It was a first time for all of us.

We showed up early to tour the auditorium, and this cute little old man who had more country music smarts in his little pinkie than I’ve got in my whole body led us back stage and talked and talked and talked about the pictures on the wall and when they were made (this cracked my dad up to know end.  ”Hey Courtney, wanna have your picture made?”  ”Hey Dad, you’re from Montana, please don’t.”) and the people in them and what songs they were singing and who their parents were and who they were married to and maybe even when they died.

Those dressing rooms were tiny and hot and for the Ryman Auditorium, not as impressive as you would hope.

But I think I might have started crying in one of them.

Because Carrie Underwood was going to be there that night, and Martina McBride, and those are two women I really wouldn’t hate to be.  And I thought about them standing in one of these rooms putting on their pretty dresses (and after I saw Carrie, imagining her doing whatever she does to make her legs look so freaking shiny, besides the obvious 8 hour a day work outs, holy COW) and I thought… what do I have to change about myself to be them?  Not BE them, obviously, but to have these opportunities?  To get up on that stage and sing Make the World Go Away or He Is Good or maybe even Better Not Settle?  To be a part of history, to really meet the people behind the scenes… the people who know?

I’m not sure who I have to be… I’m not sure how to get there and … I just know it’s the only dream I’ve ever had.  Maybe I should figure it out.

MEN.
UGH.

The biggest lament, though, was all the social standards that we feel like we need to adhere to.  For example, why is it that when a girl and a guy break up and the guy is the one who thinks it’s a big mistake, he has all of these tools available to him to help him change her mind?  Who ever heard of a dude who found it totally romantic to get flowers at his desk every day at work?

Let’s just say I know that wouldn’t work in my current situation. 

But listen.  I will never explain my situation satisfactorily to anyone, and it became apparent to me one day when he asked, “Do your friends and family think I’m an asshole?” and I had to wonder… do they?, that maybe it’s unfair to try to explain it.  I’m the one who knows myself, knows this situation, and knows him.  Yes, it has hurt like hell, and yes, I’ve definitely needed a shoulder or five to cry on over the past weeks…

But I still love him and I still think the world of him.  There is no black or white here.

And if there is no black or white… if nobody but the two of us are ever really going to understand (not that I don’t have some friends who have been AWESOME and totally In The Same Boat… that’s not it, but still… it was our relationship, not anybody else’s) then why should I have to follow these imaginary rules made up for… who?  And by who? 

Who says I can’t do whatever is in my power to do to make this complicated, foggy situation work out the way I want it to?

I know.  I’ve been through this enough to know that it nearly never works that way.  I know that moving on might just be the easiest thing for all of us.  But I have this FAITH that there’s still more of this story to tell. 

It’s going to be a fantastic love story.  I’m going to fight for it.   Gather all the faith I can find.  Do anything I can to make him believe in us.  I know that not every story has a happy ending but…

I don’t think this one has ended at all.  Not quite yet.

So I’ve got a plan.

And I’m gonna break the rules to carry it through.

There was no fighting the tears anymore.

I set out on a narrow way, many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you

Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

And I guess it was what I really needed to hear and I guess someone out there knew that.

I don’t regret him, he wasn’t a mistake.

But there are better things to come.

On my way from the parking garage to my office this morning, I walked right past Charles Kelly.  Like, we were less three feet from each other.  I watched him step into an unassuming RV with a mini-van towing along at the back.  We made eye contact.

And I’m sure he was all, “whoa, does that girl not have complete control of her facial muscles?  Her jaw is dragging along behind her.”

What I really wanted was to stop him and exclaim:

“Ok! Pick a song!  You be you, I’ll be Hillary!”

But I just smiled and waved and kept walking.

Someday…

It has nothing to do with actual recording quality because if you could see my set up you’d know it can only ever get so good, and it’s not even worth the effort it might take to make it that good.

But you’ve seen me post up mp3s of covers I’ve done in the past.  They’re usually songs I love in one way or another.  Something that’s fun to play on ukulele.  Something I really love singing.

But this song, obviously, is different.

I just can’t seem to make it perfect… not perfect enough.  This one HAS to be.

A few weeks ago I taught my last voice lesson for the foreseeable future.  That’s a whole other post in itself, but what it meant was that I could finally set my piano back up in a permanent sort of way, knowing it wouldn’t have to be torn right back down days later.  I put it up against the wall, and I put together some sheet music collage “art” to hang above it, with ribbon wrapped around it to hold music when I actually wanted to play.  Interchangeable musical art.

