Do you remember your first love and all the stress and joy that comes from the certain uncertainty that comes with it? Does she like me? Do I still like her? Is she flirting with him? Am I flirting with her? Are we going to make it last forever? Are we about to break up?
My first love, whom I met at band camp, was Tonya. She lived about two hours away, so our romance was a week together at camp (or less — we didn’t meet that first day) followed by a few months of letters and occasional phone calls. That all lasted three, maybe four months. By the time school started again, we were drifting apart — as if we were every really together.
That was forty years ago now. Tonya and I remained in loose, occasional contact until I was in high school, and we even saw each other a time or two (usually at church gatherings — she was raised in the same sect as I), but I haven’t seen her in over thirty years now, and I really have no clue about her life now. Nor, truth be told, do I really worry about it. Why would I?
But why am I thinking about her now? Because of the Boy and his girlfriend. “Have fun, enjoy this,” we tell him (and her parents probably tell her), “but don’t take it too seriously.” But how can you not take your first love seriously? It’s your first love, after all. Those enormous, overwhelming, awe-inspiring emotions surging through your thoughts continually make it impossible to do anything but take it seriously.
And we all did. We all went through that, “I know he’s the first boyfriend I’ve had, but he has to be the one fate meant for me!” certainty. “I know everyone else breaks up with their first girlfriend, but this is different.” It’s always different because it’s always real. It’s always deep. It’s always comfortable.
Until it isn’t. Until that uncertainty hits. And it always does. And it’s always countered with that certainty. Which is always tinged with that doubt. Which always has a sliver of assurance. That is lined with doubt powered with surety that has been dusted with misgivings.
In short, it’s great until it isn’t, and even when it isn’t, it’s perfectly imperfect.
The Boy is going through all the typical ups and downs of a first love, and we talk about all these things during our near-nightly walk. I encourage him, console him, laugh with him, and sometimes advise him. But mostly I just listen, letting the conversation wind where it will. Sometimes it ends up in band. Sometimes, soccer. Sometimes, something he discovered on the internet.
I try not to advise him too much because often people speak just because they want someone to hear them not necessarily to help them. But when asked, I do give a bit of advice. Yet how can I? Married for twenty years, I have long forgotten about the uncertainties of new relationships; an adult (legally speaking) for thirty-four years, I’ve long forgotten the details of my adolescent loves.
I remember that on-again/off-again uncertainty of it all, but I don’t remember how I dealt with it. I certainly didn’t talk to my dad about it because there was an understanding in our church that adolescent relationships were of little value and might actually hurt your spiritual growth. I honestly kept all my interests, loves, and infatuations from my parents until I was sixteen or seventeen, and it was no longer possible to hide them. Even those early loves, I’m sure they realized, but we never really talked about them.
That’s not to disparage my folks: I’m sure if I’d taken the initiative to discuss any of that with them, they would have talked to me about it. I just always got the sense from sermons and such that I just shouldn’t be having those feelings so young, and if I did have them, I was supposed to master them instead of letting them master me. Sort of purity culture on steroids.
So that’s likely one of the reasons I so treasure my walks with the Boy. That he trusts me to talk to me about these things is something to cherish.
Something else to cherish: a Tuesday-morning hike with your lovely wife of twenty years. Why Tuesday morning? Because I have fall break right now.
“I could take off one of those days, and we could go for a hike!” Kinga realized a month or so ago when we were looking at the calendar together. So that’s just what we did: a new trail up a mountain right beside one of the most-hiked trails in the area, Table Rock. Next to a table, one must have a chair or a stool or something. Enter the new trail: Stool Mountain Trail.
