When I went back to Denver to to get my mom Wayne stayed behind. Physically. But as he is most days, he was never far from my thoughts.
Except the thoughts I had of him while I was there were a little bit different. Mostly because I was remembering our earliest years together. Heck, our earliest days. The ones when we very first fell in love. And most of them were sparked when I passed places where we’d shared time together.
Tamarac Square
There used to be a movie theater inside, and I want to say there still might be one. The first movie we ever saw together was at Tamarac. (It was “Sweet Liberty” with Alan Alda, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Caine.)
But another fond memory I have of Tamarac is the day Wayne got a ride home for the weekend shortly after he left for Western State College near the beginning of the school year. I coerced my mom into giving me a ride to the mall so I could secretly meet him.
We stole away for two hours together, just walking around (it’s a very small mall) and dancing to our own music. (Literally. There was no music playing but at one point he swept me into his arms and for several glorious minutes we just held each other and swayed back and forth to our own beat. It’s one of my favorite romantic memories of him.)
Putt Putt at Kennedy Golf Course
Growing up as a kid this was one of my favorite places to go. The first summer Wayne and I were together we spent many a Friday and Saturday night there. This is also where he took me to teach me how to hit golf balls to take out my frustration when we were angry at each other.
Black Angus
I’m a steak and potatoes kind of girl no doubt, and Wayne is a steak and potatoes man. When we could afford a nice steak dinner out Stewart Anderson’s Black Angus was our restaurant of choice. We started the tradition in Denver, at the one on Hampden Road, and continued it when we lived in Phoenix, which also has the chain.
When we moved away from Phoenix nine years ago we had to find a new steak chain because there aren’t any Black Angus’s out this way. But when I went back my mom, sister, and I all went to the one on Hampden for dinner one night. The atmosphere was still the same inside and the whole meal I remembered all the other great meals I’d shared in that Black Angus with Wayne.
Aurora Mall
It might go by a different name now, but to me it will always be Aurora Mall. To Wayne it will always be where his great-grandparents once had farmland, then sold out so Aurora Mall and the surrounding retail, office, and residential sites could pop up.
It’s hard for me not to think of him when I pass this area. I don’t even have to go in the mall (which I didn’t this trip) for me to instantly think of him. (But when I do go in the mall I always remember when we went back to school shopping at the end of one summer. He sprayed me mercilessly with perfume when we walked by a perfume counter in one of the department stores and I smelled to high heaven for the rest of the day. Ugh!)
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Photo credit: Piotr Bizior, Photographer. 
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