Prudence 4

March 26, 1991. UCLA


Since a few years ago, I had always wanted to come back to UCLA, to Drake Stadium, on the tenth year anniversary of that magical day that marked the beginning of our relationship. The day when she and I, after all the trials and tribulations, finally accepted and indelibly celebrated the crossing of our paths.

Ten years...

…a large part of which had been quite empty.

That longing took shape probably sometime during my year of internship. During that year, during the many trips back and forth between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, where I interned, I at times made a short detour to drive by her parents' house in Ventura. It was a modest house on a quiet street facing a park. I would drive along the small street, invariably making a short stop near the house – but not directly outside – indulged myself in sweet memories for an often too short a moment, and then drove off.

It was a rainy evening in Los Angeles on March 26, 1991. I was at the time in the latter half of my Radiology residency at the big county hospital in downtown L.A..

I got off from a long day on the Vascular service, the most demanding service in the residency, and made a dash back to the Interns and Residents' Housing next door. I was not really supposed to still be staying at this very convenient, and very cheap, dormitory, which was meant only for first-year, and generally, out-of-state, hospital slaves. But interns and residents are resourceful – and are even “cheaper.” If there was anything cheap, or more preferably, free, especially food, one can count on us being there, no matter how much more work we still had to do. After my first year in this dorm, I found a way to trick the system, which was fraught with inefficiency and bureaucracy anyway: there were plenty of rooms, and presumably a lot would stay empty if the rules were strictly enforced. I had overstayed my welcome for two more years then, and had no plan to move out until the management actually changed the lock of my dorm room door, something which they have threatened to do several times already.

Despite the dash, and the relatively short distance between the dorm and the main hospital, I got wet from the badly needed rain. L.A. had been suffering from a long and drawn-out drought for the past five years, and this year, winter came unusually late. The ski resorts felt the worst crunch. Spring was around the corner, and the ski slopes were still mostly brown; the man-made snow just wasn’t quite enticing or profitable enough; even with all this moisture, they could only expect slush on the slopes this late in March. Despite the late start, however, the several storms that had been blessing us with the precious fluid over the previous three weeks had reportedly already caught up with two-thirds of the expected amount of rainfall for the entire year.



* * *



I just stood there in the shower, letting the warm water from a generous shower head continue to rinse me well after I was done. I didn’t mean to take this long, but then, I just didn’t know what I was going to do after the shower. I had wanted so much for today, tonight, to be special, in a way, I guess, to justify my nurturing of her memory the past nearly ten years of my life. I had been wanting to be there, at Drake Stadium, tonight, for so long now that I didn’t really plan on having to deal with Mother Nature. In my mind, tonight was always supposed to be just as clear as that night. But… now what…?

I finally turned off the faucets; we were getting a lot of rain water, yes, but this was still a waste. Stepping back into my room, I glanced at the window.

Still raining… Doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

So much for sitting around in Drake Stadium today.

I sank into the armchair – I just then noticed that it's also green – this one belonged to the dorm, though, and it was vinyl for easy cleaning, not cloth like mine was from the Salvation Army. I put on John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy."

"....Before you cross the street, take my hand..."

We used to take each other's hands before we crossed Circle Drive West… I squeezed the remote and clicked off the CD player. I simply could not finish the song.

I just had to get out of this room. Rain or no rain.

It will be special. I wil make tonight a special night.

With that decision, I found myself becoming superconscious of every move that I made, and every moment that passed by since then. I wanted to etch into my memory every little event that would take place this evening, because I knew that I would occasionally relive this day throughout the next ten years, as I had that day throughout the last ten years. I wanted to recreate and celebrate the significance of that evening ten years ago, and Mother Nature simply cannot stand in my way. But in the back of my mind, I knew that the odds were overwhelmingly and hopelessly against me this evening in some other way much more significant than the unrelenting rain… because I would have to do it all by myself.



