A Note From the Past

A Note from the Past

Sophomore year of high school. I was sixteen and innocent, naïve and pure, and wasn’t learning too much that wasn’t academics. I wasn’t learning too much that was academics. I’d never been much of an academic.

“Do you know where room two seventeen is?”

I never could decide if the words that started the most important love affair of my young life would be “do you know where room two seventeen is?” But they were, and they were asked by this pretty, skinny redheaded boy with green eyes. He was smiling at me. I didn’t read anything into it.



As it happened, I did know where room two seventeen was. As it happened, I was on my way to lunch and had time to deliver the pretty, skinny redheaded boy with green eyes right on the doorstep. As it happened, a mere forty minutes later, the pretty, skinny redheaded boy with green eyes waltzed into my English class in room one fourteen and sat down next to me.

“I’m Ian McLellan,” he introduced himself. He actually stuck out his hand for me to shake, and that surprised me. Those were old-world manners, sweet and unexpected and outdated and nice.

“Sloan Kettering,” I returned. He didn’t make fun of my name, though I could have sworn that the corners of his mouth twitched just the tiniest bit. Over the days, we got to talking. He was nice, flattering.

And—which I didn’t realize initially—he was sneaky. He got my phone number under the pretense of needing a homework buddy for English, someone who would have the answers when he had none. And then—sneakier still—he waited a solid week before calling me.

That week was an agony of anticipation. For the first time I was aware of, a charming boy liked me. I was certain that he liked me. He had to like me. But even when he had my phone number and a sixteen-year-old wholehearted wish to “call anytime,” he didn’t call. I complained bitterly to Kay, who was dating Sean Zuckerman at the time, about this. He was supposed to call me. He was supposed to call and ask me out. He had to like me. He just had to.

And, finally, he did. I don’t remember the details specifically, but I’m sure I giggled an awful lot during that phone call. He said he needed to know which pages we were supposed to read in Othello, but we got to talking. We got to talking for a solid two hours. And when we were just about done talking, but only because our voices were getting sore from talking so much, he asked me if I’d like to hang out sometime with him and his friends.

It wasn’t a date, but it was a start.

Maybe I wouldn’t even have wanted him if he’d been more obvious, if I hadn’t had the stresses of uncertainty. But I was stressed, and he did keep me waiting, though I’m sure I would have loved him anyway. After we’d hung out that first time—before I was the girlfriend, Pete was perfectly pleasant to me; the first and last time our relationship would be headed in a positive direction—he began to hang around, sitting with Kay and me in the cafeteria in the mornings, up in the library when Kay was studying and I was listening to music. All of a sudden, he was present—not enough to be annoying, but just enough. Just enough. He just about killed me, that boy did.

And then finally—oh, dear God, finally!—he asked me in that shy way of his if I might, maybe, like to go out with him sometime. Would I ever. I was gleeful with my acceptance; Ian, I’m sure, laughed at me in my exuberance. We went to see a movie. He kissed me goodnight. It was the start of a perfect, perfect thing.

Not once, not for a single moment, did I expect in those weeks that I would end up married to the guy. I had never really been able to see myself married, just as I had never really been able to see myself as all the other things I was supposed to dream for my future.

Things I Ought to Have Dreamed:
Being a mother, a grandmother, a businesswoman, a college student, a wife, a girlfriend, a lover, a companion.

But it was one of those things that just happened anyway. It was a bizarre sort of journey, and along the way I picked up all kinds of little knickknacks that were lying on the road. I dragged Kay along, and she snared Mark on her talons; I poked curiously at Pete’s animosity and then it was so sticky I could never get it off my fingers. Adnan was the hitchhiker, the vagabond—we grew fond of him eventually.

The Most Interesting Thing I Picked Up Along the Way:
A future.

Fast forward three years later. I’m sitting on a little, tiny bunk. I’m reading an old Psychology textbook because Kay didn’t have time to go to the library. I have a ring on my finger. I’m married—married! I love Ian more than I’d ever banked on. I hadn’t banked on loving him at all.

In the now, he’s not here. In the now, I’m sitting alone on this little, tiny bunk. And maybe things aren’t as picture perfect as I foresaw them to be in the beginning, but they’re good. They’re good, and I’m happy, even if I’m a little bored at time. And I finally have some direction. My God, finally I have someplace to go.

And so what if it’s a little distressing to lose that feeling of freedom, of not knowing where you’ll go next, of not being particularly concerned what’s ahead or what’s behind? That’s what growing up is all about, after all. I had to grow up eventually. Everyone had to grow up eventually.

And if growing up means long, rambling rants about what’s past and what’s present, so be it. Sitting and reminiscing like a crotchety old woman—“Remember back in my day, back before these young ‘uns ruined everything?”—is going to make me happy, so be it. It could be worse. If what I’ve seen of love has taught me nothing else, I’ve learned that it could always be worse, but if you give things a try, it’s likely that they’ll actually get better. It’s a liberating thought. It’s a cheerful thought. And, again, if being wrapped up in possibilities and theories and “what if” scenarios is the best thing I can come up with right now, so be it.

After all, anything is better than sitting around and musing and thinking and moping over the fact that I’m nearly always completely alone.