We Are Missing You!

(Write a story about high school sweethearts coming across one another after many, many years apart.)

The heat is intense as I shuffle down our dusty driveway to see what crap the mail person has left for us today. It seems a pointless walk and yet, part of my mind always has hopes of something interesting, new or fun. An invitation to a book discussion group or a class from one of my near extinct hobbies. Mostly the mail is full of ads for politicians or services we don’t need or use.

I wave causally to a neighbor, brush off a deer fly and pull open the box. Sorting through the contents, crap, crap, crap and, well this is interesting….a letter from my class reunion committee. I have never attended one of the reunion weekends so this will eventually end up with the others in the “crap” pile used to start the chiminea. 

I move on down into the shade of the yard and plop down on the wooden glider swing. Giving it a push, I draw up my feet and enjoy the gentle movement of the swing.

Opening the envelope, the letter begins with….”We are missing you!”

This is laughable as years have elapsed since then, the high school years, and now, the doldrums of middle age, but I read on.  

The usual newsy words of how many are among the missing, have you a current address for someone they can’t seem to find, who has died, who isn’t doing well, and of course, how much they would love to see YOU again. Please attend! We miss you! 

But then….there it is...his signature! 

Just the name and you feel your body constrict, tighten, your throat and your chest, your heart and , well all of you!

The gentle rocking of the swing in this shady spot allows you to relax and let memories wash over you and take you back to those last six weeks of senior year.

~~~~~

The days of late spring, we all wanted school to be over and summer vacation to begin with pool parties, or swimming and hanging out together. Some insisted on getting high, for others it was booze and still others like me, were drunk on love.

The days were long and hazy, the evenings hot and steamy. I had been a late bloomer in the make out department but once it began with Michael I had little control. I don’t mean he controlled things, no not at all, I wished for more and more, I was out of control.  

I don’t know, I will probably never know, if it was teenage hormones or real love. I want to think it was more than discovering passion. I want to think that it could only have happened with Michael but I will never know that either as it never happened again, not with anyone else, nothing like that last six weeks of senior year.

We were inseparable. I craved the feelings he stirred up in my body. I’d wake in the middle of the night from a dream of him inside me. Or staring out a classroom window I could feel his lips on mine. I was out of control! But it was so very amazing! I thought of little else.

~~~~~

I realize the swing has stopped moving and my mind has been off searching for those sensations, the type of thing I haven’t thought much about lately. I feel like laughing and crying both at the same time and for no good reason really, just seeing his signature on a form letter opened a flood of memories and my body reacted like I was seventeen all over again.

I began to wonder if he remembered our time too, I wondered if he remembered the moments the same way or if time had lessened the intensity for him. I laughed thinking I should attend the reunion! Had he gotten bald or fat? Did he smoke disgusting cigars or brag about his life. Was he happy? Had he married? I wondered what it would feel like now, to have him inside me! How very stupid, no worse, self destructive!

~~~~~

God they were good times, we all knew after graduation we would scatter like dandelion fluff. All going on to some imagined future but mostly we all knew we were going on alone each to his or her singular future. Maybe that is why the fire burned so hot, the passion so strong, the risks we took.  

I must laugh at this as I never for a second thought beyond the sensations he created in me, never once believing anything wrong could happen from something so amazingly fine!

But it did happen!   

Something very seriously wrong!  

I became pregnant!  

First the intense worry of being late!   

Followed soon by the confirmation that a baby had been created!

I was shocked, confused but then elated!

He was shocked, angry and then came with abortion information in hand!

I felt stupid, not ever, not even for a moment considering the possibility, somehow I thought you had to practice up to created another human being. So very stupid, child like but playing in fire!

The thing that became crystal clear was, I could never consider killing our love baby and he had no intention of being hindered by the fact of its existence!

Our relationship imploded! We both turned away! I remember the panic bordering on hysteria! He is the one person I would have gone to in times of hysterical panic and he was gone.

~~~~~

Coming back to myself here on the swing in my yard, I had tears in my eyes, I felt the days of mourning our loss of love from way back then, it still felt raw and painful.  

Of course I would never go to this reunion. First, I really thought reunions were a bit of wasted time, the success stories showing up to show us how they did, but most of us just living normal lives felt a bit let down that our happy lives were still a little disappointing.  

Giving the swing another push, I drifted back to that time so long ago.

~~~~~

I remembered talking with my Gram about how to feel when someone disappoints you so totally. Her advice was to be watchful, you will see the true person in times of trouble, but never put a friend too high on a pedestal as everyone is human and reactions vary, that is life!  

She of course never knew about my crisis, no one did really, just me and Michael. Within a week of knowing and discussing and becoming hysterical, I lost the baby. Gone, just gone, but not the memory or the realization that Michael was far from perfect in my eyes now and I must have disappointed him also with my views.   

It was over, in a few weeks we would in fact scatter across the country. I would pick up my shattered pieces and give thanks my problems were only feelings of loss.

~~~~~

Well enough wading around in the past. The swing had come to rest again. I gave it one last small push. I wanted time to ask myself how that whole spring had gotten pushed so far back in my memory that I hadn’t thought about it in years. Seeing Michael’s name on the invitation brought it all flooding back, I must have buried it very deeply!   

Walking back to the house, for one very brief moment I wondered what might have gone through Michael’s mind as he sent my letter. Did he too relive the time? I guess it matters not at all.