* * *



The drive over to UCLA was significantly slowed by the rain, but I wasn't in any hurry, and nothing was about to hinder me. In order for me to create and live this evening, in turn to recreate and re-live that evening, Time was not a concern, it was in fact an accomplice. I needed TIME to slow down; and I needed to slow IT down.

It was well after sundown by the time I arrived at UCLA; the steady rain continued. I found a parking spot on Circle Drive West just south of Bruin Walk. Dykstra was to my left. The dinner of my life took place there ten years ago, but somehow I wanted this evening to start out here, at this spot on the Circle Drive. This was how I had envisioned it all these years.

I could get a ticket for parking here. The one thing I always hated about UCLA was its greedy parking establishment. I always thought that the second most stupid thing was to pay for parking. The most stupid was to pay for a parking ticket. I did, by the way, find a way to trick that parking establishment too, at least for a time, during my years in medical school here, I mused to myself satisfactorily.

But why was I even concerned about a parking ticket now anyway?

I slowly walked down Bruin Walk under my flimsy umbrella, taking much shorter steps than usual. I was afraid that this moment would pass me by too quickly, as the past ten years just did.

Ten years ago this evening, she walked with me down this hill.

The thought made me shiver. It chilled me more than the beating rain and wind that my umbrella was hopelessly trying to subdue.

A short way down the hill was the entrance to the seating area of Drake Stadium.

We turned in here that evening without even planning on it.

I turned in, and found that I wasn't the only one. There was a jogger there also. Or maybe I should call him a trainer, because this guy was running up and down the long stairs in between the seating areas. There was no lone jogger on the tracks.

He's crazy. In this weather?

I noticed that he also saw me, and he was probably thinking the same thing. And if he were thinking the same thing, I probably scared him more than he would scare me, because as far as he was concerned, I really had no reason to be there on a night like this, unless I was a psychopath.

I waited for him to finish his last flight of stairs. We sort of say "hi" as he ran past me out the gate. I found a seat with the least moisture and made myself comfortable.

Was it this seat? Or the one over there? I thought I would recognize it, but I really didn’t. We didn’t pay much attention to where we were sitting that night anyway.

I wasn't comfortable. I had always imagined that an overwhelming warmth would engulf me, and from me, radiate to warm the entire stadium if I would just sit here and reminisce that evening ten years ago.

But I wasn't warm. And I briefly wondered why.

…..she's not here… That's why.

With that thought, I no longer felt like sitting there. Did the rain have anything to do with it? Probably only minimally. It just wasn't the same without her. I smirked at myself. How could I ever expect it to be the same anyway?? I could only go so far in trying to recreate that night – by myself.

I walked out of Drake Stadium, somewhat disappointed but undeterred – there are yet more memories to recreate and relive. I continued down Bruin Walk, slowly. Time, my accomplice for tonight.

Bruin Walk was different. It was paved with red bricks and stamped concrete, instead of the old asphalt. This must have been quite a job, I thought, slowing further down to fully appreciate the width and the length of Bruin Walk.

Pauley Pavillion to my right and its dimly lit stairs still held our secret revelations. But I did not wish to stop here; there were better memories ahead; bitter tears and confusion were here. And the John Wooden Center.... it wasn't completed when she left UCLA. Would have been a nice crocodile pool anyway. Or was it alligator?

Was it her laughter I just heard echoing in the rain? The scientific mind in me immediately dismissed the notion, but the mind that brought me across town here to this campus tonight in the rain to attempt to celebrate something some ten years ago that is now no longer in existence – yes, that mind – insisted that it was a laughter. Hers. I wanted to turn around to make sure, but I knew I would just prove myself silly.

And here comes Ackerman Union. Where I found out that there was such a thing as a PINK Hi-Liter. We shared on more than a few occasions a game of pool in the games & arcade area above the Student’s Store, where I would want to impress her by coaching her using the math and physics of vectors and forces, and where she would surprise me with consistently sure and accurate shots, not really needing my theory behind those shots. And this was where I learned that she didn't accidentally drop me back at the dorm cafeteria – she deliberately left me there.

