2000-09-19 - 09:14 MDT

September 19, 2000

First Love

A little boy, an only child who craved a sibling and would never have one, started school one day. With shakes and quakes, awash in the midst of kids, he tried to find solid ground besides the Grown Up Teacher. The kids were underwhelmed by his presence -- a hard blow to his ego. He desperately floundered trying to reach the solid ground of an ally.

He didn't know the word love, he loved his parents and cousins deeply but did not even understand that he did. His attachment to his mother was so deeply instinctive that the word love was never needed or mentioned.

There was a girl he noticed in class who was an angel personified and a lady of great beauty, she became the sole object of his thoughtful attention. He was too shy to approach this angelic person of supreme beauty, but watched her from a distance. He noted her innate courtesy and good nature and pleasant behavior toward others.

Screwing up his courage he persuaded his mother to buy one special Valentine card, which he laboriously and slowly inscribed Ann's name and signed his name and put it aside for Valentine's day, soon to come.

When he went to school he, all atremble, put the sacred pasteboard into the Valentine box on the teachers desk. And waited for endless eons to hear Ann's name called and see her get the big Valentine he knew was the one he sent to her.

He still didn't really have a grasp on the word, "love." The only thing he knew was that she had an aura he had sensed in no other place. He couldn't place her an a pedestal, he wouldn't have wanted her to touch the mundane earthly stone.

Puppy love, bosh. He gave her outright adoration without having a hope for an association with her.

He looked over toward her desk and got a glance of recognition and thanks from her for her valentine -- he died and went to heaven that moment -- to suddenly and rudely come back to earth when the bell rang.

Over the course of time he gradually made friends with her and began to walk her home from school. She lived in the next block. The first time he walked her home she told him to walk to the end of the block, turn, go one short block down and go home on the next street. He obeyed her instructions to the letter and without any question. He willingly did as his earthly angel bid, and continued to do so as long as he walked her home.

He knew she had older brothers because he had met one on the playground. The meeting was very brief and the brother went on to Junior High School at the the end of the term.

The friendship grew between the two, they had similar creeds and raising. They did well together, enjoyed each others company greatly. It has never been disclosed all they talked about -- I suppose her adorer couldn't remember himself all the things they talked about.

When summer vacation time came she went with her Mom to visit relatives way out in the country and didn't appear until school started. So this lonesome little guy did the next best thing, a secondary activity when they were in school together. It became a primary activity when she was gone, he would read a mountain of books. The librarian knew him by sight and by full name, always giving him a kind word. His summer of reading and daydreaming of her slowly drug on to school starting.

About fifth grade, his concept of the word love was a good understanding of the dictionary definition, and all he had read about knights and lady loves and other examples of love, marriage and children in the future.

He tentatively approached the subject with her and in a tender and gentle manner she would change the subject. He was frustrated, but even then kept his cool as they said a few years ago and didn't push it. They continued to walk home together as companions on an equal footing until one day at the start of the school day before class she approached him and with misery on her face and sadness in her voice told him that they couldn't be together on the way home in the afternoon nor could they even talk to each other on the playground. She told him that was the way it had to be, with no chance for it to change. She also changed the subject adroitly when he tried to find out why this unspeakable thing had to be.

So he worshipped her from afar, his eyes and heart were with her from then on. In about the eighth grade he became acquainted with a friend of the younger brother and in the course of the friendship found out why he could not keep her company. Her brothers in a fit of overprotection and paranoia had told her that they would do him grevious harm if he was seen around her anymore.

It could have been family loyalty that prevented her from telling why they couldn't be together any more. Too late the true reason came to light for him and cracked if not broke his heart. She had become the girl friend of another boy and therefore was Untouchable. His worship of her continued until he met the girl he would later marry and she faded gradually into the background and was forgotten. He feels that he began to learn what love was from that beginning. Recently, in a major cleanup and sorting, his old class picture from the fifth grade came to light, he took it in his hand and gazed upon it, still shining through from all those years her beauty struck him yet and caused a tear and a wonder of what might have been.

Although my love for Heather is unshaken and always will be, I felt secure enough -- rightly so, to show and tell her about my first love.

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