Finding Our Star--5th and Last

The 1990’s

In the middle of the conversation, my call waiting beeped indicating I had an incoming call. I cringed from having to interrupt the prospective client’s conversation.

“Bob. Would you mind if I quickly answer this incoming call? I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Oh—sure. Go ahead,” Bob replied.

I hated to do it but my home office did not afford me the luxury of having someone answer for me and the answering machine would not come on while I was on the line.

Pressing the receiver button, I answered, “Good afternoon. This is Preston. May I help you?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Preston?” a girlish-woman’s voice asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Cindi.”She paused, then said, “A friend from long ago.”

I gulped. Who is Cindi? I had been dating a variety of women since my legal separation, but I couldn’t remember one with a name of Cindi. Besides, she said she was a friend from long ago. This was going to be embarrassing because I couldn’t recall a Cindi from long ago.

“Cindi?” I quizzically responded-half repeating and half asking.

Silence again. The voice replied, “Cindi. You know, Cynthia...Bill and Anne Summit’s daughter.”

There was silence. I was struck with instant recognition of my childhood sweetheart; a girl; a woman I had not seen or heard from in over 22 years. A bolt of excitement ran through me as I fought hard to control the excitement in my voice.

I responded with a voice several octaves higher. “Cynthia! My God! How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Cynthia. I’m on the phone with a client. Can you give me your number and I’ll call you back in a few minutes?”

She gave me her number, which had a North Carolina area code. This meant she couldn’t be too far away as I was living in Charlotte.

I hurriedly punched the receiver button and returned to my client on the other line, apologizing for the inconvenience. I wanted to share my excitement about hearing from my childhood sweetheart but I didn’t know him well enough. It was awkward.

The conversation with the client seemed remote, as I was clearly somewhere else. We concluded the conversation with an agreement for me to send him a proposal and several references of our consulting efforts.

Anxiously, I picked up the Post-It note that I had written her phone number on and stared at it. I couldn’t believe this. Why was she calling after all these years? I had heard she was happily married and had several children. Perhaps she started thinking about me and wondered how my life had turned out. Well, there was only one way to find out.

I nervously dialed the number. Cynthia answered.

“Cynthia. I can’t believe it. Where are you?” I asked.

Cynthia responded, “I am living and working in Mocksville. Do you know where that is?

“Of course,” I replied. “So what are you doing there? I thought you were still in Indiana. How long have you been in North Carolina?”

She told me she had moved to North Carolina from Indiana several years before. She was working and living in the small town of Mocksville, trying to raise three children. Their ages were eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen; two girls and a boy.

“My parents have retired in Lexington. My sister Mia lives there too. Do you remember her?” Cynthia asked.

I replied, “Barely. Was that the newborn your mother had when I visited you after Vietnam?”

“No. That was Penny. Mia was just a toddler when you visited. So, tell me about yourself.”

I informed her that my son was nineteen and was living with me. I told her that I was an equipment maintenance and reliability consultant working out of my home office. I had completed two undergraduate engineering degrees and had received my master’s degree six years before.

She asked, “That’s great but didn’t you drop out of school to join the Army?”

I responded with pride, “Yes. But I finished my high school at Fort Jackson and started college while I was stationed there. I later went on to complete my degrees elsewhere. So, Cynthia - still married, I guess?”

Cynthia paused for a moment and stated, “I was married 21 years. I...I‘m going through a divorce.”

I quickly and excitedly responded, “So am I. I was married for 11 years. I can’t believe this. I was also married to my son’s mother for 11 years as well. I had a couple marriages that didn’t work out.”

The conversation seemed to take on a different tone once we both knew that the other was no longer married. Both our voices seemed excited, as if a new door was opening in our lives.

She told me about her kids and I told about mine. As she was talking I recognized the girlish pitch in her voice from long ago. I listened to her talk about her recent surgery and how she had been recuperating at home. She was only now able to drive.

“Cynthia, are you busy tonight?”

“No.”

I asked her, “Is there anything in that area…like a good restaurant?”

She replied, “Not really. Mocksville is a small town. There is not much here”

“Bummer! Cynthia. Would you like to drive down to Charlotte for dinner tonight?”

She paused for a few moments, apparently weighing the options. I did not find out until later that she wasn’t supposed to drive that soon after surgery. “Oh…ok. How do I get there?” she asked.

