Good Things Do Happen

"When things are good
I don't believe that they're for real
I really wish I could just tell myself I gotta feel
Feel something else instead
Cause lately life is like a dream
It's messing with my head
I must be dead
So, suddenly it's all picture perfect
Life is so good and I don't deserve it."

-Phoebe Ryan

Good things do happen.

It's silly because I knew that. I know that, but sometimes I forget because life isn't easy and not a lot actually goes smoothly. Maybe sometimes it's just me and this time of life. You know how multiple years can give you dump truck load of hard after dump truck load of hard? These past years the dump truck has been at constant work. I brace myself always for the next bad thing to happen. The next loved one to pass away. The next disappointment to happen. The lesson repeatedly being pounded into my brain is that nothing, absolutely nothing, ever works out as easy as you think it will.

What's hard for me is that I have the tendency to fantasize about future events till there is no possible way for me not to be disappointed by the actual happenings. It's something I've done since I was little, but it's gotten a lot better. If you don't have expectations, then you can't be disappointed. If you aren't up on an impossibly high cliff, then you don't have to fall. It's a bit of a skeptical way to look at things, but...then something unexpected happens, and you're reminded:

Good things do happen.

That's why we have hope - to sustain us through these dump truck load years when sometimes good things seem far away, even though they are always around us. When something good happens, you then are sustained by not just hope but also memories. Good memories. Love-filled memories. Memories that sweep over you in your most unsuspecting moment and leave you wondering how you were so blessed to experience those things.

Good things do happen.

This past Summer was hard and exhausting, but before all that, way back on April 6th of 2007, good seeds were planted. I received a letter in the mail from a girl in South Carolina. We wrote, we blogged together for awhile, we e-mailed, and then went back to good ol' snail mail. As the years progressed, my list of penpals grew smaller and smaller till she and one other girl was left, but that meant the letters only grew. Long, rambling letters full of complete randomness and mundane facts that only we could possibly be interested in. Since 2010 we played with the idea of visiting each other. We always knew we would one day, but it just hadn't worked out. Then out of the blue last February, she said she'd come visit me in the beginning of June.

So she bought the tickets. We skyped for the first and only time. And I planned. And planned. This was unlike anything I had ever done before because I tell myself I don't need something or I'm perfectly fine here, and I wasn't even the one going anywhere. On June 1st, we headed over to the Seattle airport to pick her up. We were there early and waited for what seemed an eternity. I knew what she looked like. I was pretty sure on that, but man, my heart was beating fast. I'm seriously the awkwardest person in existence, and I was there trying to frantically think what I was going to say. What I was going to do when I saw her for the first time. Whether I would be just who she imagined I was from the letters or whether I would disappoint - that was my greatest fear. What if I didn't live up to her expectations?

Then there she was, coming out security, and it didn't feel weird, and she graciously overlooked my awkwardness. I don't think I have ever had so much fun in my life. This was the first time she had ever come out west.  We took the ferry to Bainbridge island to see the Seattle skyline. And to see snowy and majestic Mt. Rainier. To Pike's Market where we went into a bookshop and had the coolest story ever to tell - "We've been penpals since we were twelve and met face-to-face for the first time today." I showed her my mountains. She saw banks of snow in June. And elk along the roadside. We drove around in the farmlands trying to find an old fort and wandered along the cow trails. We dashed through the valley museum before it closed and ruined our dinner with a root beer float at the little, old-fashioned fountain attached to the museum because she had never had a root beer float before. We drove through endless evergreen forests, saw Mt. St. Helens, went to the Pacific ocean. We wandered too far down (up?) the Long Beach Peninsula (Folks, they call it Long Beach for a reason) because we wanted to reach the rocks and got stuck on the beach in the dark at 11 trying to find her shoes and the pathway to the little cottage we rented.

Even though our feet felt like we were walking on daggers the next day, we wandered through the historical, little town of Oysterville, and I showed her the little red and white church where I'd get married someday with her as my bridesmaid. On the last day, we followed my family's tradition and went to say goodbye to the beach, and I misplaced my shoes, and we misplaced the pathway back to the cottage. I walked barefoot painfully back along the sidewalks and got some weird glances while she ran ahead and checked out of the cottage before the checkout time. We saw the lighthouses on Cape Disappointment. Climbed up into the Astoria Column past a flood of kids on a field trip, and I remembered why I really don't like heights as I pasted myself against the column. Long hours in the car through more forest, playing music we both liked because we like the same music, and losing our cellphone reception (and afraid that our parents might think we got lost in some cave somewhere). Plunged ourselves into this:

Because why not? And because I totally didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. We would have died if not for the mercy of some desperate looking people we passed on the way to one entrance of Ape Cave because our stupid flashlight would've failed partway through. And you can't possibly survive in Ape Cave without flashlights because you climb over high areas of boulders on boulders, and she hit her head twice because she is taller than me, and we worried about what would have happened if she knocked herself out, and this was the second time I was sure we were going to die and couldn't believe what we were doing, but in spite of all that, we survived only to find the route home still shut from the winter's snow so we had to back track, and she drove all the way, even though there were deer and mice and rabbits on the highway, because she knew I didn't like to drive in the dark. And we got home at 2 o'clock in the morning. And it wasn't just the big things and the traveling and the adventuring. It was the talking and wandering and companionship.

It was the realizing she came across the whole country to meet me face to face, and for the first time in my whole life knowing I had a best friend in the world. It didn't matter if she went back home after nine days, leaving a hole inside, because it just didn't. I realized again that good things do happen - things that you can't possibly expect or imagine. And that's what I've been remembering all Summer, and when I remember, I realize I am blessed beyond measure.