It hasn’t been changed yet.  I don’t suppose I’ll change it until I’m done needing that perfect version of the most perfect song ever written.

But really, it is, don’t you think?

I used to hear that all the time and I never believed it.  I was at school, in a music program, surrounded by a million other people who were just as good as me and probably working much harder than me.  And most of the people telling me I rocked were people who probably were pretty biased.  Or a lot biased.  Or just generally untrustworthy when it came to such things because of the SERIOUS BIAS HAPPENING.  Did I mention they liked me for ME so they had to tell me I rocked?  Yeah.  So yeah, heard it all the time and never believed it.

But to hear something like that in Nashville from people I don’t really even know and will probably never see again?

Killer.

And then an hour and a half later you’ve sung your heart and soul to the Raggedy Ann leaning up against your pillows and you think to yourself,

“Wait…”

No?

Just me?

The date alone guarantees that no matter what happens between us and no matter what becomes of us, I will always remember the night I met him.

October 29.

Important things happen on that day.

I pulled my little white orphan car up to the coffee shop, picked up my ukulele by its neck and headed inside.  The girl behind the counter smiled and asked, “Are you our musician tonight?!” excitedly.  I nodded.  We introduced ourselves to one another.  I set the ukulele down on a chair sitting at the edge of a cleared out space near one of the windowed walls and headed back outside for the rest of my stuff.

I think he was already sitting there.

As the night went on, friends and coworkers filed through those doors into that place stuffed full with warmth and the scent of fresh coffee brewing.  They’d smile and wave, and I’d sing, and say hello between songs.  It was casual.  I didn’t have a microphone up, and sometimes the coffee grinder was louder than my electric piano.  I didn’t care.  I was singing.  These wonderful people came out to see me.

It was a good night.

I moved back and forth, behind the piano, to the stool beside it, holding my ukulele.  Especially when I sat on that stool, I was terribly aware of him.  My foot bobbed along with the beat and he gazed back and forth between me and what I would later find out was a book by Garrison Keillor.  I was torn between the performer in me, excited to make a connection in the audience, and the girl in me, who was pretty sure he was paying more attention to me than he was comfortable showing, feeling pretty uncomfortable and more than a little giddy about it myself.

I had invited somebody to come that night.  Somebody named Andrew.  And he’d said he probably wouldn’t make it, and that was fine.  It was fine as long as he didn’t want to see me again.  He hadn’t been able to make it for weeks, and I was fine with finally letting it go.  He didn’t show up?  I moved on.  Simple as that.

I finished up my tiny little hour and a half of music and bashful thank yous and I started to make my way around the room.

So many people showed up!
More than I would have ever expected.
That coffee shop was FULL of people I knew.

Except Andrew.

And that was that.

I went table to table.

I sat.  I chatted.  I drank coffee.  I talked business.  I thanked and smiled and made silly faces at the kids who’d had no choice but to tag along with their mom to see me.

And at the end of it all, he was still sitting there, gazing up from that book far too often to actually have been reading it anymore.

I smiled as I walked past him, on my way to talk to the one table of friends I hadn’t made my way to, yet.

He stopped me.

He complimented my music.
We started talking.
I sat down.

My friends waved and let me know they’d just catch up with me later, no big thing.

We kept talking.  Music mostly.  Other stuff too.  I found out he didn’t own a computer, which, considering the year I’d just had, completely intrigued me.

The barista approached us.  They were closing up.  No rush, but would we wrap it up?

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” he said.

I looked at him, bewildered.

I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend.  Or a date to the sock hop on Friday night.  But I was still fairly new in town.  I was tired of trying to make friends and having them float away in front of me.  I was tired of people who exhausted me asking for my time, and people I could relax with just disappearing into my memory.

I needed him in a way I didn’t even know I did, until I met him.

No, until long after I met him.

So I said,

“Under normal circumstances, this would be my email address.  Or the URL to my Facebook page.”

He smiled.

“So, here.”  I handed him the piece of paper I’d ripped right from my songwriting notebook.

“I’ll give you a call sometime, ” he said, right before offering to help me carry my things out to my car.

I declined.  I just let him go.

And I loaded up my car and I drove home, caffiene and adrenaline pumping through my system.

Did I…

?

I did.