After giving her directions to a grocery store nearby, I asked her, “By the way, what kind of car are you driving so I will know when you get there?”

“A Toyota Tercel.”

I laughed, “Well, that makes it simple, as I am driving a Tercel too. Mine is gold.”

“Mine is red, “she replied. We both laughed at the similarities in our choices.

A few hours later we met in a parking lot of a grocery store. When she got out of the car I recognized the smile and eyes from years ago. We embraced. She was different but the same. A few more wrinkles and gray hair but the same little girl was inside the one I was hugging.

We both had put on some gray hair and a little excess weight but I could still see and hear the little girl in her. She was still short, 4” 10”. She saw the little Preston in me. We were young again. Her signature smile and luminous eyes were the same. I was taken back in time. It was amazing how we could feel so comfortable after 20 plus years of being apart.

That night, after dinner, we went to my favorite park. While we swung, we talked for hours under the moon of that hot July evening. There were two decades to bring each other up to date. The sky was illuminated like a moth-eaten blanket held up against a fire. The sparkles of the heavenly bodies looked down upon us once again. The difference this time was we were together in more than spirit.

It was nearing ten o’clock and the park would close then. The conversation had been endless and the time had flown by. Our bodies had changed but the two kids were still there from long ago. I sheltered a little boy and she sheltered a little girl.

While sitting in the swing, I leaned over and kissed her. It was wonderful. It was as if there had been no time in between...our magnetism to each other had not diminished over the years. We laughingly reminded each other of the swings and stars in our lives. It was ironic that the swing had been a focal point in our relationship in the beginning and was once again with our reunion.

One month later, on those same swings, I told her I loved her. We had seen each other several times a week and the old emotions resurfaced. We were meant for each other and had always known it. We knew what soul mates were as we fit the description.

Two months later, I proposed to her on the waterfront of my birthplace, the eastern North Carolina town of Washington. I had earlier removed a plastic ring from a soft drink bottle lid and placed it in my pocket. It was to become a makeshift engagement ring as my finances at that time did not allow me to purchase a ring.

I asked her to sit on a bench at the waterfront. It was a sunny day with white puffs of clouds spotted throughout the skies. I dropped to my knee and removed the pop-lid ring from my pocket and held it out toward her.

“Cynthia. I have loved you all my life. When I was younger I did not have the patience to come back for the one I loved and we missed out sharing over 20 years of our lives. I don’t want that to happen again. You are and will always be special to me. Would you marry me?”

She looked at me puzzled, thinking it was a joke, especially with the plastic ring. She started to laugh at the joke but saw the tears in my eyes and realized I was sincere. A range of emotions raced across her face and she immediately started crying, dabbing her eyes with the back of her hands. My voice crackled as I tried to explain how I felt.

With a quivering voice, I said, “We started our relationship with a plastic ring. I thought it would be appropriate to seal it years later with one. Would you accept this ring as a token of my affection and love for you?”

“Preston. I will! I will! I will!” Without hesitation she took the ring.

We both cried as she accepted my proposal; 22 years after the original one in Lowell, Indiana. This time we knew it would happen. We were happy, yet sad, that it had taken so many years to close the loop.

Almost ten months after our reunion, my mother called. It was a few days before the wedding, and my mother told Cynthia and me that she wanted to give us something before the wedding. We drove to Winston-Salem that evening to visit her. When we walked in, she was standing behind the kitchen counter. She reached over and lifted several items from the counter top and gently waved some paper items at us. She smiled, tears welling in her eyes. There were several photos in her hand. She dropped them on the counter and pushed them toward us with one finger

“I saved these for you, Preston. I just had a feeling that someday you and Cynthia would get back together…I pulled them from the trash when you got back from Vietnam. I couldn’t let you throw them away. I just knew…I don’t know how, but I just knew. I couldn’t accept that it was really over.”

I lifted the photos to see old school pictures of Cynthia. They were part of the collection I had thrown away upon returning home in 1970. Apparently, my mother had seen me throw them into the trash and salvaged them for reasons only she would ever know. She had a stronger conviction in a reunion than I did at the time. My mother, a special and gentle person, would pass away from cancer several years later, but not before she saw us reunited once more and happily married. She had the confidence that someday we would find each other again and clung to those pictures with those slivers of hope. I wished I had possessed one tenth of her resolution.

