When My Time Comes

For Ashley Drive.

If you were looking for me between 2013 and 2015, there’s a good chance you’d find me not at my own apartment, but at a small house nestled in a small neighborhood addressed 1114 Ashley Drive. It was sixteen minutes from my place, and I drove that sixteen minutes like I was driving to work most days of the week. Unmoored after graduating from college, I found myself looking for what was next alongside ten other people who were just as lost as I was.

We made up for what we lacked in direction by being within biking distance from a Walmart, which had a steady supply of Yuengling and Dr. Pepper to mix with whiskey or rum, which is surprisingly good.

On one particularly wonderful evening, it began to snow. My brand new husband Tucker and I decided that we didn’t want to get snowed in at our own apartment; we wanted to get snowed in with the group of friends we to this day refer to as “the boys.” On the icy roads, sixteen minutes turned into a solid hour. We arrived just after dark.

That night we tried to make snow cream, failing horribly. Someone made a snow angel outside in only his underwear. Mostly, we did what we always did that night: we put on some records and drank until 2 or 3 AM. We danced in the living room and in the kitchen. We talked about what we wanted out of life, and we talked about the people who weren’t lucky enough to be us— all while surrounded by the most remarkable people we’d ever known.

We were stuck there for 3 days, and I forget whose bed we slept in, but I’m certain that person took blankets and pillows to the bathtub and slept there so that we didn’t have to take the couches.

Another time of note, in the moments after a brutal friend breakup, wholly destroyed and unsure of what to do next, Tucker and I found ourselves on that same doorstep, but no one was there. We let ourselves in and texted the residents. We told them that we would be crying on their couches, waiting for them to come home. They were all there within the hour. Another friend, who didn’t live there but might as well have, showed up a little while later, grabbed a guitar, and made up a song about the girl that broke our hearts and ended our friendship. I still remember the lyrics and the melody, “Just because you have bangs doesn’t mean you’re cute.”

I remember thinking I was lucky to have ended up with these guys. I cried into a rotation of different shoulders that smelled like cigarettes and varying degrees of cleanliness. I felt so loved. To this day the smell of Tide and American Spirit yellows takes me right back to that night, more sweet than bitter now.

After 18 months of friendship, far too little time together, we all began moving away to start our lives as adults. Tucker, Stephanie and I relocated to Austin, without a plan in the world, on New Year’s Day. We set sail at 6:30 AM, and every one of these friends showed up to see us off. Bryce even brought fireworks. He shot them off as we left. Years later, I’d like to publicly say sorry to our neighbors, some of whom may read this newsletter.

Shortly afterwards everyone else began to move too.

Our paths diverged and without blinking 7 years passed. We all saw each other as often as possible in Atlanta, Lynchburg, Nashville, and Austin. We danced in more living rooms and kitchens. In every new friendship I made, I looked for them— Jon’s magnanimity and brilliance in all things, Bryce’s wit that makes me laugh as if I am the only person the joke is for, Jake’s gentle kindness and readiness to always be the first person to help, Taylor’s ability to never tire of me and always make me feel like I have a brother.

Really, I guess family is the proper name for what we are now. It doesn’t just feel like that, though. It feels like we’re soulmates, like we’ve found each other in multiple lifetimes, traveling down this road many times before. We find our homes in each other’s friendship.

Despite looking for Ashley Drive everywhere, I never quite found it again. You can’t really return home after you leave, can you? No matter how badly I want it back, I’ll never sit at the kitchen table beneath the plaid half curtains, or linger around that fire pit until the the coals go dim. Even though I’ve been looking for it everywhere, I could never find it because it doesn’t exist anymore. No one I love calls that house home.

Now we are left with no option but to carry it with us. In tattoos on our bodies, in photos from that time, and in whole pies from Rivermont Pizza anytime anyone is passing through town. Who I am today, and who we all are, is built on who I got to be within the walls of Ashley Drive, and we bring that into every relationship we enter into.

After all that distance, we decided to move back to the South, where nearly everyone who graced the hallowed halls of Ashley Drive still lives. We moved to Nashville, just off the street where Jon lives.

Lucky for us we’re now closer in proximity than we’ve been in years, and we can conjure 1114 Ashley Drive again when we’re together. We transport to our younger selves through a few songs that act as incantations to make a holy ground of whatever dance floor, kitchen, or living room we find ourselves in. We’re transported to our younger selves and for a few short minutes who we were and who we are now are in perfect communion.

The song with the most magic in it is When My Time Comes by Dawes. It is undoubtedly our song.

On a Saturday night last fall, one of our best friends, our dear Lindsey, got married, and as the last song of the night, she played our song. I felt giddy seconds before it started, and my eyes preemptively teared up. As the guitar kicked in, we found hands to hold and faces to kiss.

For five minutes and eight seconds the song held us, as it always does, back in that living room, dancing sweaty with the lights off, singing at the top of our lungs, like God himself could hear us.

Wedding photo by KT Sura Photography

*Note: Upon writing this I found out that [the house] has recently sold. It’s completely redone, and I hardly recognize it. Everything about the house that made it unique is gone. The firepit has been filled in, the walls have been painted, and the basement has been completely redone. The only sign that we were ever there is a noticeable dip in property value from 2014 to 2015 (after our friends moved out).

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