My First Loves

Just about every girl gets a schoolgirl crush.  Goodness knows I've had my share.  But I've also had some really nice first loves.

I was a product of daycare.  They didn't call it that back then, it was called pre-school.  Well I went to pre-school at about age 3.  At four I started kindergarten, being an October kid, and the pre-school provided after-school care to the morning kindergarten kids.  Tommy also went to the same pre-school and kindergarten.  His grandfather was a cobbler.  I don't remember why Tommy lived with his grandfather or what happened to his parents.  It's strange how the little details of life escape us (although I'm not so sure its a little detail to him!).  Anyway, there was a group of about eight of us kindergarten kids who would get dropped off at pre-school each morning and walk together the mile down Minnesota Avenue to kindergarten.  Rain or shine. After school, we would walk back.  Tommy and I would hold hands.  One day we stopped behind a tree and Tommy kissed me.  I was five years old and in love for the first time. I went to a different school the next year (the parochial elementary school was 1st through 8th grades only at the time, it had no kindergarten) and eventually Tommy and his grandfather moved away. 

Fast forward to 3rd grade...  Mitch was in my class.  He was funny, very funny.  He was also fun to be around.  And we liked each other.  We liked to do much of the same things and we had a lot in common, both being from big families, going to the same church and more.  He was Italian.  I'd never been close to anyone Italian before.  Going to his house was like stepping in to a whole new world.  Food was always cooking.  Kids were running around even wilder than my brothers and all the kids were happy.  Manners were strictly observed and enforced, especially at the dinner table.  For my birthday, Mitch gave me a little coin purse with pink fur on it with "google eyes" and a felt nose and mouth.  I loved it and treasured it for many years, keeping it in my treasure box.  Every young girl should have a treasure box, mine was an old cigar box (remember those?).  Eventually we grew apart and found new friends.  By high school I knew that the relationship would never have worked out as Mitch was not interested in females by then.

It was my 15th birthday party.  It was one of the best birthdays I ever had.  There is an advantage having a birthday a few days before Halloween - costume parties!!!  My friend Theresa asked if she could bring her new boyfriend, Marc, and his friend.  I said sure!  After all, it was a party, the more the merrier.  We probably had 30 kids there.  It was fun, not a wild party.  My parents were around, of course.  We played silly games and bobbed for apples.  Now if you can image 15-year-old girls with all their regular make-up and any extra for our costumes, well, coming up from bobbing for apples, we looked like drowned raccoons with wet hair and mascara running down our faces.  But it was okay, it was a party and it was fun.  Did I mention Marc's friend?  Well he was my first very serious love.  Dominic and I dated for a year and half.  He was fun, a year older but in my class, and he had his driver's license.  Until he bought his own, he could borrow his dad's or brother's car.  Theresa, Marc, Dom and I were a foursome seen together a lot.  I remember my first almost-kiss from him.  We went to the Homecoming Dance a week after my birthday party.  Dom's brother Vince drove the four of us - Vince was a senior with no date and the four of us were sophomores.  On way back to the car, Dom pulled me into an alcove at the school, said how much he liked me and asked if he could kiss me.  When I said yes, Dom came closer for the kiss just as Vince shined the car's headlights on us yelling, "Are you coming or not?" I did get my kiss that night, at my front door, which is not a bad place for a first kiss from a new boyfriend, even with a bratty older brother spying on you from the kitchen window (obviously he didn't have a  date for the Homecoming Dance as he was a senior).  Dominic was also Italian.  My parents let me go to his house at Christmas, after our Christmas festivities were done.  His mom cooked for days.  This was a cultural experience for me.  Christmas at our house was typically turkey and all the trimmings, sometimes with ham also and always, Pa's pies.  Dom's mother made lasagna, ravioli, sausage, spaghetti with meat balls, green salad, gnocci and dessert was cannoli and a fruit tart - all of it homemade from scratch.  (I got to help with the ravioli the day before in the morning.)  At the time, we were sure Dom and I would spend the rest of our lives together.  No, he wasn't my intellectual equal but he was nice, fun, had a big heart and we loved each other to pieces.  Unfortunately I was a high school girl and you know high school girls, it IS all about us, or so I thought.  I was selfish and learned to regret that, unfortunately by then it was too late.  It was a learning experience but that break-up hurt.  It hurt a lot.  Dom and I broke up a week before our Junior Prom.  (One of my male buddies asked me to the Prom and I gladly accepted - he and I decided we were too good of friends to try to ruin it with a romantic relationship and we remain friends to this day.)

They say time heals all wounds and three months later I found a new attraction the summer I was 16.  This relationship would have obstacles from the "get go" including distance, 800 miles worth of distance and that was just a start.  I met Kelly in Canada.  We were at the Young Life camp called Malibu.  It was a one-week camp and afterward we corresponded.  I lived in San Jose, CA, and he lived in Alder, WA, a little town outside of Eatonville (which as coincidence would have it, is where my former Junior Prom date now lives, Eatonville was established by his relatives).  After graduation I went to college in my hometown and Kelly went into the Air Force.  I'm not sure if this was really love or if it was more of the idea of romance, he was kind of a bad boy and this was my first experience with a bad boy.  Kelly had military leave the Christmas I was 18 and I was invited to his home for the week after Christmas.  I went, we discovered we did have feelings for each other.  My parents gave me permission to get engaged, if that happened.  Well, Kelly and I almost ran off and eloped.  What stopped us was that Kelly wasn't sure of the logistics of showing up back at the air base in Biloxi, Mississippi with a new wife in tow.  So we decided to wait and write.  It was a good decision.  Eventually the letters became fewer and far between. 

I will always remember my first loves with fondness.  I have no clue whatever happened to Tommy or Kelly.  Dom's life took some interesting twists and turns.  Unfortunately Mitch's life ended much too soon. 

And in case anyone is wondering, I'm very happy with the love I have now.  He's a keeper.