"I take out the maps again and trace the roads that take me back to you
and I count the hours of coffee drinking and the all night crazy driving that I'll do
I keep thinking of you 'til I'm damn near crazy in my brain
Even start to write a song to try to ease the dark and empty pain
And I think about the way you looked
When we said good bye
So much sadness in your face
It always makes me cry
And an early Kenny Rogers' tune refuses to be moved out of my head
You know I love you, you know I love you
and I wish that I were layin' in your bed"
That's the first verse of "Kim's Song", a song I wrote in some God forsaken motel in Bloominton, Illinois, years ago when I was still "road doggin" it month after month. Fortunately, I no longer have to work six nights a week, four hours a night, breathing second hand smoke in lounges where nobody cares if you are working there or not.
Yes, many things have changed in my life since that song was written, but the one constant is Kim. Kim Wilson. The Kimster. Wilson. Her real name is Rose. At least that's what she told the worried face of her next door neighbor when Kim rang her doorbell. She told the woman her name is "Rose".
Over the 30 some years we have been together, she has saved my life at least as many times as I have saved hers. We are a complete study in the attraction of opposition achieving balance. It is true what they say about married couples. You live with a person long enough, you begin to assimilate at least some of their attributes. That's my story and I am sticking to it. She has taught me to listen, lock doors, ask questions, listen, close the cover before striking, use more toilet paper, listen, cut myself some slack, be nice, and she has almost taught me sto stop holding grudges.
I think I have taught her that it is okay to dial 911 when you really have the need.
I met her on the cusp, during the final chorus of the trial separation dance of 1976. She was new in town, in the first show of summer theatre, the musical "Kiss Me Kate". I was cast in it, too. Bill Baumgartner introduced us to each other. It is important enough to me to write it.
One night that summer, Wil Denson and a couple of his cohorts, thought that I needed "rescuing" and jumped us in some sort of testosterone driven intervention that I still haven't come to grips with.
Kim saved us. She gave one of Wil's accomplices a thumping in arm wrestling and they all ran back to the Joynt.
The summer of '76. I weighed what I weighed in high school, 145 pounds, but for completely different reasons. A bunch of us from the cast are out at Big Falls on our coveted sunday afternoon off. I walk away from Kim right in the middle of one of her sentences. I get about 10 feet up the sand.
"Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you!" Then she closes the gap, body slams me into the sand and I have never really recovered.
I weep when I watch her teach kindergarten. She is that good.
Many people misunderstand her, including me. That's because she always tells the truth as soon as it arrives shiny new in her head and it instantly exits trhough her mouth. At the Univeersity of Minnesota, Duluth, her best friend, Fred, names a tea after her: Constant Comment.
My now gone best friend, Gerald Fitzgerald, would call the house under the pretext of finding news of my latest misdemeanors. Eventually, usually sooner than I care to admit, he has a question for Kim and she saves him six hundred fifty dollars in therapy fees before I get the phone back.
Gerald would reach the point where he was able to ask for Kimmy the Counselor as soon as I answered the phone.
I love her because from the moment I met her she has been right, has told me what is right, and yet, great instructor that she is, has patiently watched at a safe distance while I fumble with the laces of the sorrels of life, her chosen teacher's pet.
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