Continuation of Carolyn and Jay Story
Buying a Parkway
So Jay moved to Etown for two years. I got my own apartment in Lexington. I got a car.
I dated other people, but no one could ever touch that place in my heart that Jay did. He was the only one I didn’t want to leave at the end of an evening.
He was the only one who could prompt such giddy, ecstatic joy when I saw him … and such emptiness when he left.
And on the other end of the Parkway? Well, Jay’s mother told me some years later that “from the time Jay first said the name, ‘Carolyn’, we never heard him say any other girl’s name!” And she said, “We didn’t know if he would stay. As soon as he got back from Lexington, he’d start talking about going back!”
And so began a long distance courtship. I frequently went to Etown and Jay frequently came to Lexington. The Bluegrass Parkway was a toll road with toll to be paid at three places along the way.
We felt we bought a good chunk of the road and some small piece of it should have our names on it!
But something subtly happened as one “today” joined with another “today.” We were cautious about commitment, but other people saw us as committed to each other … and bit by bit we began to see ourselves in the same picture. (Yep, people took selfies in the 70s, just not on cell phones!)
