I told Stosh about what happened with Lisa and her friend, and he said a lot of people were saying Lisa’s friend, being a popular person from high school, was starting to sound stupid these days. I didn’t agree…or disagree. It was definitely hard to convince her that I came with the intention of reconciling something that I didn’t even understand myself. It’s like saying to someone, “I’m here. I don’t know why exactly I’m here. I only know that I’m supposed to be here.” Since I wasn’t expecting to get interrogated, I didn’t have such a good plan for dealing with the situation. At least it was over now, and I could go on with relative peace. The connection between Lisa and I had been severed completely, at least I thought it had.

A few months later came the summer of 2000. I was barely getting by during this time, moving between jobs at temp agencies because I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Maybe it was good to get a taste of everything first because I had no direction and didn’t want to commit to something I wasn’t interested in. I enrolled for art courses at MATC during the summer, but I dropped out soon after. Nothing seemed like it was the way.

One day, I was riding with my boys on University Avenue close to Hilldale heading west. We were always going everywhere and nowhere at the same time: this person’s party, that park, State Street, or wherever. We were a bunch of nobodies who tried to involve ourselves in whatever we could find to give our own lives meaning, which was a hard thing to do.

While we were driving, I noticed someone on the other side of the street heading towards downtown. It was a tall young woman with sunglasses riding a motorcycle wearing typical summer attire. It looked like Lisa, but it was hard to tell if it was her because of the sunglasses.

“No way that’s her! On a motorcycle??” I thought.

It must’ve been someone else.

A few weeks later, I was walking downtown towards State Street by myself in the afternoon, and I passed one of the outdoor parking areas just off of Gorham Street. I looked down the length of the parking lot and saw a motorcycle parked in one of the stalls, and someone was sitting next to it. I followed up with my eyes and noticed who it was. It was Lisa! She was handling some of her personal belongings and didn’t see me at all. She was about 20 meters away from me.

“I guess that really was her the other week on the motorcycle,” I thought to myself.

It occurred to me that I was seeing her for a reason. After graduation, I went more than a year of not seeing her even once, and now I’m seeing her twice within a few weeks after I severed ties with her, ironically. I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to her anymore, but I thought I’d at least be polite.

“Lisa!” I shouted.

Surprised, she looked up with her mouth slightly open, but her eye expression was hidden behind her sunglasses. Then she looked over in my direction. I kept walking in a straight path with my head tilted in her direction giving her a smile. It wasn’t a “Yay! I’m happy!” smile, but more like a sly, “Yep, it’s me again. I see you,” kind of smile. She returned the same smile and looked back down at what she was doing, with the smile still on her face. After a few more seconds, she looked back up and over at me.

“Hi!” I said, waving my hand, but an emotional protective barrier suddenly rose up all around me, and I turned my head away from her quickly and didn’t even wait for a response. I was still done with the situation and willing to forget about it even though it was one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.

About a year and a few months later, in the fall of 2001, I was working for the second time at my old first job I ever had, Pasqual’s on Atwood. I still wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go in life, but this place seemed like a good point of stability as far as work was concerned, though it wasn’t without its problems. Some of my high school classmates were still working there, including the one who got me the job in the first place back in ‘97, a young man named Nik.

Sometimes we would talk about the old days, and for whatever reason, I mentioned Lisa’s name one time. Who shows up to order food the next day? I looked through the kitchen window to see Lisa standing in line to order food. I was tempted to bring out her food from the kitchen when it was ready just to shock her and pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary about it, but I ultimately decided against it. I didn’t want to make it awkward for her because I didn’t know how she even regarded me. It obviously wasn’t hostile, but who knows beyond that? Where she ran before, it seemed like I was the one running now.

