Chapter IV:
Of Yachts & Suspicions

Continued From
Chapter III: I Didn’t Understand

Haylie and I met again a few days later.  Both she and I had left our conversation under the bridge feeling particularly unsettled about the possibility that a future could be lost.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the questions raised on that bench held for Haylie a particular level of significance.  Near the beginning of the school year, Haylie had experienced herself a version of this loss of future.  Hers was not of the same order of a husband losing a wife or a parent losing a child, but was nonetheless devastating.  And it did have something to do with marriage.

She and her then-boyfriend had begun to think about the rest of their lives and the way their relationship figured into that.  Haylie never actually gave me a play-by-play of how it all came about, and to this day I am confident that all of my conversations with her have been based on the assumption that I know more about the situation than I actually do.  The important part of the story was that the conversation ended with the loss of their relationship.

Haylie, just like her brother and just like Annie’s family, discovered quite quickly and quite unwillingly that any of her previous visions about the future would need to change.

Haylie and I had decided to travel toward Wallingford to grab a cup of coffee.  In the back of my mind I had already been saying goodbye to Seattle–or at least parts of Seattle–for a long time.  Our stopping in Wallingford had been for me a bittersweet occasion.  Sweet, because I had spent several years calling Wallingford home.  Bitter, of course, because I was uncertain when I’d see the neighborhood again.  I remember deeply hoping that Leawood had its own version of Wallingford.  I remember deeply fearing that it didn’t.

The kindly barista began pulling the shots for Haylie’s standard drink. Double-tall Americano, no room.  Because I wasn’t feeling particularly ready for espresso so early in the day I resorted to my default non-caffeinated drink; a medium strawberry Italian Soda, for here.

“Sorry man,” the barista responded, “we don’t have any middle size.  We’ve got a twelve and a sixteen.  And we’ve only got to-go cups today.”

I said that I’d take the sixteen ounce and that a to-go cup would be fine. Before I was able to finish my thought he let me know that he was out of strawberry syrup.  I said that anything fruity would do just fine.  He thought that Thursday seemed like a raspberry day and I agreed.  He asked me twice whether I wanted cream in my soda.  I said no both times.  “Whipped cream?” he asked.  I again said no.

“Man, I’m really harshin’ your mellow this morning,” he confessed, almost as if to apologize.

In my mind, it occurred to me to agree with my kindly barista.  Yeah you are, I might have responded.  But I didn’t.

“You know what, good sir,” I asked, more as a statement.  “I think Thursday is probably as good a day as any to have your mellow harshed…  We don’t want to get too mellow before the weekend starts.”

He looked at me as if to process what I said.  I looked at him as if to process what I said.  He paused, smiled, and continued fixing my order.

What did that even mean?  Was it even true?  Is any day really better than any other to have one’s “mellow” “harshed?”

I spent a bit of time thinking about why I responded to the barista the way I did.  Why was it important to me to affirm his harshing of mellows?  Why didn’t I just let it go and not say anything?

As I thought about this point I began to wonder if my exchange with the barista was not unlike the way that I respond in other uncertain situations.  I have noticed that there are certain conversations in which I am tempted to defeat silence by saying something; by saying anything.  In an effort to not let a conversation fall to silence, I say whatever first comes to mind.

I affirmed the kindly barista in his harshing of mellows; an activity against which I would otherwise firmly advocate.

Sometimes, I’ve noticed, this exact same thing happens when I’m talking to a new friend.  Sometimes it happens with old friends.  I say something for the sake of saying something and I only realize in retrospect that the words spoken were a.) completely untrue, b.) completely unhelpful in advancing the conversation, or c.) completely irrelevant to anything, ever.

Maybe I’m the only one who does this.

Because our drinks had been made to go, Haylie and I decided to wander about the neighborhood.  She knew just as well as I did how soon I was going to leave for Leawood.  While I had been running all over town, frantic that I might miss somebody in my saying goodbye, Haylie had been incredibly patient and understanding.  I had let her know that there were a lot of people to whom I had to say goodbye, and that meant she and I might not have as much time to hang out as we usually do.

At some level, I knew that my comment had been a bit hurtful to her.  The friendship that she and I shared was uncommon, but somehow I had reduced our friendship to one of many; one of dozens, or maybe even hundreds.  Haylie had become just a name on a list, like every other person, and my sense was that she had felt this.  In any case, I was glad that we were able to connect on the morning that we did.

