Rafters of First Loves

Sitting in the rafters of the barn, I sat on a beam rummaging through boxes.  My mother has been asking me for years to go through my college boxes, boxes that contained my only academic memories of class time.  Yep, that's right. The few memories I have of going to class in college generally revolve around one thing......did I take good notes.  Good notes in my mind are not what the notes say, but HOW the notes look.  Do they look organized, is my handwriting perfect, did I write in pencil or pen.....A little OCD, I know.  Every body has their one thing and mine are notes.  But that's not what we are here to read.  We are here to read about that four letter work we love to hate or hate to love. 
So back to the rafters.  I discovered a bundle of letters.  Yes, that's right a bundle.  Tied up in a leather strap with pink, blue, and yellow envelopes.  My heart lept when I saw them.  After all who has bundles of letters anymore.  I had a faint hint of what this bundle would contain.  I am a romantic girl, I like the stories, the cliches.  So I found a semi-comfy place to sit on the narrow beam traversing my childhood barn.  Knot by knot I untied the leather strap holding these drifts into time.  There, on the top of the pile, was a small envelope with a red heart on the inside.  I smiled knowing this wasn't one of the letters I was looking for, but that it was an object of love anyhow.  On the front of the envelope were the letters "AB" written in elementary kid pencil handwriting.  On the backside was the name of my younger brother.  My face lit up with love knowing I not only once received a Valentine from my brother (gasp), but that I had foreseen the specialness of it when I received it. 

Other letters in this bundle included various professional sounding letters from my dad.  Some that I'm pretty sure I'm saving for a blackmail related purpose later in life.  Letters from my deceased grandparents I passed up because they exhibited love.  And to read the letters of love they had for me was just going to be too much.  I wasn't up there to cry my eyes out, I was up there to find LOVE!

And then there it was, the handwriting of my first true love.  The boyhood scribble of a young man who I was completely in love with and had left behind to go to college!!

Speaking of college, I had conceded to my parents in the summer after my senior year to not go to my first choice school, which by the way I picked for three very well thought out reasons.  1. It was located in between both the mountains and the ocean, 2. the brochure folder showed these wonderful green lawns to lay around on (because that is a must in a college), and 3. it was a 24 hour drive from my parents.  So on a whim, I applied to University of Nebraska just in case.  Most of you know the rest of the story.  If you don't, just know that I bleed Red!

So back to the love part.  My first love, BC, was the love of all loves.  We met just before the summer after my senior year of high school.  We had what we now label as the best summer of our lives.  I spent every waking minute I could with BC.  I would get up, go to work, go home and sleep until he was off of work and then be out all night.  We did that for 2 months.  And then I left and here is where the letters come in. 

First let's fast forward a decade and a half and Mr. BC and I reconnect after having not seeing each other for at least 15 years.  We have the same chemistry we had back when we knew nothing about heart break, failed relationships, marriages and life in general.  We spend a good part of a Saturday night catching up, arguing about our (his) political stances, and in general shared long stares in the eyes wondering what might have been. 

I begin to open these letters one by one and read them slowly, aiming to let my youthful memories come back.  The letters profess love, devotion, committment and longing to be together, longing to spend the night together without having to lie to our parents.  :) Some of the letters are late night delirium of words trying to insert the warm feelings of his heart into the paper so that my body might warm just by touching the same note.  And some are the mundane details of college life without your best friend. In any case, I cherished each one today as I did when I retrieved them from my dorm room mail box.  I secretly wanted that relationship back, scratch that. I wanted that love, that devotion of time, thought and space back in my life.  

I fell in love with these letters today. I transcended time and allowed myself to feel those irrestible feelings of love, lust and friendship that come with your first true love. 

As I go to sleep tonight, thinking about my day in the rafters of my barn, remembering what true, devoted, unwavering love felt like again, I wonder, Can you ever love someone as deeply and as whole-heartedly as you did/do your first love?