The One...(s)

It was a little over a year of being married that Gary and Barbara had a ground shaking conversation. At the center of the matter was something so trivial, as he later looked back on it that it should have made less effect in their lives. There was Gary early morning, after morning getting ready, driving to work, standing all day at that cashier's desk, wondering what his future employment would be. The times were dangerous, and he narrowly escaped being sent out to war.

Barbara Borg, a stunning mathematician steadily advancing toward getting her degree was a planner. She thought that talking to her father in law would perhaps motivate Gary to pay attention to his job not to lose it as he had lost his IT helpdesk job last month. There he sat on his lunch break and got a call from his dad only to get an earful from him about laziness and his need to take care of his family. Gary was drenched. Not so much about the call but about the betrayal by his dear Barbara. Friends told him that marriage gives these experiences all the time and it causes us to grow but things finally blew over on Valentine’s day 1916. Their conversation in the car lasted about a half an hour and the couple then told it all, letting it all out.

Fast forward to sometime in June 1917, Gary has been writing notes in his diary, notes to motivate him, to look over from time to time and he wanted to share these with a fellow colleague but couldn't find the opportunity. One of these notes read ---"Coming to the rocky shores of a river and filling up your bucket saves you the hassle of pumping water from the tank". In his mind's eye his riddles had meaning only he could understand but one day as he left the lunchroom to talk to John the accountant, he left his notebook open and found Sam his co-worker at the cashier office looking over the book. Before he advanced into the room, he made sure to make louder footsteps, and as expected Sam pretended to be otherwise occupied and walk away. These notes continued until the end of the year, each day Sam glancing over them. Gary at this point had written every motivational quote he came across that changed his views on life.

The only problem was that Sam his colleague was a female co-worker. Samantha Hedges was an ambitious yet shy young woman of 24. Her father being a coal miner worked hard and would accept nothing from his children less than college degrees. Her brother, an aircraft pilot in the army had gone through many close calls but the great war kept him away from home for some months now. Now Gary had come to gain a lot of respect for Sam over the years, but it was time to put the diary notes to rest. To her surprise the notebook was not there one morning and Gary and Sam both knew why. They would stare at each other knowingly and continue about their business.

Could a connection so strong develop without uttering a single word at each other, was it all in his mind's imagination or was there a reason for it all happening? Gary would never know. He found that Barbara and he could not utter a sentence at each other without her exploding it into an argument or have an intimate moment without the conversation derailing into another argument over trivial matters. Their interests were worlds apart as Barbara's accounting courses were drawing toward graduation. They continued as friends but could never kindle the spark of passion for each other... For the most part Gary had given up.

Two years later a series of events tore Sam's family apart and she continued to think of Gary from time to time. He had quit his job to find employment in a neighboring Province and could not stop thinking about the benefit he received from putting his thoughts down on paper, always wondering if Sam felt the same. He determined to ask her the next time they met.