Mapping the Way
to True Love
Janet Kuypers
1/24/17
I’ve always taken charge
and led the way. But even on my own,
I accomplished more than anyone.
I was invincible.
I was doing so well,
I quit my job as an art director
in the second largest city in the States,
kept paying for my Chicago apartment
and traveled around the country by car...
Until I was stopped at a light,
and one car slammed into me,
and then another.
Then
I fought for my life.
And this sounds very sad,
and I’m telling you, it was,
but this is a part
of my invincible life —
because doctors from other floors
in the hospital read my records
and called me “miracle girl”
because of my miraculous recovery.
But this was the first time
in my invincible life when I felt
alone, because the only thing missing
from my invincible life was true love.
You know the kind, ‘cuz
in this hectic modern world
it’s next to impossible
to find your philosophical equal.
So now, because I’m a journalist
forced to take the train
because my car was totaled,
I’d ask passengers questions.
Tell me something about yourself.
Because my life was almost
taken away, I wanted to learn
everything about life I could.
Let me at least vicariously live.
Tell me something about yourself.
And one man answered
in the cold of January,
while I kept myself covered
in a coat, hat, scarf, gloves.
he asked me what book
was I currently reading —
I said a philosopher’s name.
He said he knew their writing;
he had read their novels, then
he named their non-fiction books,
and he even said he read
the lexicon on their philosophy.
I stopped him. “You’re telling me
you read a dictionary.”
He said yes, and the information
comes quite in handy in his life.
And on our first date
we talked philosophy
more than half the night
when not asking each other
vague “tell me about yourself”
questions. And though we had
only known each other
for two weeks when
Valentine’s day came, he decided
to give me an expansive map
of the United States,
because I had just traveled it.
He carried the large tube
to his work on Valentine’s Day.
A coworker saw it, inquired.
When he said he was giving
his girl a map for Valentine’s day,
the coworker laughed —
“She’ll hate that. Women want
chocolates and flowers,” he said,
but when I got that map,
I asked if it was okay
if I kept it curled up
until we had a home for it.
When I look up in my office,
I see that map on the wall.
And when I walk out of my office
I see a wall displaying his guitars.
He likes that I wanted
to display his music. And he likes
that I’m a creative person
with an engineering side,
because he’s an engineering
person with a creative side.
But that shouldn’t surprise him,
and it shouldn’t surprise him
that we were engaged
four times longer than we dated.
Yes, our dating was accelerated.
Because not many people
talk philosophy on their first date,
and not many people realize,
even before they start dating,
that they can’t be without the other.
Because now that we found
each other, we want to lock hands
and scour those maps,
because we want to see
every part of the world together.
Because when you get to this point,
celebrating alone isn’t celebrating,
and living alone isn’t living,
when you could be
with your one true love.
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