Stepping on the ice, love can become quite slippery
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- December 6, 2019
- 907
An ID bracelet begets a class ring, begets a birthstone necklace, begets keepsake earrings, begets a diamond solitaire, begets a wedding band.
This is pretty much the way things go when a guy gets serious about a girl or, in my case, girls plural.
My circuitous route to the altar — well, it was actually a sunny stretch of sand on an Outer Banks beach — had its origins in, of all places, the public library.
And I don’t think I’m alone in that.
It’s relatively private, offers lots of comfy seating, has a million diversions and, best of all, bans superfluous noise.
When you’re in the eighth grade and not sure of how to handle the terrain of what might be love, it’s essential to be able to communicate without speaking.
I mean what 13-year-old has the wit and wisdom to avoid the trip wires and trap doors of courtship when his only experience in matters concerning the opposite sex is what he’s seen on TV?
Dick Grayson had huge advantages I could only imagine, not the least of which was an alter-ego known as Robin the Boy Wonder.
No wonder I looked to Maynard G. Krebs, instead.
But it didn’t really matter which fictional character I chose as a role model — in the wonder years to come I might have tried Kevin Arnold — because when the game was on and the clock was ticking and the scoreboard was showing zeroes, I had to be myself.
For better or worse, in sickness and in health, etcetera, I was all I had.
So I looked inward, trying to figure out what were my best qualities and where, for lack of a better term, I sucked.
Not surprisingly, that latter list far outdistanced the former.
As the product of a Roman Catholic educational system that had spent eight years ingraining in my malleable psyche the twin papal strands of guilt and shame, I wasn’t exactly poised on the threshold of romantic possibility as I came of age.
I’m not saying, precisely, that parochial schooling was a deal-breaker when it came to young love, but when you’re taught from an early age that just thinking about committing a sin is the same as actually doing it, well, let’s just say your imagination is crippled.
It was like living behind one of those invisible electric fences, the kind that shock dogs when all they’re doing is considering biting the mailman’s leg or chasing after the Good Humor Man’s truck.
The trick was — and I wish I’d known this then — to cut through the back yard and the unprotected woods behind it, running for a place of freedom and possibility where no nuns or their Commandments could hunt you down, blaming your normal, well, urges on sin.
Those of you who didn’t experience the putative gulag of Catholic grade school might have a difficult time believing the veracity of my slightly exaggerated account, but I’m no liar.
If you wanted to slide through the gates of heaven unscathed — and that was the goal — you had to be careful where you stepped.
That, naturally, led me to the public library.
Behind those heavy doors, secrets could be shared and kept.
She was a year younger but smarter than I was.
She wouldn’t wear my ID bracelet in school but would at all other times.
She loved music, books and movies.
And she said she liked me.
This, when you’re living the outlaw life, is enough to keep you skirting the letter of the law, just hoping to hear her say it again.
Because that was the one thing I discovered about myself.
I could carry on a conversation without sounding stupid.
Or sinful.
This, to nonsurvivors of the parochial preparatory gauntlet, might seem a trifle self evident, but, I assure you, being able to walk that fine line was an achievement tantamount to memorizing the Mass in Latin or getting away with wearing penny loafers to school.
It just wasn’t often done.
But she made it easy because, as I’ve already alluded, her intelligence was only outdistanced by her compassion because I was hopeless when it came to taking the next step.
It was one thing to play footsie under the table as we did our homework after school or to feel that electric touch as our fingers briefly brushed as we flipped through the card catalogue.
It was quite another to take our show on the road, to dare to be seen in public where the parochial pipeline reigned supreme.
I don’t want to go all Currier-and-Ives on you, but when you’re in the eighth grade and you’re 13 years old and a gentle snow is falling and the girl who’s wearing your ID bracelet is holding your hand as you skate around the public rink and it’s almost Christmas and the carols are playing through the speakers mounted on the light poles and your friends smile as the two of you glide by, well, it is like a painting, one that you keep in your gallery.
It’s not that we thought we were getting away with something; quite the opposite: we believed we were moving toward something.
And the fact that what we shared that night never matured into anything beyond knowing smiles and an unspoken acknowledgement that the Brooklyn Bridge’s “The Worst That Could Happen” was, in an ironic sense, our song is what matters.
Not every young love — if that’s what it was — lasts. Very, very, very few ever do. But what does count is that feeling you get when you step on the ice, offer your outstretched hand to someone else who might well skate away and instead you’re mitten in glove, eye to eye, heart to heart, a warm fire waiting up the wooden steps after you’ve made memories that cannot be replaced.
I like things that only happen once.
Most of you weren’t on that beach in Kitty Hawk when the woman I’ve loved for more than 30 years finally became my wife. Had you been there, you’d have seen something beyond my dreams.
But then again she’s smarter than I am.
She wears her wedding ring always.
And she loves music, books, movies and me.