1972 was a bad year for us, and not in the conventional ways that most years seem to be bad for normal people.

In 1972, Susan broke me down, and we bought a home. It was a little two-bedroom number at 1020 Hollywood Avenue, situated right smack in the middle of the quickest-growing suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.

Tennessee was where we lived now. I have to backtrack a few months to remember why: In September of '71, Suse got a call from her mother. "Your father is in a bad way," she told Susan. "You better come home if you want to say goodbye."

So the two of us loaded up Henry's van-which we bought from him in '68-and made the trek from San Francisco to Memphis. Her father was dead two days when we arrived, and her mother, in tears, let loose that his final wish was to see Susan married.

We tied it up in a twenty-four-hour wedding chapel over in Murfreesboro and spent our wedding night in the back of the van. Spent two months there, until Susan insisted on a house. In Memphis.

So we spent a few days looking, got a loan, and picked out a two-bedroom brick house in the suburbs. It had a big yard, a garage, a washer and dryer. It was everything Susan dreamed of.

This was nothing near what I wanted, but over the course of the past few years, I had realized that what I wanted was nothing to Susan. What I wanted wasn't what Susan wanted, and what Susan wanted, Susan was going to get.

She wasn't a dominating woman; don't take my explanation of things wrong. Susan just let herself get caught in the suburban dream, and I can't fault her that.

What I can fault her for, however, is the loss of that spark that I saw when we first met. It gradually died out, like a campfire put out by a child's water gun.

So 1972 started nearly a full decade of a life mundane. A life content with the ordinary. Susan's life.

© 2005 Jason Gurley