Free Things I Want to Say by Cyndi Myers Page B

“I’m on my way to California—I’m going to be living there. But twenty years ago I spent my honeymoon here. The people who owned the house then rented rooms and my husband and I stayed here.”
    Some of the stiffness went out of the woman. “Yes, I remember hearing the Stolzes sometimes rented rooms.” She looked toward the end of the porch. “You would have stayed in this bedroom over here, is that right?”
    “Yes. I remember the door onto the porch.” Alice led the way to the white-painted door. The Amish woman opened it and ushered us in. “My oldest sons sleep here now, but you are welcome to look.”
    There was nothing remarkable about the room, except that it was much neater than I’d expected a teenage boy’s room to be. A pair of maple twin beds shared space with a simple desk and an old-fashioned chest of drawers. Simple white curtains at the windows and patchwork quilts on the beds were the only decoration.
    “When Bobby and I stayed here, there was a big white iron bed,” Alice said. She stood in the middle of the room,a soft expression on her face. “It was spring, and we left the window open at night. I remember the smell of jasmine.”
    “The jasmine is still there,” the Amish woman said. “And the white bed is in my daughters’ room.”
    Alice nodded, as if satisfied to know these icons of her past still existed. “Thank you for letting me look,” she said, and led the way back onto the porch.
    “You were happy in your marriage?” the Amish woman asked, her tone puzzled, perhaps because she’d noted the lack of a wedding ring on Alice’s finger and the absence of a husband.
    “We were happy for a long time,” Alice said. Her eyes still held a dreamy look, as if she was once more that child bride, ignorant of everything to come in her life. “Thank you,” she said again, and descended the steps to the driveway.
    I nodded to the Amish woman and her son, and took off after Alice. Neither of us said anything as she turned the truck around. When we were out of sight of the house, I said, “Is there anywhere else you’d like to visit? Anything that was special to you during your honeymoon?”
    She shook her head. “No. That house was the only place.” She glanced at me, and some of the sadness returned to her expression. “I just wanted to see, one more time, a place where I’d been really, truly happy.”
    Her words made me ache. “You can be happy again,” I said. “Now that you’ve beat the cancer and you’re going to Ojai to start over. You could meet someone and…”
    She held up her hand to stop my babbling. “I’ll never be happy in that way again—the kind of happiness that comes from being so innocent and untouched by tragedy of any kind. It’s something only young people can know. And we’re too ignorant then to know how precious it is.”
    I nodded, understanding what she was saying, but unsure if I’d ever known the emotions she was talking about. Evenchildren can be touched by tragedy, I thought. And yet, they’re often happy in spite of it.
    Maybe that was the real test: to learn to be content in spite of our troubles. To find the good in the midst of all the bad.
     
    The next morning we hit the road again, this time with me behind the wheel. Though I was a little nervous about piloting the big truck, I was also secretly thrilled. There’s nothing like sitting above the rest of the traffic to make you feel a little superior and powerful.
    “I always wondered what it would be like to be a long-haul trucker,” Alice said as we sped west on Route 283. “Or one of those people who live in a motorhome, always traveling from place to place. In a way, it’s very romantic and all, but I think I’d miss having a real home.” Funny word, home . Simple, yet charged with meaning. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had a real home,” I said. “Not really.”
    “What do you mean? Of course you did. You lived in the same house for the first sixteen years of