the first of a few

I'm going to try and tell my romantic history. First, because I have one - and every day I realize that far too few women truly do. Second, because I cannot yet figure out how the romance of my past affects the reality of my today - and no matter that the people of past romances are now dear friends or lost lovers, I find myself thinking back on the purity of young love, of gifts born of creativity as funds were simply not available and expectations of more worldly items not yet dreamed up. I'm starting to rediscover that creativity on my own as I try and make a cross-continental relationship work - but it's amazing how rusty I am, when years ago such sweet-nothings came to me as effortlessly as saying "I love you." Still, I'm having fun dreaming up new ideas, and I thought it would be fun to reminisce and share some of the romantic things that have been part of my history in an effort to get these juices flowing once again.

"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."

The scene: 6th Grade camping trip.
Me: glasses, braces, more than one jumpsuit and a very flat chest.
Him: A mop of dirty blond hair bleached on top from spending the summer sailing, a crooked grin and a blue and yellow old-school baseball jacket.

He asked one of my friends to ask me out (we'd never spoken), and after she pointed him out across the campsite I gave my response, "o.k." Thus started my first relationship, which would lead to my first kiss (in front of 6 of my closest girlfriends, just seconds before my dad pulled up in the old Colt to pick me up from school), the first kiss that made me swoon (he dipped me after the cool boys in shop class asked us to kiss in front of them) and my first true break up - which I really don't remember, to be honest. Even at the tender age of 11 though, I was beginning to understand what attraction was all about - what it meant to excite someone of the opposite sex just by being you (all pre-pubescent and bracefaced that you were).

But our story didn't end there. Fast forward to 8th grade - there have been a few boyfriends in between, my first FRENCH kiss (in front of some of the same girls), a number of disastrous middle-school girlfriend dramas and my sixth grade boyfriend and I found ourselves sharing a class and getting to know each other as real people for the first time. The year progressed, the attraction returned - but we were shy, and two of my girlfriends liked him too, so we sat on our feelings until the end of the year. But then we found ourselves at the eighth grade dance, the night upon which all of middle school came down to. I was dressed in the most ridiculous ruffled shirt my mom had bought me, (which happened to be see through - though she convinced me it was o.k. because it had a busy print and I'd bought a pretty bra in a coordinating color from the Victoria Secret catalog to go underneath - I promise I was the unlikeliest candidate to suddenly show up as a little whore-monger at the graduation dance). He was there, we both knew this night meant something to us, the end of an era we entered into together three years before, though it was only starting to make sense to us now.

The night went on, the last dance started. He grabbed me, took me to the dance floor and the moment was ours. There was no definition, nothing happened after this night, but in that moment, my heart leapt and I understood that some moments exist purely for the romance they bring.