"" Writer's Wanderings: Teenaged Memories

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Teenaged Memories

Saturday morning is time for breakfast at our favorite spot--The Diner. It's a little New York style place with vinyl seated booths and music piped in from the 60s--my kind of music.

This morning they were playing "Put Your Head On My Shoulder," a tune that was popular a bit before I met my husband. It brought back memories of someone else. I remembered dancing to that song with him. We couldn't have been more than 15 or 16. He was my first kiss. The boyish face, the big grin, the eyes that crinkled when he was teasing--all belonged to a young teenager. I never saw the man that he became until a few years ago.

My brother shattered the teenage memory. We were at my nephew's graduation and my brother brought a middle-aged, graying man with a slight pounch over to meet me.

"Know who this is?" he asked. I stared at the man in the baseball cap and sunglasses. There was no way I was going to guess.

"Here," the fellow said, "let me take these off." He removed the hat to expose more grayed hair. Then he removed the glasses. Still no sign of recognition.

"You don't remember, do you?" my brother egged me on. Little brothers are like that no matter how old they are.

The man before me suddenly broke into a grin and his eyes crinkled with that teasing look.

"Oh, my gosh, Tom!" I hugged him. But as I stepped back to look at him again, I wondered. What was he seeing? A middle-aged woman whose hair was lighter because she covers the gray, with a few more pounds that the skinny girl who needed meat on her bones and a face that sagged a bit from years of weather and, well....years.

This morning I remembered the boy. It was a nice memory. It also made me happy I chose my husband to grow old with.

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