Summer of '50

The boy who took me on my very first date died last week.

I hadn't seen or heard from him in well over fifty years so I wasn't expecting the odd, sharp sadness I felt when I read about it. I remembered a blue eyed twelve year old with spiky blonde hair and a shy smile who'd worked for a month to earn the price of the show and got in dutch for using his daddy's cologne before he was old enough to shave. Looking at his obituary picture, I saw a career military man, a lifelong soldier with dark hair and a mustache, looking precise and more than a little elegant in his Canadian armed forces uniform. In more recent pictures, he was a little heavier, his hair had gone white but the smile was exactly the same and there was the same sparkle in those blue eyes. Nostalgia and mortality make for a bad mix, I suppose and I felt not just sad, but a little regretful that we hadn't kept in touch.

We were both twelve that summer, delicately balanced on the brink of teenagery and all the foolishness and heartbeak it would bring. We spent the time together - prowling the beaches for driftwood and seaglass, going to every Saturday night show, playing our first game of Spin the Bottle - and learning about life under the watchful (but pleased) eye of my grandmother. We rode the hay wagon with Bill Melanson, played croquet with Ruthie, picked blackberries, listened to old 45's on the sunporch, sat with Sparrow and his old hound dog and watched the sunsets. Sometimes we just walked around the Old Road, holding hands and talking while his younger brothers and sisters - there were nine of them, all told - trailed after us. Even then he wanted to see the world and he did. His military career took him to Germany, Egpyt, and Cyprus just to name a few. He served his entire adult life and when he retired, it was back to the island where he'd been born, back to friends and families old and new.

I doubted that any of his brothers or sisters would remember me but I sent a condolence message anyway.

Summers fly by and first loves fade but both are sweet to remember.