Let me be clear: my husband is my soul mate. We have been married almost 47 years.
However – and this is a BIG however – he was NOT my FIRST LOVE.
My boyfriend and I started going steady in 9th grade – although we were already throwing sneaky sidelong glances at each other during math class in 7th grade – so much so that it prompted our math teacher one afternoon to flippantly ask me the following: “Miss Levine, are you overly sexed?”
I was too embarrassed, humiliated and stunned to answer her.
(And I’m not so sure in today’s world a teacher would be so flippant with a question about her student’s sexuality!)
My boyfriend and I went the usual route of young couples in the mid 1960’s: We started “GOING STEADY.” (I asked my 15 year-old grandson last night if he knew what “going steady” meant. He had no idea.)
My boyfriend and I exchanged silver ID bracelets. We finagled three sets of matching shirts from his dad’s clothing store -which we wore very frequently to school to show the world the strength of our bond.
The highlight of our junior year was when he passed his driver’s test immediately after turning 16. If we had spent as much time studying as we did necking in his black Chevrolet Impala convertible, Harvard would have been courting us both.
Every summer – in a desperate attempt to split us up – my parents would fly me from Ohio to Florida to spend time with my aunt and uncle and to get away from my boyfriend. The separation only fueled the fires of our highly charged, emotionally intense romance.
In our senior year, we both worked on the school paper – a four-pager published weekly. Our job: write opinion pieces and interview our class mates on such topics as their “philosophy of life.” (Today, I find that mildly hysterical – I’m 75 years-old and still trying to craft my philosophy.)
We were voted “Cutest Couple” in the senior popularity poll. Thus proving, once again, the strength of our bond.
Graduation was in early June. The morning after all 750 of us – the class of ‘65 – had walked down the aisle to the notes of Pomp and Circumstance, my boyfriend took every one of the approximately 36 issues of our school newspaper, The Bulldog Barks, to a local printing company and had them bound into a hardback book.
I stashed my copies of our student newspaper under my bed. In the ensuing years, of course, mine would be lost; his would remain intact and with him.
To both sets of our parents’ displeasure, my boyfriend and I applied to the same university, were accepted and headed-off to freshman year with arms entwined. What our parents couldn’t put asunder, the allure of freshman year swiftly did. In early October, we broke-up. (Actually, he ended it with me.) I was heartbroken. I transferred universities and in the ensuing years, we both married our college sweethearts and settled down to raise our families.
My first marriage didn’t last. His did.
Fifty-eight years would pass before I realized just how much the strength of our bond still remained intact.
The story continues next week.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor