Headed Out West

Our first real test of commitment 

Beau Dudte

Sorry all of my photos are buried in a box somewhere and nothing was digital in those days.

As is the case for many young couples who got together in high school, we had quite a few ups and downs in our relationship. Through the years we would break up and get back together again. Then when we were about 21 we split up and it seemed like our fairy tale ending just wasn’t meant to be. 

She moved home to her moms and I moved back in with mine. 

Well at 21, when your kid moves home and really has no sense of direction in life, it's not the best of times. My mom told me it’s time to do something, anything but you can’t just go to work, come back here and drink all night. 

Of course she knew I was just depressed about how everything was falling apart so she forced me to get back up. Sometimes you just need to do that with your kids. 

I said to myself, you know I have nothing tying me down here in Ohio, I’m young and I always loved living on Bainbridge Island, which was about a half hour ferry ride from Seattle, when I was 10-16 years old. So I called an old friend about moving back out there, saved up for a plane ticket, packed a couple suit cases, dropped off the car that Mandy’s dad still let me use even after we broke up and I flew back out west to start fresh. Let me tell you putting everything you’re taking to start a new life is about as fresh of a start as you can get. 

When I got there things didn’t start off as great as I thought they would. First, my buddies forgot to even pick me up at the airport so I had to drag my 3 bags and suitcases on and off city buses just to get to the ferry depot. Then when we got back to my buddies house, well his moms house, I found out that there wasn’t a room available for me in the house. 

I’m not even sure if he discussed it with his mom to be honest. So I got to live in his 12x15 shed with a lamp, a small electric heater and a 50 year old couch to sleep on. 

But as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers, so I made the best of it. Shortly after getting there I learned an old coworker of mine was the manager of the local pizzeria so I talked to him about getting a job. After a few months my boss asked if I wanted to move in with him and his three roommates in a house that was only a couple blocks from work. Now this was no ordinary looking house and neither were the occupants. When you walk up to the front, most of the house was covered in ivy and there was a mannequin standing on the front porch dressed in camouflage, or in drag, or holding a beer. Inside the house was nothing but stacks of empty beer cans, dirty dishes and minimal food. So essentially a perfect place for a single 21 year old guy trying to bounce back after losing his high school sweetheart.

If you went up stairs you’d probably bump into Bennet, a 6’ 5” skinny guy with jet black hair halfway down his back and kinda had a whole Undertaker vibe going on, always in his long black trench coat that typically had several of his chef knives tucked inside. To say he looked intimidating was an understatement but turns out some of the roughest looking people are sometimes some of the kindest. 

To say  the least this was a very colorful home with very colorful characters.

Shortly after that I was in charge of either opening or closing this small pizza shop tucked away in the back corner of an outdoor shopping plaza , so naturally I was given a set of keys. Yes a 21 year old single guy who frequented the Mexican cantina a few doors down on a nightly basis, had the keys to a pizza shop. Now don’t get me wrong it was no secret to my boss that we would regularly close the bar and then head over to make ourselves our own personal pizza. I mean he would be with us half of the time and finish off leftovers at home the other half of the time. 

While I was living my best single life for the first time as an adult, I was still in constant contact with Mandy. We would send letters, (those were like hand written emails on a piece of paper that the mail man would deliver to you after a few days of waiting) pictures and call each other once in a while just to check up on each other. The first letter I got from her with a stack, and if you know Mandy and pictures, I mean stack of pictures, I had to walk outside to read. It had been a few months and I still would come back from the bar and write letters to her that I really didn’t plan on sending, mainly because I had no idea where she was at that point. I sat in my damn shed that wasn’t even mine looking through those pictures and wondering how badly have I screwed up this time. I went from a cockroach infested trailer at 18 to a shed that was one drunken night from going up in flames. 

Come to find out later, she had found herself in a physically abusive relationship and I had found myself in a substance abuse relationship, so it was safe to say things were not going great for either of us. Little did I know however, she had been devising a plan to jump in a car and drive out to Seattle with her friend and all of their belongings. When their plan fell through (thankfully because I can’t see someone who likens driving the one hour to Cleveland to Homers The Odyssey, driving 2,000 miles to the west coast) She wasn’t sure when or if she’d see me again. 

