Romance, Love and the Ages

Does age reflect on what is deemed romantic, made you feel the butterflies of love and what you look into the future and see as the perfect happy ending? I think so.

How old were you when you had your first love? What was the first thing a guy/gal ever gave you that sent your heart into a pitter-patter? Reflecting back on the different periods of your life, do they make you smile, feel that little ‘aw’ emotion?

My first real kiss was at the age of eight and if he hadn’t stunned me, he would have been wearing a nice, shiny black eye. Needless to say, he didn’t try it again.

That kiss, however, had me seeing boys with a different eye. I didn’t like it. Boys were my equals, my tree-climbing, cowboy and Indian, fishing pals. Then an eight year old, redheaded, freckle-faced boy smiled at me at school. We became inseparable, but only on the school grounds – one day he found a lug nut on the playground, put it on my finger and declared me his wife. I moved to the other side of town, which meant I had to change schools. End of marriage. LOL

My next experience was as an eighth grader. Oh my – the black haired, brown-eyed boy stole my heart. Small town, small school and an age where there is interest between the sexes, but fear of being shot down keeping them at opposite ends of the room. His friends and my friends ganged up on us at school dance. He finally approached me and said we could only have one dance together. His family was moving. No one else knew. The song was American Pie.

This happened at a time just after I discovered romance novels. I was enveloped in the romance and emotions and suddenly, I could really relate to the forlorn heroines and heroes who left them. Well, as much as a young teen could. The only difference was, my hero wasn’t going to return.

My freshman year of high school wasn’t under way long before I had two senior guys hanging out at my locker. I didn’t understand why they were even in the freshman hall or why me, being the shy, awkward, hide in the shadow girl I was when out of my element. One moved on to college at the end of the year, the other continued to pursue me through the summer. The day I received roses from him, he proposed to another woman.

Seeing a pattern here.

Finally, sixteen came around and I was allowed to date. I wasn’t the least bit interested. But my first real date was with a football player – we went to see Jim Stafford in concert. Our second date was to our Homecoming Dance where I learned he only asked me because his friends coerced him to.

Oh my God!

Would you have bothered with guys after all this?

A few months later, I accepted a date with a tall, nerdy Tuba player and another football player. I, being in the flag corps, wasn’t unfamiliar with him. My half-time program had us side-by-side during some of our routines on the field. Now, this was an odd relationship. We dated only while school was in session. Other than that, we had a good thing going. Until the middle of my senior year when my mother said we were getting too serious.

I refused to date after that. Until a friend of mine decided I just had to attend my senior prom. She set me up with her ex-fiancée. The rest is history. The rest is romance at it’s best.

I’ve been married to that man for thirty-one and a half years. We had actually met my sophomore year, his junior. We played one-on-one basketball every day we had gym while our classmates showered and dressed. We hated the crowd. He doesn’t recall this, but it stands out so vivid in my memory because it’d been so long since I was allowed to be myself with a boy. I was born a tomboy and will die one.

After the initial date, we saw each other for two weeks and he dumped me. I graduated from high school and moved to the city. Two, maybe three weeks later I called him. He’d been trying to find me and my friend was too mad at him to tell him where I was. We were married two months later.

I’m the heroine and my husband is the hero and we’re watching our four sons become the hero and wondering who their heroines will end up being. In the case of our oldest son, who will be twenty-eight in two weeks, he’s chosen his heroine. Their story is a romance novel in the making.

My ‘aw’ moments of the ages of my life have made me the woman I am today. Lessons of love, heartache and with patience, love and yeah, a few tears – there’s a happy ending.

Bekki

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