October 20, 2002
It is a park where lovers go to meet. In the morning when most couples are in each other’s arms and hold each other in the warmth of their beds, he finds himself sitting in the park and writing a letter.
His apartment is next to the park and he has come out here to compose a note explaining to his lover why he can no longer stay, why somehow things have gone awry. She sleeps in the bed unaware that he has gone; her security wrapped in the warmth of the sheets.
The letter goes badly and he crumples yet another sheet at the public garbage can. A couple passes holding hands and laughing, obviously in love. He wishes he could be either of them.
He gives up on writing to his lover and opens his journal.
* * *
You don’t know who I am, or if you do, I am a distant memory.
I saw you yesterday as you walked through this park on the way to lunch or work or shopping. You were dressed in a business suit that really accented your figure and your walk. Years have passed, but you haven’t changed even after all of these years.
You could not know how much you have affected me, how much you shaped my life. My relationships and lovers have been colored by the impression of you. It is as if you were the archetype from which artists, after seeing you, created each of the women I have met since meeting you. Perhaps it is the reason that I have floated from woman to woman looking for something or someone in order to somehow find you.
It was a long time ago, I was ten, eleven, at the most when it happened, the day I met you; I remember it clearly. People remember many firsts, the moment they realize they can read, their first kiss, and the first time they make love. I remember the moment I met you, not just because it was the first time I fell in love, but because it was also the moment I first became self-aware.
Falling in love when you are ten or eleven is a particularly dangerous because it stays with you longer than it should. After all, if you are a late-bloomer before hormones hit, there is an innocent cast upon a situation that you do not yet understand; it is a time where you can fall in love before you are even capable of being in love. An early-developer gets hit with a surge of hormones that they cannot control, but it is fleeting as it goes from crush to crush. For a late-bloomer, it doesn’t disappear; it sits and becomes a part of you.
I was a late-bloomer.
* * *
It was the end of summer when the days are still hot, but the leaves have already begun to turn. Our school butted up against yours and you could hear the shouts and whistles from the high school when class ended for us, and it was time to go home.
We had played softball that day. I struck out as usual, but that was not what bothered me. My best friend, … it is funny to think about best friends in elementary school, they change from year to year; friendships at this age are of convenience and happenstance rather than of any sort of lasting bond… I think his name was Andrew or something like that. I don’t even know what happened to him, in fact, I can’t even remember his last name; that is how close we were.
Children are merciless on the playground. At an age when recess transforms itself into physical education, even if they don’t mean to, early-developers find kick-ball, dodge-ball and flag-football another way to express themselves upon the less fortunate late-bloomers.
I didn’t find my hand-eye coordination until college, so you can imagine how awkward and frustrating P.E. was at that age. At least P.E. was gender segregated; on the playground it was most embarrassing to be picked after the girls. In P.E. you are simply picked last.
Incidentally, I was that kid that whenever the larger boys would pick on me, the popular girls would come to defend me. I am sure there is a psychological phenomenon about that: a “little brother” syndrome or something – Not that that is relevant, just an observation.
So there we were playing softball, I was trying hard, I really was. Usually I played outfield when we weren’t batting, but Andrew had wanted me to play in the infield. In retrospect I think he wanted me to be more than one of the outcasts that late-bloomers tend to become at that age. In any case, he had made me catcher for the team, which in elementary school usually meant someone who chased after the ball after it had been pitched and missed. Not a bad job really, we didn’t use gloves and you didn’t have to be particularly coordinated to chase the ball and throw/roll it back in the direction of the pitcher.
It was the middle of the game, I don’t remember what inning, it doesn’t matter which; I don’t even know if we were winning or losing; I think we were losing or about to lose or something. Andrew was playing shortstop and I was there at catcher. The pitcher pitched the ball right to the batter and with a crack, the ball went sailing to the outfield.
The other late-bloomers were stunned and did not , or could not, react to the ball in their midst, so Andrew tore off after the ball. The batter reached first and rounded second. Andrew got to the ball as the batter hit third. Andrew got ready to throw the ball to home. I stood up and got ready to make my first contribution in a team sport.
It was really out there, and Andrew threw the ball as hard as he could. It arched all the way across the field like a meteor. I stepped forward ready to catch the ball. Somewhere in my head, I got my wires crossed and didn’t think I could let the ball bounce before I caught it.
The ball flew towards me, and the batter made his way towards home. I am sure people were screaming but I could only hear my own heartbeat. It was the moment, I thought, the moment that I would belong, the moment that I would be accepted amongst the other kids and not always be picked last.
I am sure you can guess the rest: I reached out to catch the ball, but it went passed my hands and crushed me in the chest with a bone-rattling thud. I fell to the ground with the wind knocked out of me. The batter ran home safe. I lay on the ground and struggled to catch my breath, my heartbeat pounded in my ears. And the ball, it rolled away somewhere.
