Certainty

Music. It is a common theme on this blog. I've been working on a music project for awhile, and I am in the midst of completing the final leg. At it's inception back in 2004, when I would break up with my last girlfriend before meeting my wife (again), it was intended to chronicle the songs surrounding the relationships I had from high school up until that point. Very typical of someone at that age I suppose.

One song struck me in particular tonight and it has to do with my wife. Our relationship goes back quite a ways. More than 10 years now as a matter of fact. We have only been "together" for half of that time, but the parts where we tried and failed are what I'm tackling with this final piece, among other themes.

This is pretty quick, but it resonated pretty deep tonight. In September of 2000, I was on hiatus with my on again, off again girlfriend at the time. Stephanie, was on with her on/off again. But I didn't care. I was in Omaha and I was going down to the town where we met, Maryville, Missouri. I didn't know what I was doing, I just did it. I had just confessed my feelings for her from the previous year when we met after all. I had to see her. I had to do something.

I skipped out on my cousin's wedding reception and set off for the campus of Northwest Missouri State with no plan. I didn't have a place to stay. I had not a clue what Stephanie and I were going to do. We ended up going to Kansas City. I did the typical dinner and a movie, which for the night was Olive Garden and "What Lies Beneath." It all ended innocently enough with me dropping her back off at her dorm, and me grabbing a spot on my friends couch who still went to school there.

But what made me even post this tonight was digging up the Bob Marley song "Waiting In Vain," which musically and lyrically is very germane to this part of the story of my wife and I.

I distinctly remember driving the back highway to get to Maryville in my white Volkswagen Golf, listening to this song with the admin building and the high rises on the horizon with the sun setting behind my car, thinking "I am certain this will never work out." Thus proving that certainty is never certain.