From New England to Oklahoma: A Love Story Across The Oceans, Part XI

The BETA Tape

It didn’t come with a warning.
No heads-up. No tracking number.
Just a package on my doorstep—
and inside, a tape.

Not a metaphor.
An actual, physical tape.
Like something out of the '70s,
except it wasn’t nostalgia—it was him.

I looked at it like it had three heads.

What in the world would it contain?

By now, I’d collected plenty of his letters and cassette tapes—
filled with songs, conversation, fragments of his voice.
But this?
This would put a whole new spin on things.
I would actually be able to see him talking.

This wasn’t just a tape – it was a tether. A relic of connection. A message across time and tide.

This was intentional.
This was curated.
This was him,
trying to reach me in a way that letters couldn’t.

He’d labeled it:
“The Comedy Show.”

On BETA. OB-SO-LETE.
And I had no way to play it.

Where was I going to find a Beta player?
Especially when everyone had long since traded up for VHS.

It wasn’t like I could stream it.
This was 1987 in a plastic shell,
and I was standing with nothing but questions
and more than a little bit of excitement.

It was practically burning a hole through my hands.

Then I thought—the video store.
Surely, they still had an old Beta player laying around.
Something dusty and half-forgotten?

I didn’t know what I’d find at the store
or on that tape, but I knew I had to see him.
Even if it was just through static and grain.

Today’s mail delivery contained hope stitched into the quiet rhythm of every day life.

A quest wrapped in memory.

I grabbed my keys like I was chasing something.
Not just the tape,
but the version of myself who was starting to believe in people again.
Who believed in the fun and the magic of magnetic tape.

And I knew that once I watched it,
I couldn’t unwatch it.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready to feel everything I suspected it held.

The drive across the bridge to the adjoining town
was a lesson in patience.
The video store on Main was open,
and I nearly busted through the door.

It wasn’t like the tape would self-destruct,
but I felt an excited urgency
just to know there was a possibility of playing it.

And they did have one.

The clerk explained how to work it,
how to hook it up to my VCR
so I could transfer the action from Beta to VHS—
while watching it at the same time.

Whew.

Back home, hooked up,
I hit play.
And briefly realized I was sweating bullets.

There he was.
Not polished. Not rehearsed.
Just real.
Two whole hours of real.

Talking. Laughing.
Pausing in ways that made me wonder
what he wasn’t saying.

It was intimate in a way that letters never are.
It was vulnerable in a way that calls never feel.

And it was goofy, too—as I suspected they routinely acted this way
to deter the boredom between the mundane, the continuous training, and the emergency calls aboard ship.

It was the first time I had seen him
since our “see ya” in San Diego months before.

And it cracked something open in me.

Because when someone sends you a tape,
they’re not just sharing their voice.
They’re asking you to listen
with your whole heart.

And now it was my turn.

Stay tuned for what happened next, as the journey from New England to Oklahoma—A Love Story Across the Oceans—continues at #theprairieYankee.

From New England to Oklahoma: A Love Story Across the Oceans. Part X

Connecticut and The Breath I Didn’t Know I Was Holding

I hadn’t expected it.

The tightness.
The way the land seemed to lean in as we drove east, and how my body responded without permission.

Somewhere past Indiana, I realized I was holding my breath.
Not fully—but enough.
Enough to feel the ache in my ribs.
Enough to notice the shallow rhythm of my inhale, the way I was bracing for something unnamed.

It wasn’t fear exactly.
It was anticipation.
Recognition.
The slow, creeping awareness that I was returning to a place that knew me too well.

Ohio felt like a mirror.
Not because of what I saw, but because of what I remembered.
I started to rehearse again—smiles, answers, deflections.
I started to shrink, just a little.

New York was the last test.
The final stretch before the return.
I caught myself holding my breath again, like I was trying to pass through unnoticed.

And then—Connecticut.
The driveway.
The trees.
The air thick with memory.

I exhaled.
Not relief.
Not surrender.
Just acknowledgment.

I was here.
And I was different.

Connecticut felt like an old glove.
Soft.
Broken-in.
Familiar in the way only a place you’ve loved and left can be.
I slipped back into it easily—routes I could drive blindfolded, faces that knew my name, rhythms that required no rehearsal.

At first, it was comforting.
The ease of it.
The way everything seemed to remember me, even when I wasn’t sure I remembered myself.

But as time passed, the glove started to chafe.
Not everywhere.
Just in a few places—subtle, persistent.

A conversation that felt too rehearsed.
A role I was expected to play without question.
A silence I kept out of habit, not choice.

It wasn’t pain.
It was friction.
The quiet resistance of a life that no longer fit quite right.

I tried to adjust.
To stretch the glove.
To soften the seams.

But the truth was, I had changed.
And the glove hadn’t.

So I started to ask different questions.
Not “How do I fit back in?”
But “What do I want to carry forward?”
“What do I want to leave behind?”

Tailoring the Fit

I didn’t throw the glove away.
I laid it flat.
Studied the seams.
Noticed where it rubbed, where it sagged, where it no longer held me the way I needed.

That’s when I started tailoring.

Not the place itself—Connecticut would always be what it was.
But my relationship to it.
My routines.
My boundaries.
My voice.

I stopped showing up out of obligation.
Started showing up with intention.
I chose silence when it served me, and speech when it freed me.

I carved out space—literal and emotional.
Walks alone.
Rooms with light.
Conversations that didn’t require performance.

And the discomfort?
I stopped resisting it.
Started listening to it.

It wasn’t failure.
It was feedback.
A quiet nudge that said: You’ve outgrown this part. Time to adjust.

Discomfort became my compass.
Not the kind that points north, but the kind that points inward.
Toward truth.
Toward alignment.
Toward the version of me that didn’t shrink to fit, but expanded to belong.

I didn’t leave Connecticut.
I re-entered it differently.
Not as someone trying to fit back in.
But as someone building a life that fit me now.

The glove didn’t need to be discarded.
It just needed to be acknowledged—for what it was, and what it wasn’t anymore.

Stay tuned for Post California: Life in Connecticut #theprairieyankee