On May 1st, ten months after our reunion, we stood before the minister in my home; the den was crowded with 25 of our closest friends and relatives. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room as we began exchanging the vows we had carefully written. There were words that reflected the course of our relationship. Everyone knew the story and it made the occasion all the more sentimentally charming.

The minister started to read:

“Friends and relatives, we have gathered here today to pay homage to the celebration of marriage by joining this couple, Cynthia Summit Steel and Preston Ingalls, in holy matrimony. In addition to celebrating the bonds of this union, joined together by thirty-seven years of friendship and love…”

He continued:

“Robert Frost wrote, “Two such as you cannot be parted nor be swept away from one another once, you have agreed that life is only forevermore, together - wing to wing, and oar to oar.”

As I repeated the vows we had written, my voice cracked after hearing my mother, a few feet away, gently sobbing. She had been the eternal optimist, never surrendering her hopes that one day we would reunite. I realized that she had been stronger than I. I was a little ashamed.

My sister, Lynn, had agreed to sing at the wedding but had to stop half way through, choked by the emotion of the event. Despite having been a professional singer, she succumbed to the moment. By the end of the ceremony, everyone was crying or fighting back tears of joy. It was a day, well past its original due, but it had arrived.

Our honeymoon would take us through Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. We would see the world anew and together. We had finally bonded as one.


Chapter Six{b/b}}



The 2000’s

The adhesive tape, used to secure photos and other objects in the scrapbook had dried up long ago. I could see the brown outline where some photos had been posted but had slipped out only to disappear into obscurity years ago. I wonder what photos they were and what moments long ago were captured with the flicker of a camera’s lens.

I looked down at Emi to see if the story had bored her. Teens have short attention spans and I was concerned that I had over-taxed hers. She had tears in her eyes.

“Papa. That made me sad.”

I carefully put my arms around her shoulder to comfort her and to hide my own tears which had started to well up in the corners of my eyes. I wanted to keep my tears to myself.

I smiled and returned the scrapbooks gingerly to their shelves. Who knows when they would be removed and scanned again for a revisit down that hall of memories?

“Emi. There is an old tale that comes to mind. Amoebae split into several cells eons ago. Some people say the development of humans embarked from those cells and have spread to the four corners of the earth. Once in awhile, those original cells meet and are naturally attracted to each other. There is a strong attraction and desire to remerge. They call those people with plural cells soul mates.”

As the president of my own consulting firm, I am fortunate to have taken Cynthia with me on assignments to many parts of the world. She has traveled to over twenty countries with me. We both thoroughly enjoy traveling but delight in it the most when we share it with one another. A striking Arizona sunset aglow with streaks of red and orange hues seems almost meaningless unless we both point at it the same time, comment about the sky, then laugh together at its simultaneous recognition. A bubbling mountain brook in Colorado doesn’t seem as stunning unless, hand-in-hand, we are gazing at it together. We have enjoyed the sunrise at sea in the South Pacific to the point that we did the exact same cruise twice.

We often send flowers to each other and more often than not, I will find a wonderful greeting card in my suitcase if she was unable to accompany me on a trip. Many times Cynthia will insist on more than one kiss when I depart for a flight; as if stealing one more trace of affection before I depart will bring me home faster.

It has been seventeen years since we reunited and neither of us can recall a day that we don’t tell each other, “I love you.” Cynthia and I are blessed with seven wonderful granddaughters. I guess being raised with four younger sisters; I was destined to be around women all my life.

One day, ten years ago, her father, Bill, was helping me to build custom shelving in my home office. We were taking a break and I looked over and impulsively asked him a question.

“Bill. Do you ever regret not letting Cynthia leave with me that time I came to visit after Vietnam?”

He looked up at me and without the slightest hesitation asked,” Preston. Do you ever regret not coming back for her?”

We both smiled but never responded to each others’ questions that day; we both knew the answers. We continued to work and neither said anything else about the topic. Maybe the questions were more rhetorical than inquiries. Bill passed away at the end of 2006 and would take those answers with him. My father would pass away on the exact date one year later. There are three of them at that table now…all playing cards and drinking those long neck beers in that smoke-filled room somewhere.

I told Emi that her Grammy and I are together. I guess some things are meant to be. First love... ever-lasting love! Emi looked up at me with tears in her eyes and smiled. There is a bond that cannot be split nor ever divided. She now understood that there are some things that neither time nor space can part.