The Bottlecap

I was sitting there in the passenger seat of his small SUV staring out the windshield at the nothingness that grows alongside the highway in Eastern Oklahoma as he started the long drive back home. The car was quiet. We’d sang all the songs and talked about all the things we could think to talk about earlier in the day, and now neither of us had anything left to say.

Being with Chad was usually easy, but something felt awkward. The physical space between us in that compact SUV was small, but we felt miles apart in that moment; both eyes locked in the forward position, as if trying not to engage the other. I was confused, a bit perplexed, so I twisted the top off my pop and focused in on the gentle hum of the tires on the road as I contemplated how we even ended up here, 3 hours away from home on a random Saturday in September.

It had been a bizarre day. Chad was tense, a little edgy, and seemed like he had been forcing himself to have a good time all day; a good time on this impromptu road-trip that he sprung on me the night before.

The day began bright and early at 8 am that morning. “Don’t be late!” he made me promise, “It’s a surprise!”

I was not ultra-enthused about being anywhere that early on a Saturday morning, being that I am NOT a morning person, but I desperately loved this man, so alas, I was there at 8…. ish and very curious to see what zany idea he’d come up with for the day. You truly never knew what you were walking into with him. We could have been getting on an airplane in 60 minutes or just going to get breakfast, but that was part of the fun… that I learned to love. He was a bit unorthodox and full of adventure.

“Close your eyes,” he said with some authority, almost immediately after I walked into his living room.

“What. Why?” I rebutted, as I made a frowny face. (I’m such a great sport haha).

“Don’t be difficult. Just close your eyes,” he replied.

So I stood there in his living room with my eyes closed for a few seconds, when he slipped a black piece of cloth over my eyes.

“Spin around in a circle,” he said next.

“What? Why? What are you doing? I thought we were leaving…” I began again.

“Stop being difficult. Just play along,” he said. I could hear the annoyance kick up a notch in his voice.

In all fairness, it was 8 am and I hadn’t eaten breakfast or slept enough for motion sickness games on a Saturday morning, but I obliged him and turned around in a circle one time and then stopped. He sighed heavily, grabbed my shoulders, and turned me around a few more times.

“Okay, point somewhere,” he said next.

“Point? Just anywhere? I can’t see… I don’t get it.. OMG what is going on!!” I snapped as I ripped the blindfold off my eyes.

“OMG why can’t you just play along?! Just pick a direction, Shannon. East or West. Don’t think about it. Just pick one….. Now!” he pressed, as he stared at me with this wild look in his eyes.

“Umm.. East?” I said hesitantly.

“Okay, we’re heading East,” he said, as he walked by me toward the front door, as if we had to leave right then.

“To where?” I questioned, as I followed him.

“I don’t know. I’ll know when we get there,” he answered.

It had only been about 5 minutes since I arrived, but this “surprise” was already starting to concern me.

We got in his Rogue, grabbed some breakfast burritos at Braum’s, bought a few drinks and snacks at the gas station, and took off down I-40 East, into the unknown. I expected the tension to tone down a bit once we finally got on the road, but there was still this underlying nag of pressure in my spirit.

We’d jam and sing to some fun songs, talk about God and what we felt like He was doing in our lives and the tension would subside for a bit, but then, we’d start talking about other things, and he’d find a way to bring up something controversial to debate, and we’d find ourselves right back in the awkward disagreement. It was this steady eb and flow of conversational tit for tat and frustration.

Time usually flew by with Chad, because he was always easy going and generally funny, but this day… this might have been the most mentally exhausting day I ever spent with that man.

We’d been in the car for over 2 hours, and I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of seeing nothing ahead in the distance, knowing full well there was NOTHING up in the distance. We were literally driving to nowhere, and the practical part of me knew the farther we drove, the longer it was going to take to get back home.

I was hot from the sun shining on me through the window, I starting to get hangry, there were no food places in the foreseeable future, and he’d really just pushed me over the edge with this debate over the moral and ethical dilemma of freezing and destroying embryos for infertility treatments…

“What are we dooooinnnnggg?!” I blurted out. “Where are we going? Did you really just trap me in a car to argue with me for 3 hours? I like surprises, but this is … I don’t even know what this is. There is nothing East on I40. We should just go back home.”