Lisa was far from the only one who ever showed up like that after mentioning their name after I hadn’t seen them in years. Some other people showed up a few days later, the next day, or even later that same day! For example, in more modern times, there was someone I hadn’t seen in about seven years. I was thinking about her one day because I was thinking about who from that job was nice to talk to, because communication flows a bit easier with some people than others. Three days later, she was suddenly working at my bank! As a reminder, it had been seven years since I last saw her, and she’s not someone I think about regularly. But with Lisa, it wasn’t a surprise at all that it would happen since nothing else so far happened like any typical encounter would. I was past the point of thinking any of this kind of stuff was just a coincidence.

In 2019

Years went by, and after living in a few cities around the U.S. and living abroad for four years, I found myself back in Madison after a long journey. I was constantly trying to get away, but I was always getting pulled back for different reasons too. I had been working for Weed Man out of the Middleton branch a few months short of a full year. They sent me to all kinds of locations: Wisconsin Dells, Baraboo, Merrimack, Portage, Janesville, Greenville, Mt. Horeb, Waunakee, De Forest, Sun Prairie, Middleton, Madison, and several others as well as to Green Bay once to help another branch. We were applying fertilizer, spraying for weeds, applying mixtures to keep grubs from destroying the lawn, doing aerations, and a few other services. It was really hard work, but that and the travel aspect made it worth it to me, as well as the management team, who all became my actual friends. There was one bad apple in the group who brought down everyone he was partnered with, but I had ways of dealing with him.

Not much happened out of the ordinary with this job, except for a few “coincidental” meetings I had with people I had just met recently. Still, there were definitely some stories worth noting based on some of the funny and surprising things that happened. No place is drama-free.

We started servicing lawns in early spring, and it was now summer. I was fertilizing a round section of grass in front of an apartment in Waunakee early one afternoon, when suddenly, I felt something I’ve never felt before. It felt like the earth’s gravity increased three-fold, and I stopped pushing the spreader I was using and was having trouble even standing up. Then I dropped down to my hands and knees and couldn’t even stand up anymore. The feeling was so heavy that I thought about calling dispatch and telling them I couldn’t work for the rest of the day, but I decided to give it another minute.

Finally, the sensation eased up. I was able to stand again.

That was really intense! I didn’t know exactly what that feeling was, but I was guessing it was related to something that was going on “out there.” It wasn’t anything that was wrong with me internally. I’ve been dropped by stomach pains before, but this felt like an external pressure weighing me down rather than something internal spreading pain throughout my nervous system.

Later that evening, I saw in the news that Trump ordered airstrikes on Iran and called them off at the last minute. Could that have been what I was picking up on? There was no way to know, but it all happened on the same day. Who knows what kind of Hell those airstrikes would’ve unleashed with Iran and its powerful allies?

The summer kept moving by, and interestingly, I kept getting assigned jobs in the neighborhood in Madison where I had that dream about Lisa in almost perfect detail before I had ever been there. This is exactly 20 years after I first went there to see a hypnotherapist. I didn’t think much about that old situation with Lisa these days, especially after everything I had been through in almost two decades since I last saw her, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still a tiny spark of wonder and an emotional bond still there pulling on me. But now, I was forced to reminisce about it a bit. So much time had passed. I wonder if she would even recognize me now.

A few weeks later, I was just finishing a job on a duplex that overlooks Lake Mendota next to The Cove condominiums. It was a tough job because the lot was situated on a steep hill with tall grass and lots of mosquitoes, but they didn’t seem that interested in me for some reason, unlike usual. I was always happy to get a job on the lake, though, because of the view and the feeling of freshness.

I finished spraying the weeds, reeled in the spray hose, and got inside my assigned truck. As I was looking out at the lake, suddenly, I felt something. I felt…HER. At any moment there are billions of influences that contribute to an atmosphere, but I was sure that I could feel Lisa’s presence out of everything else somehow, like a fragrance that was suddenly carried in by changing winds. It was too strong of a connection to not know what her presence feels like, I guess even after all this time. But why? I had done my best to forget about her, and I would guess she did the same. Why is this happening right now?