The keys to my future: Two cool ways the first man I lived with changed my life

Photo taken by Dan of me in Hawaii.

Mornings with my mother were a chaotic dance that always began with the grinding of coffee beans and usually ended with a frantic search for car keys. 

 

Every time I watched this stressful performance, I promised myself I wouldn’t follow her lead. But of course I did, finding myself dancing the same clumsy, loud steps for years — until I moved in with Dan.

 

I’m not sure how many times he watched the chaos before ending it — maybe once? As someone who re-created the same anal artwork with the careful positioning of his wallet, watch and name tag on his dresser every night, Dan could not let chaos reign in his home.

So he added a hook to my bookshelf near the front door and said, “Your keys go here.”

 

That was cool.

 

Because more than thirty years later, I still hang my car keys on a hook. But that simple switching of chaos to calm wasn’t the best thing Dan did for me. No, the best thing he did was help me earn a college degree.

Without parents to offer me support or stability after graduating high school, I treaded water for years, working full-time while doggedly starting but rarely finishing classes at my town’s community college.

 

A science teacher who noticed the pattern announced the first day of one semester that there were people registered for his class whom he knew would drop it, and he urged them (or was it just me?) to quit right then so others who really needed the course could take their place.

 

But I didn’t; I convinced myself that I would stay and finish this time. But I didn’t; I dropped that course, again. And I might have done it yet again if I hadn’t next enrolled in the math class where I met Dan.

 

I first went out with the cute guy sitting next to me because he seemed calm and smart. And I kept dating him because he was definitely NOT like the last guy who asked me out — a 26-year-old I dropped off at his family’s apartment afterward because he didn’t have his own car.

Like me, Dan was on his own, having moved out of his father’s house as soon as he could, and we shared the goal of completing a college degree — him wanting to being the first in his family to earn one, and me wanting to achieve what my mother and both her parents had done.

But unlike me, Dan first earned a well-paying union job at a grocery store that allowed him to buy his first home at 19. I could not have been more impressed at how Dan didn’t just draw a map for his life, but successfully followed it, and so I happily hitched my wagon to his when he asked me to move in.

Now finally accountable to someone other than myself, I started finishing classes and eventually transferred to the university where I earned my bachelor’s degree. And though Dan later joined me there, we broke up soon after moving in together again.

Because graduating college was the only goal we shared, and our time apart finally gave me the courage to admit out loud that I no longer saw me on the map of his life, nor him on mine.

And while I wasn’t always thankful for the time we spent together (especially the time he wouldn't let me finish dessert), I now feel incredibly grateful to have met Dan when I did — because he steered us both toward a dream I might never have achieved without him. And that is very cool.

Dan washing a truck he just bought himself.