“Well you’re the one who picked East,” he replied.

“Well if you would have given me half a clue as to what this entailed, I would have picked South and we could have been in Dallas by now!” I retorted. “But I don’t want to drive all the way to Arkansas just because I said East, so figure something out or just turn around!”

“Well what’s up ahead?” he asked.

“NOTHING. There is nothing out here but Lake Eufala for the next 50 miles!” I snapped.

“Okay, well let’s just go over to the lake and see if we can find somewhere to stop,” he suggested. “I packed us a lunch. I thought we could have a picnic somewhere.”

“A picnic… Okay…” I said quietly.

I was really up for anything that got me out of that vehicle. I needed to move my legs and have some personal space. Lake Eufala it was!

We drove another 20 minutes and finally made it to Eufala. I am really familiar with the area, so I navigated him toward the town so we could find a gas station and a restroom. We ended up finding a cute little antique shop and blew 20 or 30 minutes in there looking at random junk, which for some reason helped reset us both from the previous hour of misery on the road.

We got back in the car feeling a bit more relaxed and ready to search for a spot to have this picnic he had envisioned. If this man planned this whole random day for one picnic, then I guess we’ll have a picnic… even if it is the dreariest, mistiest, day in September you can imagine.

We cruised around Eufala Cove slowly and didn’t see anything even remotely promising for a picnic site. Oklahoma had suffered a record-breaking drought that spring and summer and the lake was the lowest I’d ever seen in it in my entire life. I’d spent many summers at that lake, but this particular fall, the low water levels made it almost unrecognizable. The cove where wakeboarders once competed was literally dried up. Docks that once floated were resting on cracked red dirt. It looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic survival movie where people walk miles in search of water.

To make it even more unappealing, there was heavy fog that morning, so the ground was a little damp. The grass was all dead from the drought, the trees were bare, the water was gone, the ground was wet, and the sky was overcast with grey. There wasn’t a stitch of blue sky or sunlight to be seen.

We travelled 3 hours to have a picnic on parched ground under a bleak sky in the middle of nowhere. The writer in me could not help but see the irony and parallelism in this entire situation.

We drove over to another part of the lake in search of more appealing scenery. We found an area that had some new high-end lake houses being built, so we ventured up this steep gravel road to where they were tucked into the cliffside overlooking the more open parts of the lake, hoping to find a quaint spot to throw out our blanket.

But again, there was no where to set up our picnic.

I could tell Chad was getting really discouraged. He seemed really set on this picnic. He finally parked off to the side of the narrow gravel road we were on with a steep treed hillside down to the water just on the other side, which made me incredibly nervous, and he suggested we just sit out here… which was really nowhere.

“But you can’t even see anything from the ground over here. This is just brush by a gravel road…” I protested meekly. “Plus, this is all nasty red dirt from the construction, and I don’t want to get my new shoes dirty…. Can’t we just eat your sandwiches in the car? At least it’s not muggy in here,” I continued, trying to find a bright side.

“Yeah… sure,” he replied coldly, without even making eye contact with me.

He reached behind my seat and pulled out the most iconic woven picnic basket you’ve ever seen. He opened the lid and handed me a lukewarm sandwich and a tiny bag of chips. We both ate in silence.

“Is this all you brought?” I tried to ask kindly, but that mini sandwich just made me more hungry.

“Yeah, I didn’t plan on us being gone this long or being this far away from the City,” he answered.

I really wanted to start my next thought with, “I feel like lack of planning is the main theme of today….” but I just stayed quiet for a bit, trying to harness some empathy for his devastation I didn’t yet understand.

“Listen,” I started softly, after we’d both finished eating our meager lunches, “This was a really sweet idea. I can tell you’re really disappointed, and I’m sorry this day didn’t work out how you thought it was going to, but the point was that we were together right? Let’s just go back home. We can change clothes and go eat dinner somewhere. We could go see a movie…. What do you think?”

I’m trying hard to salvage this day.

“Yeah… we can do that,” he replied, without making eye contact or moving a muscle in his body; the crushed tone in his voice impossible to miss.