The teacher ran to us, the kids crowded around me, Andrew ran in from the outfield. To his credit, Andrew did not blame me for not catching the ball. I suppose he did not expect a late-bloomer to be able to catch it. The teacher asked what happened. I told her that Andrew threw the ball and I tried to catch it in my chest.
Andrew must have felt defensive because he said, “You should have let it bounce, most people would have let it bounce.” I don’t remember ever talking to Andrew again after that.
I am sure a girl defended me and the teacher was worried enough to send me to the nurse’s office.
I was mortified, not for having a girl defend me, not for missing the ball, not even for Andrew betraying me, but strangely for not understanding that you could let the ball bounce before you caught it. I had gotten it confused, that an “out” only happened when it was hit, not when your best friend was throwing it home to tag the guy.
* * *
The school bell rang and I was walking home with my little brother. He is two years younger than me; he was eight or nine I guess. Most of the kids had gone home the other way. We lived in the back of the school past the high school where you were.
My stomach hurt, I couldn’t tell if it was from the ball hitting me in the chest or if I just needed to go to the bathroom badly. It really hurt though; it must have, if I was willing to show that much pain in front of my brother; either that, or the events of the day made me forget to be older, wiser and macho in front of him.
We got maybe half-a-block from the school and were walking along the fence of the high school. I am sure now that it was because I really needed to go to the bathroom, I am embarrassed to remember it that way – having a broken sternum or a bruise from the softball, or even appendicitis would have been better and would be a better story, but the reality is, I think I needed to go to the bathroom and hadn’t gone before we left the school. In my defense, I think the pain from the softball might have masked it.
The stomachache got worse and I had to stop, I am sure I was scaring my brother. I doubled up and fell to my side on the sidewalk. You were playing field hockey at the high school and the ball must have rolled over to the side of the fence because for whatever reason, you were there to see me lying on the ground. I can’t remember what my brother did; I will have to ask him some day.
I remember you came to me and asked me if I was okay. I told you my stomach hurt. You leaned over to see how I was doing. Brown mane of hair, flowing over me, concerned eyes, soft touch. You crouched over and told me to get on you back. You were warm and soft. The memory is one of great security, of warmth and understanding, of being taken care of and cared for.
You took me to my school’s office and made sure the nurse took care of me. After were calls to parents, worries about appendicitis, my teacher coming in to see me, getting to go to the bathroom, going home and feeling better.
I never saw you again.
Never that is, until yesterday when you walked through this park and back through my life. I didn’t know what to say, I don’t think I was capable of talking to you, though in the twenty-four hours since then, I have thought of everything I could think of so that you might remember me.
I don’t know what your situation is, whether you are married, or happy or content. I don’t know if you have children or if you like your job. I don’t know even the most basic things about you, like your favorite color or even your name, but I feel a bond to you, like there was a reason that we should meet again after fifteen years.
But as the time passes waiting for you, and I am not sure of myself anymore. If this is fate, I don’t know why you have not passed again this morning. I am thinking that if this is indeed fate, it is perhaps missed fate, a lesson in decisive commitment.
Yesterday, I was given an opportunity to once again see you, the chance to introduce myself and say “hi, you won’t remember me, but you made a big impression on my life, would you like to have a cup of coffee?” And like many of the chances I have had in my life, I have missed it and am left with even more regret.
I begin to wonder whether it is a sign, that this lesson is meant to give me insight not on whether or not I should seize the day when the opportunity presents itself, but rather a chance to examine my inability to commit to the women I have floated through.
It is a lack of maturity that does not allow me to appreciate the people I am with. It is fear that roots me into the past and prevents me from living in the present. Pedestals are set too high, expectations are unreasonable and I find myself creating reasons to leave the people I am with.
Perhaps it is not you that I am waiting for; perhaps it was the idea of you.
The woman asleep in my bed upstairs is wonderful. She laughs and makes me laugh. She understands when I anger and when I cry. She reciprocates and lets me take care of her when she angers and cries. She is opinionated, yet mild in temperament. She is stable but passionate. She is everything I have ever hoped for in a woman and yet I am sitting alone in a park thinking of leaving her – no, trying to leave her.
Even the thought is indicative of the immaturity. I am lucky and even blessed to be with her and it took a woman fifteen years from my past on a chance missed-meeting to make me realize it.
It is empowering. Still, a part of me wants, wishes, that you would walk by.
“Hi, you won’t remember me, but you made a big impression on my life, would you like to have a cup of coffee?”
The romantic-me hopes you would remember and we would take it from there. The pragmatic-me knows that reality is better than fantasy; you won’t pass, and if you did, you wouldn’t remember.
* * *
In this morning where couples are finding themselves in each other’s arms, a woman in an apartment beside a park wakes to find her lover asleep in her arms and in the security of the warmth of their bed.
In the park, where lovers go to meet, couples walk holding hands and laughing. A woman in a business suit walks through the park looking in recognition for a barely remembered face that she cannot place. She passes a park bench littered with crumpled pages, looks up to the apartments along the avenue, dismisses it all from her mind, then continues on her way.