there was any talk of physical attraction. It has made us purposeful, intentional, in getting to know each other first. And while it's certainly not the typical situation, I wouldn't have traded it for a "normal" one.

We get to have our "happily ever after." I am in love with the man of my dreams. And I cannot wait to be his wife.

Baffle

People.

People.

The human race is one of the most complex groups on the planet. Where else can you find a species whose members go out of their way to cause such extreme emotions in their fellow members? Joy, pain, guilt, rage, happiness, wonder - all at the hands of each other. For what? For pleasure. For amusement. For selfish joy.

I am not drawn to people. I am drawn to the stories they tell, but I am not naturally bent toward camaraderie with human beings. The nature of my personality is such that I am drained by most human interactions, and I need time by myself to re-charge that energy, just in time to have it sucked out again by a conversation, a party, a family dinner. We were in Florida last weekend to visit relatives and when my feet hit the threshold of our house, I went straight up to my room, shut the door, and laid in my bed watching "Sherlock" for the rest of the night, reassuring my family that I wasn't mad at them or being "antisocial" - I simply needed to be alone to rest my soul.

Scientists say that humans are no more than an advanced form of primates, but if we are inherently animals, we are treated drastically different. The latest trend is pit bulls: if a pit bull exhibits a mostly-docile nature and suddenly turns on its owner - say, a child - it's impounded and most likely destroyed. But when a trusted co-worker suddenly stabs you in the back and muddies your name with vicious gossip, they're pegged as "untrustworthy" and avoided. And how inhumane it would be to say, "Put her to sleep for her two-facedness."

Humans baffle me. Of all the mysteries on earth, I think human nature is the deepest, and because the ones studying human nature are inflicted with that same condition, I don't think we'll ever figure it out. In Peter Pan J.M. Barrie the Author described his fairies as being so small that they can only exhibit one emotion at a time. At least they throw their whole energy into being either bombastically angry or sugary sweet, and you never doubt which emotion that fairy is showing at one time or another. Humans, on the other hand, can play so many emotion cards at any given moment that it boggles the mind to think how they keep them straight: "I'm mad at her but I smile at her anyway, I secretly want him but I'll give him the cold shoulder until he notices."

It's no wonder we don't trust each other: we've given so much reason to doubt. How can you possibly trust a race that is capable - and in many cases, willing - to talk behind your back and lie to your face?

I've wished for years that people were honest with each other - that they played their emotional hand not as a matter of strategy or what they can get out of it, but simply because they have no reason to be false with their behavior. Be viciously angry. Sing when your heart is happy. Mutter that you're not "fine" even if you don't want to talk about it. But for God's sake, do not continue to put up the farce for your own gain or for the sake of another's feelings or in an effort to be consistent with the persona you've built for yourself. If we cannot be honest with our own emotions - the colors of our existence and the shade of our own spirit - how can we hope to be honest in any other area?

River

It's the beginning of March and I'm sitting on my uncle Kevin's front porch in a tank top and shorts. I think we hit 80 degrees today. The older I get the more I love summer, and this right here - writing with my bare legs in the sunshine - is nothing short of perfection.

It's weird being here again. I haven't been back since my grandma died in '08 (seven years in a couple weeks), and it doesn't feel the same with her gone. When we were growing up it was always the thing to do to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house; aunts came and went, uncles moved, but the white house on Orange Valley Circle was always home base. Wake up in the room with the Samantha American Girl doll, go to the dining room for cereal and orange juice made from the oranges picked across the street, swim in Miss Edith and Miss Hazel's pool next door until the afternoon Florida rain chased us home. We'd watch TV, play with the train set on the glassed-in back porch, go bowling, play mini golf, and get our fill of sunshine until the next time we visited.

Everyone else is still here. Nothing else has really changed. But it's not the same. My uncle has some of my grandma's old furniture: the green chair and desk - the one with the Churchmouse books - I think her end tables, the swivel recliner, maybe her quilts. Her masterpieces of cloth strips and patterned stitches are the common link we have to her. We were at my grandpa's house yesterday and I wondered if the quilt on his chair was hers, but I doubt it.

I doubt his new wife lets any of Nancy's things in her house.

It's probably just as well. The quilts on my bed back home don't smell like her anymore; I doubt the ones here have kept her scent either.