“She’s in love with the boy!” Trisha Yearwood was singing the song out of the boom box as Tim and I danced barefoot in the sand. “She’s in love with the boy!” the song continued. “Come on, Timmy,” Puddin’ said as he got up for a beer and pushed Tim in a little closer to me. “She’s in love with the boy!” We were holding hands and moving back and forth from each other. Tim was twirling me as he led me in a country swing dance. “And even if they have to run away, she’s gonna marry that boy someday.” It was our song. Jen, aka “Shonka-Bonka,” was hosting us and our big group of friends at her parents’ lake house. The sun was hot. The sand was hot. When our song came on the radio, everyone started cheering for us and singing along with the song that is about “Katie and Tommy.” Our gang always changed the words, singing about Katie and Timmy instead. That was us. The song ended, and we raced back into the lake and jumped on an innertube. From the distance, we heard a low rumble that became louder and louder as Bryan and Shonka arrived back on the jet-ski. “You guys going next?” “Heck ya!” Tim hopped on, and I climbed behind him. He revved the engine, and we flew into the distance. He took some sharp turns, and I bit my lip. Then he slowed down and turned off the motor. We sat there together on the water, listening to the waves, looking up, and feeling the hot sun on our faces. The song was still playing in my head. “She’ll follow Timmy…anywhere. ‘Cause she’s in love with the boy.”
In the summer of 1992, I moved into a duplex in Lincoln with four of my friends. I was about to start my junior year of college. I stepped out of the front door and walked down the steps to the end of the driveway. I eagerly checked the mailbox. No letter. The disappointment of the moment washed away as I walked back in the door and saw Michelle, aka Marcia, making an odd expression, and I laughed. “No letter, girlfriend?” Marcia asked. “Well, no.” It was Wednesday, and I was hoping to have a letter in my hand from Tim. We couldn’t afford to make phone calls very often due to the long-distance phone charges. So we wrote letters to each other to help us get through the silence and distance of the week away from each other, him in Schuyler and me in Lincoln. I wrote every Sunday evening, hoping he would receive my letters on Wednesdays. The letters revealed how my heart ached to see him gazing at me again, holding my hand, singing “Brown-eyed Girl” to me. On Fridays, Tim’s black car would roll into the driveway, and the silence of the week would be immediately forgotten as he lifted me in an embrace and smiled down on me.
The duplex was built for college students. The neighborhood was filled with twenty-somethings. “I’ll cut the carrots.” A fresh bunch of bright orange carrots sat on the counter, and I grabbed one of them. Eric, aka 1/2 a Bee, was pouring rice into a saucepan of water. Tim reached for the wine glasses and started pouring from the spout of the Franzia box of cheap Zinfandel wine that sat on the shelf in the fridge. Soon, the wok was sizzling with vegetables and chicken as Marge stirred. Eric served plates, and we sat around the old hand-me-down table together, sipping wine between bites. Nichole got up to go fart in the bathroom, and we laughed about her good manners. Eating meals with our friends on Friday nights became commonplace.
When Tim drove me to Schuyler to meet his parents, his dad, Ernie, was slow to warm up to me. I learned from other family members that Ernie didn’t like the idea of Tim having a girlfriend from anywhere but the Czech population of Schuyler. Ernie and Maxine were so much older than my parents. In fact, Maxine was the same age as my dad’s mom, Mabel. They were both sixty-seven years old in 1992. We walked in the back door and up the steps to the kitchen. Maxine was prepared with a bucket of chicken from Gene’s, one of a few restaurants in town. We filled our plates with chicken and mashed potatoes. Maxine and Ernie gave updates to Tim about classmates he grew up with and other Schuyler news. The Schuyler Sun newspaper was sitting in the living room and provided prompts for further conversation after lunch. I saw pictures of Tim as a child at age four, the year of his dad’s electrical accident. Ernie was a lineman trained to fix electrical line issues on poles. He lost both of his arms in 1974 in an accident with a live wire. Tim was the baby of the family, the youngest of four children, and his life growing up was colored by the aftermath of the trauma of his dad’s accident. Tim stood up from the couch and grabbed my hand, pulling me up. “Come here.” He led me through the small kitchen to the narrow staircase that led to the basement. The walls were lined with old posters of polka bands. He explained that his dad had collected these posters of polka bands that had played in Schuyler’s Oak Ballroom over the years. “Look at this.” He drew my attention to a crate full of vinyl records. “It’s all polka music,” he said and laughed. “You’re gonna have to learn how to polka if you want to be a part of the Hron family.” He looked me in the eye with a more serious expression, and with a part of his lips, he snuck a kiss, then picked a record and played it loud.
My dad, Jerry, was twenty years younger than Tim’s dad. Our family culture had a younger vibe all around. My brother was still in high school, and my parents were in their forties. A group of my friends came with me to my parents’ house–Marge, Bryan, Tim, and I showed up at the door, and we were loud as we walked past the piano toward the living room. It was a short visit but long enough to break the ice and make first impressions. My friends were polite and funny and interested in my younger brother, Jeremy. We shared some college stories with my parents, and Mom offered us pie.
Tim moved to Omaha in the summer of 1993 to attend the University of Nebraska at Omaha. We helped move him into the upstairs apartment of the house on 42nd Street. We continued to live in separate cities, him in Omaha and me in Lincoln. Weekends were thrilling, full of fellowship with friends, and balanced with time alone as we started to talk about a future together. My heart started breaking every time we said goodbye on Sundays. I loved him. I loved his enthusiasm, his genuine nature, his laugh, his arms around me, and his loving heart towards me.
