2012 03 05 Ya Ever Wonder?

I had a breakfast date with my big sister this morning. It was so good to give her a hug and a kiss when I saw her. I hadn’t seen her since just after Christmas when my son, grandson, and I made the trek to her home in the hills.

We decided to drive into town and have a meal at a local small restaurant that my wife and I frequent from time to time.

It was a weird morning, weather wise. When we left my house, it was sunny, but it started snowing before we made it to the end of my road, just three miles away. By the time we arrived across the river, into Fairfield, the sun was out again. Hello Maine weather.

The meal was good, and the company was even better. Three cups of coffee, and a breakfast sandwich later, there we were, headed back out into the country, and to my home again.

We talked about a lot of stuff. Some politics, some current events, and a lot about family. The topics flew into the past, and chugged back again into the present as we talked and smiled and laughed.

The discussion fell into how when we were young, we were so impressionable, and that things we idolize and crave to be like, suddenly changed from one thing, to another, without really even knowing it.

I told her about my first crush, and how hard it was for me to try and understand how I was supposed to act under this brand new extreme pressure to be someone that I was so unfamiliar with. I mean, there I was, thirteen years old, pretending to be a boyfriend to a girl I would have been just as happy remaining really good friends with. That unprepared stab at maturity chewed me up, and spat me out, over and over again. I was so unsure of myself, and really didn’t have a clue what to do, or how to act. No way, no how.

The victim of my poor attempts was a pretty girl who had captured my heart. That was no easy task back then either, seeing as how my heart was usually bouncing around, tripping me up. She had managed to corral it though, and our friendship meant more to me, at that particular time, than life itself.

I have only felt this way one other time, and it was when I met my wife. Same reaction. Same capture of heart, same stupid feelings, all over again, only this time, I not only pretended I knew what to do, I faked it over and over again.

Was I faking though? Was I pretending again, or were those gasps for breath a sure sign of something real and good?

Thirty two years later, I think they were as real a part of me as anything in my life ever was.

I know now that that first love, way back when, and this love, way back now, came so easily to me that I really didn’t have to worry about any of it. It just was, and so was I.

How did I get onto this tangent?

Little help please?

You don’t know either, right?

Ok, alternate route, here we go again.

Ya ever notice when you’re almost finished clearing out the end of the driveway from snow, the town plow rolls through, filling it back in? Ya ever think you can hear the driver laughing inside the cab of his truck? I know I sure can. Ya ever call the plow driver a long line of nasty names as you wipe the frozen sweat from your forehead while the sound of the plow slowly rolls away? Ya ever wonder why you start to sound like Andy Rooney?

Back to the tangent at hand, most of the best relationships I ever had with people are the ones that came so easily, as though they were meant to be, and waiting around the corner to jump in and smack you upside the head. They were the relationships that stay firmly planted in your minds, and hearts, and nothing ever seems to be able to lighten their impact that they had on the past.

I would like to have been able to bring all of that wonderful innocence with me into who I am now. Maybe I did and I don’t even know it. Maybe the way I feel like I have known my wife all of my life is testament to the fact. Maybe I don’t know what the heck I am talking about?

I guess I would like to thank you, Mary Beth, for your friendship back in junior high. You made my days bright, and your smile has stayed with me all through these years.

I would also like to thank my wife. It is because of you that I was able to bring that innocence along with me into the future, and spend the feeling of it with you. Because of you.

I never really thought I would ever be able to find someone to share life with. It just seemed so impossible to me, even into my later teen years.

I guess you could say that it found me. That’s what I always told my son when he was growing up, that when the time was right, it would find him, and he really didn’t have to do anything special.

It would just be.