My first love was a red hat....
I probably loved my parents and cake prior to falling head over heels for the hat, but I really don’t remember. I’ve seen evidence in pictures. I recently came across another picture in which I am quite fascinated with a toy, I’m told I also loved. My eyes are as big as planets, spellbound as it spins round and round like a circus ride. It circles higher and faster like the one with the bucket swings attached to a pole in the center. Two little chicks start to dance in a capsule at the top like the bride and groom on a wedding cake.

I must have always remembered that toy on some level because many years later, I felt magnetically attracted to one just like it in an antique store with the fervor of a metal detector to a ring. I simply had to have it then, and I didn’t know why.

There was never any doubt about the red hat. I wore it every single day for an entire summer. It was made of red felt and had a brim that flipped back like the Farrah Fawcett hairdo. I remember feeling so frickin’ cool wearing it, but then it disappeared, much like my worn out jeans and ratty old tennies that year. Believing I must have lost them somehow, I was heartbroken and always blamed myself. Why did I ever take it off, why didn’t I hold on tighter? I was sure I would never find one like it ever again and my life would never be the same.

Growing up, I wasn’t quite sure what love really was. It wasn’t mentioned much. I knew people loved Jesus, but then he ended up on a cross, so I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. We have a huge family and my Dad was never home. For the first 6 years of my life he spent most of his time working in Chicago while we lived in Green Bay.

When we all moved to Illinois, we kids were harangued like cattle to dinner at the table. We would watch for my Dad through the fake wooden blinds, but he was always late and Mom was always mad. More often than not, he ate dinner in “his chair,” which I think he actually favored. He would kiss my mom and she would give him food. She made delicious mom-ish meals like meatloaf and spaghetti and he loved her cooking.

I didn’t see a lot of things like kissing, hugging, or talking quietly. But times were different then - even our favorite TV couples like Rob and Laura, or Fred and Wilma had separate beds. My Dad’s lap was always covered in paperwork from the office and Mom whistled at the stove. She preferred he stay completely out of the kitchen. They built a life and love together. It’s not what I imagined love to be. What I do in fact imagine, could never be confined enough to judge or then define. It comes in many flavors. There is no “right” way in which to love.

I do not know how in the world they did it, but they did for 50+ years. They would pack a few suitcases, a cooler, us 5 kids, and a poodle and drive from Illinois to Oregon every summer without killing each other. This was all accomplished in a burgundy station wagon with phony paneling and a seat that went down in the back. We’d take turns sleeping in the back with whomever we weren’t ready to take a bite out of. One year my sister did actually bite me and my mom told me I should bite her back. I didn’t really want to and then we all cried loudly and got in trouble. 

She told us that surely no kids fought like we did and we should add it to our confession. Off we’d go to Father Lynch, who was drunk in Oz’s closet with the teeny sliding door. It opened to a metal curtain and he would ask “how many times,” as if someone were ever counting when havoc wreaked the house. The penance was so irrelevant, two of this and three of that, then go and sin no more. The pandemonium would never stop there. There was yelling in the car as we left the parking lot.
Years later we christened that family car “The Wagon” and we’d all pile in and drive it all over town and party. Amidst all our crazy mayhem, I never saw my parents fight. They seemed to stay in their own corners and go about their own business. They had their roles. They worked it out.

However, more than half of marriages do end in divorce. I was married once back in my 20’s. I managed to screw that up in about a year. I know it sounds super cornball, but I didn’t know who I was, let alone if I loved myself. There are a lot of books on love… how to get it, how to keep it, and what to do when it goes away. If there was one manual to champion above all others, it would be a cover and a single page that would read, “Love Yourself First. The End.”

I skimmed through advice of experts and thought I could squeeze by without this one component. People are saying it out loud to a circle of strangers in therapy groups and seminars worldwide. I love myself unconditionally. They are using EFT and tapping all their pressure points in hopes to feel they’re worthy of this thing called love. It really makes me cringe, but the more I resist, even refuse the lesson, the more the lesson will show up. It keeps showing up like dandelions do, one after the other.

