My first love

I fell in love for the first time during the summer of 1986 while I was at Governor's School. When it was over, I sometimes regretted that I had.  Especially since I almost hadn't fallen for him.

But it was his eyes.

Since re-entering the single world, I've had opportunities to exam "attraction". That elusive something that draws one person to another. I see girlfriends who have well defined "types" that attract them. The muscled-up men, the successful entrepreneurs, the shy boys. My attraction is first and foremost - the friend that makes me laugh. I can meet someone and have no gut physical attraction and then in the middle of a conversation something just clicks for me. Bless their poor heart if they don't feel it, too!!

But my first love - it was his eyes.

I actually started my first love in the same pattern that holds true today. I met a fire-headed guy, tall and lanky and his tall-lanky reserved friend. Not sure how we started hanging around one another, but we'd meet up at movies and dances and lunches and banter back and forth, to and fro. I'd skip back to my dorm and I was HAPPY. It's a simple trite word. But when you can just use the word and only the word and it explains everything, it's the purest, most rewarding sensation.  Then one day, on a grassy field, just sitting at 16 with my two friends - the fire-head who wrote the most intriguingly random notes with little doodles here and there with the darkest of dark black ink pens and his shy roommate always quietly on the fringe, "that" clicked for me.  I knew without a doubt what the super intelligent guy I'd dated the previous school year was missing and months later when I'd left Governor's School and The Date guy and I were swinging on a playground, I could finally verbalize it. My heart is pounding when I swing on this swing set. Lunging myself at the sky. I'm happy. I'm thinking of my last two weeks at Governor's School. I close my eyes and I see...

His eyes. His blue eyes.

So it clicks. Do I tear apart this three legged friendship because it's clicked?  I am 17. It's really all about me and I am happy.  So I put my heart on my sleeve and I let my fire-headed guy KNOW. "I like you".

A three legged stool NEEDS three legs. And it was awkward. And I wasn't happy long. Love at its best, doesn't always replace friendship at its purest.

So my fire-headed guy and I, we talk. How do we fix what's been broken?  It's been the three of us. Side by side. Now, the quiet one is late to join us and sits behind us when we go places. I'm not happy. It's late in our journey, our time at Governor's School is winding quickly down. I need to make this right so we can all stay friends and I can still have my love. I want to feel happy. But I also need my triumvirate  to be happy.

I walk with the quiet one to the library and we perch on the roof - back when the library at Hendrix was partially underground and from certain sides you could just walk onto the roof.  We talk about just junk for a few minutes and I steal myself to, in a sense, ask permission to be in love with the fire-headed laughter bringing guy. It's dusk now. Symbolic of the cycles of everything.  Dawn - the newness and calm. Midday - burning bright and hot. Dusk - winding down, closure. 

And I saw his blue eyes in the dusk.  Blue is my favorite color. 

I fell in love at 17. On a roof.  In the dark. With blue eyes and one first kiss. And the next day, we were complete. The triumvirate repaired itself.  My fire-headed guy, still sat with us. Side by side. Never behind us. Always on time.  I think he may have known before I did that I would love those other blue eyes.  My first almost love and my first true love. I was happy. I still am.