I rarely pay attention to the grapes I’m buying, other than to make sure they’re in good shape and are reasonably priced.  I never pay attention to whether or not the packaging says “seedless,” because I have never, even accidentally, picked up a bag of grapes with seeds.

But you should never say never, I suppose.

Of course, I know grapes have seeds, duh.  But I guess considering that I’d never, even accidentally, picked up a bag of grapes with seeds, I kind of didn’t think they sold them that way.  Or at least, it didn’t occur to me that I could accidentally pick them up.

I bit into one and it crunched.  I looked at the bag.

Hmm.  Seeds.

So one evening I was sitting out in the yard under our starting-to-bloom-kind-of magnolia tree with a bowl of grapes, spitting out the seeds as I made my way through each juicy purple sphere.  I decided to call my mom for a quick chat.

“Did you know they make grapes with SEEDS IN THEM?” I exclaimed.

She laughed a little.  “Uh… yeah?”

“Do you think, since I’m sitting outside in the grass and spitting the seeds onto the ground, we might end up with a GRAPE TREE?”

She laughed again.

Sometimes I like imagining things might happen, even though I know they won’t.

I’m looking for magic tonight and that’s all I can seem to find.

Grape trees.

Would somebody find me one?

“This is probably more your thing,” he said nonchalantly as he disappeared back into the other room.

I shrugged.  I could have listened to either.  Other than the fact that he really dislikes most modern country music and I’ll never (and I mean never) be able to play my bluegrass out loud around him, we really do have similar tastes in music.

Before I knew it, he’d reappeared and joined me on the couch, his head at the opposite end and his feet in my face.

“I’ll tickle them!”
“I’ll kick you!”
“Get your feet out of my face!”
“It’s my house!”
“I’ll tickle them!”
“I’ll kick you!”

We are, obviously, terribly calm and mature.  The ultimate picture of two perfect adults.

Things settle down slightly, mostly because he’s much stronger than I am and makes any attempt at self defense, tickling or otherwise, futile.  I start to relax back as “Que Sera Sera” wafts through the air to my ears.  Immediately, I perk up.

“You’re not going to sing,” he tells me.

“When I was juuust a liiittle giiiiirl,” I croon.

“Shut up!” he yells.

“I asked my mother, what will I be?” I sing a little louder.

“Courtney.” He gives me his fake angry face.  I get a little more obnoxious, on purpose.

“Will I be pretty, will I be rich?”

Now he won’t even look at me.

“Here’s what she said to meeeeeee!”

My arms are flailing and I am, for lack of a better term, couch-dancing.

“Que Seraaaaa Seraaaaaa, whatever will beeee will beeeee.  The future’s not ouuuuurs to seeeeeeeee.  Que Seraaaa Seraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

Gasp.

“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

His eyelids are low on his eyes.

“I think you can leave now.”

“I could, but I won’t,” I smile.  ”I’m done now.”

And he winks at me and we talk seriously just for a little while.

But we can’t ever talk when Doris Day is playing in the background.  Or Frank Sinatra.  Or anything I know the words too and haven’t heard in much too long, which, if we’re honest, is a good deal of his collection of music.

He’s in the middle of telling me some story or another (of course I’m not paying attention.  Like I said: Doris Day) when this song catches my attention and refuses to give it up.

When I fall in love, it will be forever
Or I’ll never fall in love…

I sit straight up again and in typical girly fashion (maybe just in typical Courtney fashion) I say, “Awwwwwwwwwh!”

He looks at me half quizzically, preparing himself to roll his eyes.  He can’t seem to tell if I’m simply reacting to a mushy song or if there’s a story to be heard.

“I sang this in high school,” I swoon.  ”In a restless world like this is, love is ended before it’s begun….”

I’m not singing, but I’m lip synching, and it might be a little silly and dramatic.

Maybe.

I realize I don’t remember the words as well as I think I should, so rather than continuing on, I throw my feet down next to his, put my head on his shoulder, and let him wrap his arms around me.

…and the moment I feel that you feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you….

We lay that way long after the needle has lifted itself off the vinyl, talking a little, saying nothing a little.  It’s not until we realize what time it must be that we pull ourselves up off the couch, and he hits play on the CD player again before wrapping me up in a hug and dancing me around the living room while we make shameless fun of Thom Yorke’s garbled up 15 Step melody.

We step outside and I sit on his brick steps while he smokes a cigar.  He kisses me on the cheek and sends me home.

I drive home wondering which of those songs is going to be “our song” to me.

They’re both ridiculously appropriate.