I could have sworn that I just heard her laughter again.

I no longer could keep my pace slow. All these scenes came flooding back, drowning me and choking me. I didn’t have to recreate them – they never left me. And they did not awake gently; they overwhelmed me with surprisingly vivid images and hauntingly with sounds of her laughter hidden in the noisy rain. Maybe if I walked a little faster, I would breathe a little easier.

I turned off just beyond the Men's Gym, at the Campus Corner, and walked toward Janss steps. I paused briefly before walking up the steps and looked up.

No. I prefer looking DOWN the steps.

Eighty-seven steps it was. And on top at last.

The quad in between Royce Hall and Powell Library was empty. It would have been empty anyway even if it wasn't raining, because this is the week of Spring break.

I turned around and slowly panned and focused my sight from near to far. To admire the raindrops dancing on the steps, and sheets of rain flying over the intramural fields, and drenching the seats of Drake, and fogging the dorms on the other hills, and soddening my already fading memories of the years past.

I looked up to see the Big Dipper. Or any stars. I still wasn't very good in astronomy. I looked up only to ridicule myself. Star-searching on a rainy night like this would be comparable to my search for lost love over the past nearly ten years.

I didn't bother sitting down. I felt that chill again from my core, which slowly and cruelly permeated through my body.

Continuing through the verandah of Royce Hall, I glanced occasionally to my right to observe Powell Library in between the columns of Royce. How serene it looked, like a mother's figure. And Royce, well, with all its majesty and solemnity, the father.

During that all too short a time, Mom and Dad had witnessed two of their children being head-over-heel in love with each other. The family albums overflowed with so many snapshots of the kids sharing their hearts in the many rooms of their mansion, in Mom's arms, at Dad's legs...

These columns of Royce, Dad’s legs.... I felt giant butterflies in my stomach standing against these columns with her in my arms. This was where I first realized how two human beings could feel so close to each other with one's arms around the small of the other's back.

Coming out of the front verandah of Royce, I was immediately bombarded with the rain from above, and at the same time, stepped into a large puddle of water. My socks, which had remained half-way dry, were now saturated with water. I was amused in a strange way. Reality, like the rain, came down hard and cold, and with a sinking feeling.

Continuing north, I walked by Rolfe Hall.

One day many years ago, when Love was still in black and white, and Romance had only one taste of sweetness, she stood somewhere in that hall, outside of my English class, waiting for me at the end of the hour. I could still remember; she was wearing her brown corduroy blazer.

I shivered. It was all coming back to me now. All these images. Emerging and surging from the chambers of my heart, rushing and racing through the great arteries, flooding into my head, creating small quakes along the way which I wrongly interpreted as my shivering because of the cold.

And I could see it all again so clearly. There.... I was there in the seat next to last in the second row from the left. We were overtiming; all the other classes had been dismissed by then. The hallway was filled with students coming and going in both directions, and the noise in the hallway poured into the room as the professor opened the classroom door.

Noise attracted attention. And I looked up and out the door. And despite the busy foreground of the many people hurrying back and forth, all I saw was my Little Pony Tail standing with her back against the wall, waiting for me, ever-so-slightly and so-serenely smiling.

Our eyes met. And her shy smile beamed ever-so-slightly brighter, but that was all it took to light up her face like the sun just peeking through a veil of cloud. And I had just melted, but only for a fraction of a second, because then I wanted to bolt out of that door to embrace her.

I shivered again. I couldn’t help it. A thick Gore-tex down jacket wouldn’t have helped. The cold was all from the inside of me. I felt a chilling hollowness with the thought of embracing her.

A gust of wind came shaking the rain water off the surrounding trees, causing an unorchestrated splashing sound and waking me from my trance. It almost felt like the water was splashed onto my face.