We fell quite naturally into our previous line of dialogue about the loss of future.

Haylie described connecting quite seriously with the idea that in the wake of loss–and she did use the word wake–one is left with an unaddressable number of unanswerable questions.

“What if I just said these few words differently,” she questioned.  “Or what if I just agreed with him and took more time to try to see things his way?”

There was no doubt in my mind Haylie was at that point in the mourning process where the “what if…?” question was still all-consuming.  Not that I actually knew much about that mourning process, of course.  That was just my suspicion.

Several weeks earlier, in fact, Haylie and I had been sitting on a hillside, watching multi-million dollar yachts pass through the channel out to Elliott Bay.  We could have been talking about anything in the world when we arrived on the hillside but we inevitably ended up, as was a recurring theme when we sat on this hillside, having some condescending conversation about how even if such a grandiose yacht were given to us, free and clear, we’d not accept it.  “It’s just too big,” Haylie would invariably conclude. “What would you do with a boat that had eight bedrooms?”

We never knew how many bedrooms these boats had, but we suspected that a yacht that had a crane to offload its own speedboat and several Jet-Skis also had plenty of bedrooms.  We didn’t actually know about the bedrooms but we had a suspicion that there were a lot of them.

It was on this hillside that I shared with Haylie my deep fear that I have absolutely nothing figured out.

This came as a bit of a surprise to Haylie because I never seemed to have a shortage of advice for her.  For Haylie, I had become that friend who could always offer at least a small scrap of sage advice.

“Most of what I know, or think I know about the world,” I began to confess, “might be completely off base.  My sense is that the only truth I know in this world are things that are based off of a deep suspicion.”

I explained how the only things that I am at all sure about in life are those things that I sense to be true.  “It seems to me,” I might begin, “that X, Y, and Z are true.”  Or I might speak of how “my strongest sense suggests” something.

The only reason I even mention anything about the hillside or the yachts is to explain this idea of senses and suspicions.

I think that hearing Haylie talk about the loss of her relationship stirred in me a lot of these deep suspicions.

“Is there any degree to which you think you might be trying to see this situation in any way other than what it is,” I asked.

I had wondered as I heard Haylie speak longingly of a way to get things “back to the way they were” if she was being unfaithful to the reality of reality.  “What are the odds that you’re looking at the situation without fully acknowledging the facts,” I asked, pressing further.

Haylie told me that the only way she could stay hopeful for the resurrection of her relationship was to focus on the positive aspects of the situation.  The notion of a resurrection of a relationship was something that I had a hard time grasping.  She explained that to look at the situation from an objective third party perspective would be unfaithful to the reality of how much of her heart is still invested in the relationship.  Invested in a relationship that no longer exists, I couldn’t help but think to myself.

“It seems to me that it’s probably not helpful to ignore the facts of the situation,” I began to ponder aloud.  “And it’s probably also not helpful to think about the situation with too much hope.”

I couldn’t believe that I was advising Haylie to not remain hopeful.  The words that were coming out of my mouth seemed true, but also seemed completely contrary to what I thought I might say.  I always considered myself a proponent of hope.  Hope dies last, I often told people.  But is it possible that there are times in which it is best if hope does get killed?  Is it possible that there are times in which it is best that we kill hope?

It caught me off guard to think that I advised Haylie to give up hope.  Now a few months after the demise of her relationship, however, maybe it was time to encourage her to move on and to let go.  She could even say those words, move on and let go. But she couldn’t believe them.  It’s one thing to say words, but it’s an altogether different thing to actually believe them.

“There’s a name for living in a place in which you choose to ignore the reality of the world around you,” I eventually shared, not completely sure where I was going with this line of thinking.

“I know,” she said quietly.  “It’s called mental illness.”

It came as a relief to me that Haylie had made sense of my statement and had caught where I was going.

It’s one thing to say words, but it’s an altogether different thing to actually believe them.

We sat in silence pondering this disconnect between cognition and emotion without anything more to really ask or say.

When I finally chose to break the silence I asked Haylie if there’s a way to let go of a relationship without letting go of a person, and whether or not that question changes anything.