I counted my boyfriends once and lost interest before I was done. I myself am a serial monogamist. My typical MO is 3 weeks to move them in and 3 years to move them out. I’m 48+; you do the math. My friend’s roll their eyes so far back they’re even walking backwards when I profess new love. They want to know immediately if he has a job, a car, and a place to live in order to assess the likelihood that I’ll be doing extra laundry next week. No one’s asking, but I do it.

I’m not enough just as I am. As much as we might want to, we cannot fix that in each other. We will never fill the emptiness with something or someone else. We can only share the fullness.

Where and when do all the normal people go to learn this stuff? Did I miss a memo? Am I missing the love chip?

When I switched from Catholic school to public my freshman year, I was in shock. Everyone was holding hands in the halls and even kissing by the lockers. I didn’t go to my first boy-girl party until the 8^th grade and even then I had to go home earlier than everyone else. I was waiting outside with Bob Buckles when my mom picked me up in the wagon. I hid, silent in the back. She never said a word. I thought for sure I was in trouble, but for what I didn’t know. When we got home, I went straight up to my room. It ruined my entire Christmas because I was ashamed. I’d done nothing, but felt as if I did.

When I got to public high school and saw what was really going on out there, I was terrified. I got asked to homecoming by a sophomore football player. I wore a white dress with blue ribbons that my mom made from a pattern by McCalls. I also had a white floppy hat with a brim bigger than my red one. I wore a locket that had flowers. I looked like an angel or a prude as the boys all called me.

As rumors loved to have it, I would not kiss him before the game. He broke up with me for a cheerleader from Central. She wore silvery white lipstick and had a reputation for being loose, which still sounds gross to me. I don’t consider him as my first love. My first love was from the “other” side of town, but the gossip was unfounded.

Our school was split in two, literally. Kids came from 2 towns, one upper middle class, one middle lower. The designated stereotypes were downright utter hogwash. My parents weren’t concerned or at least they didn’t tell me. We went out for 2 years. Enter alcohol and it was over. He and his best friend married twin sisters. They have children and it’s happily ever after. Good for them.

They say you never forget your first love, but all that I remember is the couch covered with the afghan my grandma had crocheted.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I don’t know who does. I’m certain people do consult the Magic 8 Ball, the I Ching or Tarot for answers to questions other than love, but not me. It’s always about love. I don’t know if those things have the answers anymore than the weekly love horoscope that I now confer with online. A psychic told me once I would never find the one true love I seek, yet I’ll have many loves in consolation. She gave me this ruling like it was really no big deal. I guess I always just assumed I would marry and have children, but it’s a little late for that.

I’ve spent years picking up daises on the sides of roads. I keep traveling wondering if I am loved or not. I do a quick go around of, “he loves me, he loves me not.” If I don’t like the answer, I do it again. When I don’t like that one either, I think I might have pulled 2 petals instead of one and I must check it and make sure. Then, they blow away in the wind, leaving me all confused.

The best advice I’ve ever received was from my little sister. She was 10 or maybe younger. I asked her which boyfriend I should choose when I was caught up in the middle. She told me to “dump ‘em both.” Boy was she ever right. However, I chose one and didn’t listen. Now that she’s a therapist, I wonder if I’m her example of what to do and not to do.

It seems so push-and-pull me. I step up, you step back, I step back, you step up. Why do some people want more of what they can’t have? Why is it that the one it took you years to leave, wants you back when you’re finally gone? They say the opposite of love is fear and it sure seems like fear to me.

There are those of us who never give up hope. We are hopeless and romantic. We continue searching for “the one.” Even I, who was told she would never find “the one”, could never stop her looking. We are said to have a “soul mate,” and I just hadn’t found mine yet. Maybe Zeus is up there in the sky refusing to put us back together. If he did, then we’d be too powerful and rule the family tree.