He put the car in drive and wound us down the steep pass back toward the town of Eufala, back toward State Highway 69, and back toward Interstate 40 for the 3 hour drive back home.

We were making our way down Highway 69, when he handed me a bottle of Root Beer – my favorite.

“I got this for you at the gas station,” he said kindly, but still with this wounded tone in his voice.

Right before we left Eufala, we stopped at a gas station to refuel and buy some drinks for the trip home. While I was in the restroom, he grabbed two pop bottles, one for each of us; glass bottles with twist off caps, unique flavors; nostalgia that harkened back to another time in American history, and he had this strange love for trying unique sodas.

“Thanks,” I said with a smile, trying to inject some happy into the atmosphere. He didn’t really accept it.

I held the bottle for a moment as I stared out the windshield trying to figure out how we ended up here; why he’d been so tense all day long; why this day was supposed to have been some fun surprise felt so strained. Maybe he’s having second thoughts about us. Is this the beginning of the end?…

It was way too early in the car ride back for my mind to spiral, so I broke my thought process, twisted off the cap to my Root Beer and took a sip.

“Oh these have sayings under the cap! How fun! What does yours say?” I asked him, trying to find anything to talk about that might get us back to center.

He twisted the cap off of his bottle and looked at it… and looked at it…

“Well…. What does it say?” I asked again.

He didn’t respond.

Still driving, and holding the bottlecap between both hands perched at the top of the steering wheel, he turned his head toward me and looked hard at me for a moment, then back at the bottlecap. Then back to me again, then back at the bottlecap.

Then, without any warning at all, he slammed on the breaks and veered right. I heard our tires squeal as he came to a screeching halt on the shoulder.

“Chad!!” I yelled,” What in the world is going on?!…”

He didn’t answer. He just kept looking at his bottlecap.

“Well what does it say?,” I demanded, because I was really annoyed at this point. “It can’t be something worth almost wrecking us over!”

Without a word, he flung open his car door and marched around the back of the SUV toward my side. I watched him in the rearview mirror with wide eyes, entirely unsure of what was about to happen.

Is the car on fire? Is there a crisis I’m unaware of? Are we in danger? Does he just need a moment to himself? What could I have said to make him THIS mad?

My brain was coming up with probable solutions in rapid sequence when my car door abruptly opened. He forcefully stepped into the space between the door and me; his body language rigid and tense. I could feel the shock and uncertainty on my face.

“This day has been a nightmare. You made everything about this so difficult…” he began.

“This wasn’t my….” I tried to butt in.

“Just let me finish!” he said, as he put his hands up in a stop motion.

“I’ve prayed about this. I was SURE today was the day. And then nothing… NOTHING went like I thought it would. You didn’t want to play my game. You didn’t want to have a picnic. You didn’t want to get your shoes dirty. The lake was ugly. The ground was wet….” he continued.

I was really hoping he was getting somewhere fast with this, because this wasn’t my train-wreck of a “plan” for a date… and I was about to let him know.

“and I just thought, ‘You know what, God, maybe I heard wrong. Maybe today is not the day.’ And I had already accepted the fact that it just wasn’t going to happen, but then I read this bottlecap, and it hit me that none of this matters at all….”

“Stand up,” he requested, as he broke his thought mid-sentence, grabbed both my hands, and pulled me out of the car.

“Shannon Manek, you can be one of the most stubborn and frustrating women I’ve ever met in my entire life at times, but you’re my best friend, and I love you, and I know we’re supposed to be together, and I’ve been praying all afternoon for God to give me a sign, and just when I was ready to give up on this day, I read this bottlecap, and it says, ‘Stop Searching. Happiness is right next to you’……..

So ………………………….. will you marry me?”

Before I could process whether this was an insult or a compliment, he was on one knee with this beautiful shiny ring, the ring I’d always wanted, in my face.

I stood there stunned, obviously. Speechless.

“Well……….. say something!” he said with a combination of irritation and vulnerability all rolled into one.

“Yes!” I said, as I laughed nervously back at him, the bewilderment of this entire moment written all over my face.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed, as he pushed that beautiful ring on my finger and stood up. “I was starting to think you were going to say ‘No’,” he laughed.