I hastened my way through the patio area of the North Campus cafeteria. This is where all the liberal arts folks hanged out. Jenny and I never spent too much time here. But emerging from underneath Bunche Hall, I came to the Franklin D. Murphy sculpture garden, and I slowed my pace as I was near the garden. The grass knolls, the blade of grass in her hand, the letter, the first kiss, the birth of happiness and heartache.

Time and again over the past ten years, including today, and especially today, the big emptiness in my core kept reminding me how much of an impact her presence, or her path across my life, or her sheer being, had made on my life...

CHAPTER TO BE REVISITED & COMPLETED
(I have been meaning, for too many years now, to revisit UCLA in order to finish this chapter; obviously haven’t had the chance to do so).


* * *


EPILOGUE



I had decided since my last visit to Drake Stadium, UCLA, on our tenth anniversary, that I would finally lay to rest all memory of her, and to move on with my life, as I had always been advised by people.

...To move on with my life... Whatever that means.

People's advice... Can people always be right? In all situations? Isn’t this, hasn’t this always been, my life? Haven’t I been living my life? Why can’t nurturing and preserving the memory of her be a part of living my life?

Are there not many ways of going through life? Would people be advising a dedicated person of the faith who finds solace in solitude, happiness in austerity and simplicity, to move on with his or her life?

I am no monk, and even she had advised me to stop being obsessed with her, as she had once put it in one of the very few letters she had written back to me so long ago. May be there was an element of obsession here, and of course, I would not recognize it or admit to it. I guess there had always been a fine line between love and obsession; and to me, it always has been love. But to many others, and most likely including her, it was at times, at the least, obsession.

It doesn't really matter to me. And I ain't trying to prove it – or disprove it.

Obsession or not needs no denial or confirmation as far as my feelings for her are concerned – I just know that they are there, and they make me wish to be with her at all times. I just wanted to share my life with her, all over again – it had been as simple as that. Although I have become more at peace with what I now know are just fantasies. People’s advice has not done me any good. I come to terms with things when I come to terms with things.

I can only be reminded of her once in a while...

...that once-in-a-while when I met her, again, by chance, in a record store.


* * *


It was a windless Saturday afternoon at Cabrillo beach in San Pedro. I had suspected it even before noon; funny how a love of a sport suddenly turned me into a not-so-bad weather forecaster, although windiness would be my only specialty. Windlessness is probably the only thing that isn't fun about windsurfing. Well… also maybe broken equipment in the middle of a very windy day, and having to swim in with the broken equipment in tow while fighting the swells. Or perhaps also broken equipment at the beginning of a windy session, before even starting; but then, every diehard sailors would bring a spare of everything.

When the wind would pick up, I would feel my heartbeat quickening as the palm trees windpruning and swaying and the sand starts blowing. And the more windpruning and swaying and sand blowing, the stronger the wind, and the more frantic the windsurfers get; and invariably it would seem that I couldn’t rig my sail fast enough. Then I would carry the board and sail as fast as I could to the ocean’s lip, hopping into the lapping water with the zest and glee of a 6 year-old; and I would launch the board onto the water, flying the sail, timing the wave breaks. And as I would hop on, pump the sail, get the board to hydroplane – with the board skimming the water surface at high speed, hook into the harness, lean back against the wind-filled sail, ride the fin, hop the chops, get air, gybe, tack, get high... I would let myself be both exhilarated and mesmerized by the wavelets and the chops that would come blurring past my sight and underneath my feet as I skim uninhibitedly past them. And I would choose the sweetest part of a steep swell to launch the board and feather the sail and temporarily think that I can fly.

But when there is no wind, none of those can happen, and I can feel the bluest of blues, along with the other sailors on the beach.

So that Saturday afternoon I decided not to loiter the local windsurfing shops, although I could use yet another harness line, and my wetsuit is starting to show a little more of my flesh; but instead I paid a visit to a record store on the Westside. A big sale had been advertised.