I am then condemned to wander this earth forever in hopes of finding my other half, the one that would finally complete me. If I don’t behave, he will throw his mighty thunderbolt and split me once again and I’ll hop forever on one leg. So I keep quiet like I’m told, and hunt silently in the dark for my “twin flame” to light the room and make me whole again.

I get confused and so upset when a husband or wife dies first and the one who’s still alive gets to remarry. What happens up in heaven? Is someone left alone? If two souls are truly driven to find each other and join in holy harmony, how the heck does that work?

I was talking to a woman whose mother died at 89 and her father sat staring out the window for 3 weeks waiting for her to come home. When she didn’t, he died too. They had been married 70 years. Now that’s love, but it’s too late for me, unless I live to 118.

Frogs croak in order to recognize their perfect mate. Male frogs look for “the one” unique and special female croak. I don’t like to picture myself as a frog really, but I have certainly been through the many frogs your mother warns you about. Yes I’d say, I’ve kissed my share. At a certain time of year, if you go anywhere near Weborg Point in Peninsula State Park, it’s like a gazillion frogs are croaking… the sound is quite phenomenal! You can hardly hear your breath, let alone the differences between them, but despite these odds frogs do it.

If only I were born East Asian, I would have had it easy. I could pull on a red string and the search would all be over. Hand-over-hand over hand-over-hand, the thread can never lie. The lunar God Yuelao, matchmaker in the skies, would tie a string from me to you and destine us to meet. There would be no urgent need or fear, forever we could wait. All my many challenges and all of my mistakes mean nothing if I were from China… the red string never breaks.

This magic string of miracles can stretch and get all tangled. In spite of this, against all odds, the two shall join in love. We know not where, we know not when, or all circumstances, but its fate they’ll be together, for the two remain entwined. I’d rather hold this red string than be waiting for a shoe - to sit and wait and hope he comes, the other half to make the pair. From the corner of my eye, I would wonder, is it you?

I see much more in one eye than I ever saw in two. In the beginning it’s all fabulous. There are secrets held with reason. When do we cross over from the unsafe into safe? Love is always scary and more so if it’s true. It gets harder to say I love you, even if you feel you could. You think you’ll live forever and act like it is true. There will always be more time to say those words to you.

The secrets build the walls between us, too tall to ever climb. Men hate the women they must lie to. I read this in a book. Betrayal is a bad one. They resent the one they hurt. It all seems so unfair. No one promised that it wouldn’t be.

“People come into our lives for a reason, for a season, for a lifetime,” that’s for sure.

I’ve been through so many seasons. If I have to, I’ll get through more. Each season teaches me something. There are many things to learn. I know there’s more to learn from staying.

I wish my wish to stay.

I envisioned how my life would be as this little, sweet old lady. I’d be sitting hand in hand with you, my little, sweet old man. We’d tell each other all of  our favorite stories. I would laugh and slap my knee. You would look at me with sparkle. I’d lay my head upon your shoulder.

In my dreams our conversations would be of memories that we made, a history we created with a love that never swayed. You’d know everything about me. I’d know everything of you. We’d be resting on that park bench, the one saved for me and you. We could finish each other’s sentence; we could feel each other’s thoughts. If we couldn’t speak, or see, or move, no message would be lost. You’d find it in the bottle among a million bottles in the sea. You would know how much I loved you and I’d know that you loved me.

But it’s no longer sunrise, it’s closer to sunset. I want to cry, it seems so sad, the love we didn’t get. We’re older and we’re broken. It’s in the stories that we tell.

Why did it take so long? Why’d we go through so much hell? We waited and we waited, the stars had to align. The lessons that we learned had to settle and match up. You were walking slow behind me and picked up pieces of my heart. You were saving them for later until you knew just what to do.

Those pieces of my heart were missing pieces lost in you. To all the lost hearts, the found hearts, the broken ones, the new: Never give up on love. It won’t give up on you.

THE END