Later that year in September however, my brother decided to buy me a plane ticket to come home for a week for my birthday. So naturally, when I got back into town the first phone call I made was to Mandy’s dad, if anyone knew how to find her it was him. He told me that she was living with her piece of shit boyfriend, his words not mine, in Lodi but didn’t know where he’d be or what he’s doing. But he said if you need a vehicle to pick up her and her stuff we can take my truck. I said well, let’s hold off on that while I call up all of our old friends to get together that weekend. Of course Tiffany, that same best friend from Wendy’s, said she was having a party at her house and that Mandy was going to be there. So it was set, holy shit I’m going to see her! When I got there she hadn’t showed up yet so instead of catching up with old friends I nervously paced on the front porch thinking of what I might say to her when I saw her and rerunning old memories in my mind. Then I saw her old black cavalier with her awesome coffee can sized exhaust that everyone had to have back then, pull in the driveway. She was here, after 6 months or so of waiting she was finally here. 

To say my heart was pounding out of my chest doesn’t even do justice to the level of nervousness and anxiety that was running through me in that moment. My body was going 100 mph but my brain was at a standstill trying to figure out what to say.

As she got out of her car and she came to give me a hug all she could get out was, “look how dirty my car is!” Obviously I wasn’t the only one who was a bit nervous. 

For the rest of the night her and I stood away from the other 15-20 people that were there and just talked. At some point she gave me a hug and I couldn’t help myself so I kissed her like I hadn’t kissed her in years. The next thing we heard from over by the bonfire was, Tiffany,  “AWWWWEE Beau and Mandy are back together!!!”

I was thinking “back together” was maybe a bit of a stretch, I mean I live 2000 miles away, how can we be back together? 

But then a couple days later we went to her dads house together and he said if this is what you want I’ll pay for the ticket and help you pack. Now fellas, to have your girlfriends dad say he’d help move his daughter half way across the country, I mean that’s the ultimate sign of approval, and the single most thing I am grateful for from this man. Since day 1 he always treated me like family. If everyone else had 20 presents on Christmas morning, him and his wife made sure I did too. One phone call later back to my roommate Chris and now we had a 6th roommate. 

But I have a daughter now and I can’t imagine what kind of guy it would take for me to do the same but I know it wouldn’t have been for a pizza boy with no car and who has now learned more Spanish in the back parking lot of a cantina than he did in high school. 

A couple days later she boarded her first flight ever to follow me to a place where I was the only person she knew. She left her whole family, her car, her friends and just said "let’s go". 

When we got there we were still living with all of the roommates, neither of us had a car, I mean we didn’t really have to have one because we lived in town; but it made it harder to progress from where we were at. She started working at a daycare and I was still at the pizza shop. It was a struggle for sure but at this point we were together and we’ll just have to figure the rest out. 

Her moving back with me ended up being the best thing for me at that time in my life. The partying had become too much and was really starting to take over my life and every dollar earned. I had bar tabs that would always be open and would be more than my rent at the end of the month. When Mandy was back though I didn’t need to, or more than likely that crap just wasn’t going to fly with her. 

One night about 6 months after moving out there with me, she used her power of persuasion, which was a bottle of tequila and and that cute little twinkle in her eye, and asked if we could move back to Ohio. Of course I knew I wasn’t doing anything to better myself there and I knew she missed her family and so did I. So of course I agreed that we could move back SOON.

It didn’t take long, I believe it was right before my hang over wore off from her sneaky bottle of tequila, she had informed me she had purchased two tickets leaving Seattle within the next week! Ladies long story short -- if you want your man to do something you know he’ll put up a fight about - just get him drunk and look cute. We’re pretty easily persuaded at that point, then just say, but you said… Side note, “Our” decision to have a second kid was kinda made the same way. Although I wouldn’t take it back for anything because I love that little man, but I also love to throw the whole “entrapment” in her face to this day!

When we did return to Ohio I soon found out that my Ohio license was suspended and a failure to appear warrant was outstanding. Apparently an unpaid seatbelt ticket turned into a suspended license and a week before I moved to Seattle I was pulled over and informed of this. Well clearly I needed a public defender to handle this, as I already had bought my tickets and was moving out of state. He told me it’s fine I’ll get this taken care of and we’ll inform you of anything by mail. Come to find out, shortly after leaving he was able to drop me as a client and as far as the court knew I had fled the state. Eventually that got cleared up but they must’ve had a lot of man hours put into looking for me, because their bill was ridiculous. But now we were home, we were together, we learned a thing or two along the way, which is probably responsible for how we’re together to this day. Although it may have only been for 6 months, the fact that she left everyone and everything she knew just to be with me, will always be something I remember. 

It made us realize exactly what we wanted in life and that one thing was just to be together. It made us appreciate what we had and even though, there might be a million fish in the sea none of them stood up to what we had together. So if you’re lucky enough to find that one person in your life that just makes you want to be a better version of yourself. Don’t give up, don’t quit and fight like hell to keep that person in your life. Companionship can be easily found but a real partnership is hard to come by. This would also help prepare us for these last several years when at any time she could’ve said I can’t do this but instead always said, WE’VE GOT THIS!