You Never Forget Your First Love

No matter how old you get, you never forget your fist love. I never did.
When my family moved to St. Albans, that first year we lived on one side of a huge house. The next year we moved to a house that we bought way up on South Walnut Street.
And "he" lived beside me. I was eight and he was ten. On my part, it was love at first sight: He had blonde hair and blue eyes and I was the opposite with dark hair and dark eyes.
He didn't even go to my grade school but to a catholic school in downtown St. Albans.
And he knew I had a crush on him; how could he not when I wrote his name in chalk right smack out in the street?
Eventually his parents asked me to go places with them and him. I was petrified but thrilled inside and no way gutsy.
I will never forget searching for the just right valentine to give to him. My parents had taken me to the store and there it was and they bought it for me.

Giving it to him was another problem because it definitiely had the word LOVE on it and inside of it. So, I coerced a girlfriend of mine to go to his house and we handed it to him.
What did I say? We got this for you. What a dumb thing to say and not what I wanted to say at all.

Several years went by with my passion for him and his for me but it all came to a thundering thud when my parents decided to sell our house and move to Charleston.
I was heartsick.
Years passed and I never forgot him. I would drive to St. Albans to visit relatives and drive up by his old house hoping to catch a glimpse of him but never did.

After I was married, I saw him in Charleston pushing a man in a wheelchair: I was across the street but I knew him instantly. When I crossed the street to see him, I got a big lump in my throat even if we were adults. We talked briefly and he went his way and I went mine.

Many times I called his mother and talked to her about how she was doing and how he was.
It was a jolt to learn that he had MS and was in a terrible condition. I told her how sorry I was to learn about it.
Not long after that, his obituary appeared in the paper.
When I saw it all I could do was cry and cry and cry. It was for the young love we had but more for the what ifs and what could have been.
Wasn't written in the stars.
Still you never forget your first love and every single Valentine's Day after he died, I think back to that day my girlfriend and I gave him that card. I wish I had handed it to him.
But I know he knew it was from me to him.
This Valentine's Day, take time to think back to a first love you had and hang onto the memories.
I do.

Sherry Hill