We hugged and kissed and laughed at the ridiculousness of that day and the fact that he just proposed to me on the side of a random State Highway with cars whizzing by, 15’ feet from a dead Armadillo.

It wasn’t the proposal Hallmark Christmas movies are made of, but it was ours and there was a beautiful lesson at the foundation of it.

Stop Searching. Happiness is right next to you.

_____________

I was thinking about our infamous bottlecap a few weeks ago when mine and Chad’s engagement pictures popped up on my Facebook Memories from 8 years ago this November. We took a picture with it in our hands to commemorate the moment a bottle of pop changed everything.

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between that miserable day (pre-bottlecap) where nothing seemed to go as planned and every attempt to improvise just ended with something equally disappointing, and this peculiar, frustrating, disappointing, and sometimes painful, year that many of us have gone through.

I think it’d be fair to say that 12 months ago none of us would have expected 2020 to turn out this way, when we were all getting ready to enter into this new bright and shiny decade of hope and prosperity. We all had plans; we had dreams; we had goals and vision for where we wanted to see ourselves.

None of which probably included covering your face in public, homeschooling your kids, being laid off from work, being disconnected from your family and close friends, being sick, being afraid of getting sick, and saying goodbye to people you love. All of that on top of the socio-political drama we’ve had to deal with, and I think 2020 has left us all disappointed, second-guessing the blessings we thought we were sure of this year.

“I just knew this was going to be my year, but then nothing turned out like it was supposed to… a year of provision turned into a year of hardship” reminded me so much of Chad saying, “I just knew today was going to be the day, but nothing went like I thought it would…”

‘Nothing turned out like I thought it would…’ seemed to hit particularly hard during Thanksgiving last week when I didn’t get to see any of the family I’ve seen every Thanksgiving for my entire life. So many of us had a drastic first taste of what this new holiday season will look like in 2020, due to forced separation, and some of us due to death.

But I think I can say this next bit with some authority, despite whatever circumstance you find yourself in today, because I’m no stranger to life not being what I had planned. Disappointment isnt unique to 2020 for my family.

When Chad suddenly died almost 3 years ago, 5 short years into our marriage, I had to come to terms with the fact that my entire life would not turn out to be even remotely close to what I had planned. Not just a day or a season or a year, everything I had envisioned for us and our family was gone in an instant on March 26, 2018.

Truthfully, I’ve spent 2 years and 8 months, as of this writing, learning what it means to find happiness in unexpected moments where there seems to be nothing but misery. Maybe that’s why the unpredictability and challenges of 2020 haven’t completely leveled me like they have a lot of people I know.

We’ve had almost 3 years of OJT at making the most of sucky situations here at the Robinson Casa. I won’t temp fate and say I’m a professional, but in some weird way, I feel like I was prepared for this or…. in the very least, a bit desensitized to the shock that immediately follows having your world turned upside down and all your plans ruined. We keep going, because that’s what we’ve learned to do.

If I’ve learned anything else over the last 3 years, it’s that happiness truly is right next to you… because happiness is an external feeling based on outside forces. Happiness is a temporary and fleeting moment of bliss. We chase moments of happiness like addicts chase their next high, thinking this is what life is all about, all the while forsaking what can bring us emotional stability and peace.

Happiness is a feeling; here one second, gone the next.

But joy… joy is constant. Joy is internal. Joy is a state of being.

Joy can be the refining lens through which we view life that sharpens our moments of bliss and softens our moments of pain. And once you realize how to let joy live inside of you, you figure out how to reach out and grab the happiness right next to you, no matter how the circumstances are masquerading it.

Wherever you are right now, Friend, however this season or this year is affecting you, this is my prayer for you:

I pray you feel the love of God surround you;

I pray you have the Prince of Peace inside of you;

I pray you rest in the sovereignty of the Lord over you;

I pray you see the hand of God go before you;

I pray you walk boldly with faith in front of you;

I pray you put the fears of this world behind you;

And I pray you let joy live within you, so that you can stop searching, reach out, and take hold of the happiness that is right next to you.

Blessings!

Shannon