It was crowded. The store had always been popular, and today was supposed to be a big bargain day. I wasn't really looking for any CD in particular; I was just browsing. And that phrase was poised to fly out of my mouth had any store assistant asked me, "may I help you?" Although I didn't expect this to happen in a record store.

"May I help you?" ... So much for my theory – there must have been extra store personnel here today because of the sale.

"Thank you. I'm just browsing." A woman's voice from across the aisle prevented my would-have-been embarrassing reply, because the question wasn't addressed to me. But in anticipation of answering, I looked up just in time to see the store assistant smiling understandingly at the woman as he walked away.

And then my eyes caught hers, as well as the thanking smile that was still lingering on her lips.

Time just froze. My heart and respiration just went into suspension.

I know that smile.

...And those eyes.

And here they are, in real life, after all these years, within feet from me. Just as real as they had always been in my mind's eye.

She didn't recognize me at first. I know because of the initial blank stare she gave me. My hair was different; and definitely not the same pair of eyeglasses. But a second later, when her smile receded, her composure told me that the entire story, hers and mine, had just flashed across her eyes. And she had now realized who it was standing across the aisle right in front of her, within reach, but separated by the great songs of the Beatles, of John Lennon, of James Taylor...

It was about the same for me. Her hair was different, too. No ponytail. But those eyes and that smile had been forever etched into every pathway of my brain. And what I just saw fit that picture in my mind's eye perfectly. There was not a single mistake, not a single blemish, not a single brush stroke too long, or too short, or too wide...

"Let's go, honey."

A man, her husband, I presumed, was just behind her, with his back toward her, browsing the other aisle, and he was just presently turning around. He didn't notice me. And I really wasn't looking at him.

She lowered her eyes, and just as in a dream, I heard her saying, "Let's go, honey." It was to a little boy trying to open a packaged CD by her feet.

I hadn't noticed him.

Slightly flustered, she stooped and busied herself with the little boy, leaving me across the aisle suspended in a vacuum. And they walked off together out the door. And I thought I was still dreaming. We were just two arm lengths away.

The little kid must have been around two years old. A beautiful boy; just as John Lennon's must have been.

Near the exit, she glanced back briefly over her left shoulder toward my direction. But her eyes never caught mine. Another patron had just walked into the door, blocking the line of sight between her and me. Had she lingered on just a few seconds more, we would be staring into each other's souls. But that would have been too obvious. And I probably did not deserve it.

So that only time I saw her eyes was the last time. It was painfully brief. And it was hard to describe – both rhetorically and emotionally.

It was neither a "Hi" nor a "Bye."


* * *


So now, here I am, at the beach again.

Not a single windsurfer out there on the water. One or two sails have been rigged, lying lifeless with their boards on the sand. There are still the diehards, the hopefuls, the optimists.

... And there is me.

And there's nowhere else I'd rather be at this moment...

How appropriate it is that there is no wind today. For if there was wind, my heart would start racing as the adrenaline rushes in my blood; and at this moment, my heart does not feel like racing. It's taking its time, trying to be as silent as possible, lest it would further burden me.

And without wind, the sea is calm, as is my respiration at this moment. It too, does not want to disturb me.

Only the tireless waves continue their never-ending cycles of rejuvenation, offering solutions to the complexity of life in magical ways that I could never fathom.

A little boy runs across my lifeless line of sight. He, too, must have been about two years old.

It could have been me gently clutching that boy's other hand walking out of that record store.

And she would only have to turn ever so slightly to look into my soul...

...which has Love...that is all. Strongly. Exclusively. Steadfastly. For her.*

And the boy at the beach is now out of my line of sight, letting the waves coax me into learning how to erase the foot prints little by little, leaving a flat, smooth, glistening beach one more time.

But only the waves can do that...






_______________
*To George Sand