Dear Emily,
This pandemic is definitely upending lives. It is also exhuming thoughts that have long lain dormant on the back burner of memories. Events and people are seemingly coming back to life, or demanding to be remembered.
I am 12 again and I am seeing the image of this 14-year-old boy who has captivated me. I remember my heart thumping when I laid my eyes on him for the first time. I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t figure out what was happening. A terribly strange but wonderful sensation was overwhelming me.
After 65 years, and as I close my eyes, it is summer vacation again, and I am seeing him vividly in our neighbor’s house!
After many days, the daughter of our neighbor, who had a “Cruella” streak, sniffed that I had a growing crush on their cousin and wanted me to stop in my tracks immediately. ”He’s already in love with XX!” she said.
How could she have known it was love when I myself didn’t know what I was feeling? XX just happened to be the daughter of our family driver. They met during the previous Christmas holidays and he had been writing to her since.
I was crushed. But that didn’t stop me from watching him from afar. We got to talking occasionally and he even asked me to go with his group during one outing. I never fitted in, but what mattered was we were together.
But summer vacation ended and we moved on with our lives. XX and the boy never made it together.
And I never forgot the boy. The pain of my jealousy over his obsession with XX lingered through the years. We were still young, but being ignored by him, despite my constant presence around him, hurt very much. Could that have been why I was always attracted to boys without money? Was I hoping to recoup the lost love of a poor boy who ignored me in my youth? I married a poor student eventually, and he became successful in life.
No matter. First love never dies, they say. I am proof of that.
Jealous Teen
Emily says:
Dear Jealous Teen,
No matter how young you were then, the fact that you can still see him in your mind and feel him in your heart to this day just means that love never has an expiry date. What ensued in your life between then and now hasn’t tarnished or even diminished your memories of your young love.
At your age, your feelings that were never swayed by wealth or anything superficial mean you’ve got the gift of feeling – something pure, and thereby difficult to flush out. Being honest and true with your feelings is wonderful. It is almost welded in your psyche and will stay with you till you pass on.
There’s a Hallmark card with the inscription “What is remembered is forever young.” Love is ageless! Aren’t you lucky that the romance in you never faded?
(Send email to emarcelo629@gmail.com )