Old Flames

I've been reading "My Boyfriend's Back", written by Donna Hanover. After divorcing Rudi Giuliani, she met up again with her high school boyfriend and they have had a happy life together. Her book memorializes a number of famous and not-so-famous people who have reunited with romantic interests from previous times in their lives.

As I started listening to the book, I was thinking back over all my past flames and wondering what possibilities might live in that list. There was one guy, Dave, from high school who is a musician and geek and dearest friend. We had been keeping in intermittent touch for about nine months prior to our 40th class reunion in March. I fully expected something to come out of that re-meeting, if nothing less than more regular contact. Alas. We spent maybe five minutes in conversation the entire weekend. His life is moving in a very different direction that involves woods and forests and mountains and solitude. Clearly, that new direction does not include me.

I reviewed the list some more - Tommy from 1st grade (no idea where he is now), Danny from 4th grade (happily married to a his second wife, a fabulous organist and really neat lady), Ernie from 5th grade (again, happily married to his first wife who has chronic health problems that consume him), Buddy from 6th to 8th grade (whose foster mom decided I wasn't good enough for him), Donnie from summer after 8th grade (happily married to high school friend after bad divorce from previous high school sweetheart), Jim from 11th grade (physician in Tennessee, put on lots of weight, not going there), Mike from USF (oooh, would I love to find him again but I think he's married).

But as I think back over these guys, it doesn't matter how close the connection was in the 50s and 60s, forty years have passed. I've been associated with Adventists, chandelier-swingers, Lutherans, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Jew/philosophers, and golfers. If I never pass through the doors of a church again for anything other than a concert, I will be a happy church-goer. Too many evil and hateful things have been done to me in the name of Christianity for me to want to have anything to do with those people ever again. (PianoLady, you're exempted from this statement.)

When Dave and I were talking about going to the reunion and I was saying I doubted I had anything in common with any of those people anymore, he objected. He said we probably all had much more in common than I could imagine. And yet when I was back there, there seemed to be a lot of the high school "kids" who were still practicing Adventists, despite the makeup and jewelry in evidence.

So back to 6th-8th grade Buddy, whose real name was Edwin. He and his two older sisters all went to Orlando Church School with me. I never knew their family situation; we never talked about that. They had been split among three families, all of whom lived within about three blocks of each other. One sister, Norma, as I recall, used her foster family's name and the other, Lucretia, kept the birth family name. Buddy used the foster family's name but I always knew his real name.

I adored him. My childhood was horrible, to my recollection. I never felt like I fit in anywhere. My mother was harsh and critical. The only thing I knew how to do and ever did well was to play the piano, so all my energy was poured into that. I adored my daddy, but he worked seventeen-hour days, so he wasn't all that present in my life. I don't remember how Buddy and I got together. He was a grade behind me in school. I don't remember at all who approached whom, but I do remember the first kiss behind the sports equipment shed on a Saturday night after we had been boyfriend-and-girlfriend for about a year. At some point he asked me to go steady and gave me his ID bracelet to wear. I wore it proudly until Mother realized it was not a boy's watch turned around with the watch face to the inside. When she realized it was a bracelet (Jewelry! God forbid!), I had to give it back to him, which broke my heart. I had no more identity as being his steady girl. (Explanation for the non-Adventists reading here: when a boy asked a girl to go steady, he gave her his watch to wear. Adventists were only allowed to wear "functional jewelry", i.e. a watch or pin. So there were no rings to exchange. Only watches.)

When I look back at that relationship, through the lenses of my life with John and all that was right about that relationship, I realize that one thing Buddy and I had in common, one very important thing, was our abandonment. Neither of us fit in where we were, but we fit in together.

<Sidebar On>
This is what I have always felt was the value of Interlochen Arts Academy. Those extremely talented and smart young people stand out in their normal high schools in a not-the-norm manner. They're pretty alone in their regular high schools. But when they get to Interlochen, they merge and feed off each other. A synergy develops that is almost too powerful to be believed. I believe Tyler is who he is today in a large part because of his experience at Interlochen. He learned to think for himself in a manner that never would have occurred in his conservative evangelical Christian father's home or in his sheltered, naive mother's home.
<Sidebar Off>

As I was thinking about Buddy and John and life and being alone and sad at 57, I realized that one cannot presume anything about friends from the past. Just because I've become cynical and think raising a child as a Seventh-day Adventist should be a misdemeanor, I cannot presume that those people I was friends with 40 and 50 years ago feel the same way. As handsome as Buddy was, as much as I loved him at 12 and 13 and 14, he's probably still an Adventist, probably happily married, and probably hasn't thought of me in 45 years.

Then I listened carefully to Donna Hanover's words. Maybe I already had my second-time-around. John and I always said how lucky we were to have found each other again. Maybe that was it for me. Maybe that two-and-a-half years of happiness is all I get. I don't like that thought. It makes me feel like I have no purpose, no goal. But maybe my purposes and goals are yet to be developed and will be more successfully accomplished if I am able to focus on them solely rather than diluting my life with the energy it takes to maintain a relationship.

I've said for four years that I wanted someone to enhance my life. Would that person only dilute my life? Oooh, that's a harsh thought that's never occurred to me until this very moment of striking keys to express these thoughts.

<For What It's Worth #1>
I did some creative Googling last night and determined that Buddy now is a successful electrician whose two sons work with him in his commercial electrical contracting business. In Hendersonville, NC! The town in which my mother lives!
<FWIW#1 Off>

<For What It's Worth #2>
Mr. Match called last night. Twice. I ignored the phone the first time. (I've set a distinctive ringtone to his number, so I know when it's him.) Half an hour later he called again, which surprised me. We had a nice conversation. And he asked me out to dinner tonight! Whatever.
<FWIW#2 Off>