Way Back When

Way Back When

“Oh, Mom,” Melanie sighed as she leaned against the door she closed gently. “I love him. He’s the greatest.”

Mary Harris heard this more times than she remembered as she gave her daughter a knowing smile. “I know, honey. But you said the same thing last week about, what was his name anyway?” She hesitated to remind her sixteen-year-old daughter that she started this ritual the day she reached her thirteenth birthday.

Melanie became quiet and lowered her eyes as if not quite sure what to say. She folded her hands in front of her and in what seemed to be a half whisper, she told her mother, “I know, Mom, but this is different.” She raised her eyes and looked almost pleadingly at her mother as if she wanted an answer to a question she didn’t know how to phrase. She reached out and took hold of her mother’s hands. “He’s just the greatest boy I’ve ever met.”

Excitedly, she went on to say how soft and liquid his brown eyes were when he spoke. She loved his dark blond hair and how he hated it when one curl in the front fell on his smooth forehead. “He won’t use that greasy stuff to keep his hair in place but keeps brushing the hair away from his eyes.”

Melanie told her mother how his eyes seemed to sparkle when he smiled – which he did often. “Oh, Mom, you should see his dimples. He’s just the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen!”

Mrs. Harris gave her daughter a hug and kissed her cheek. Trying not to sound indifferent to a story she’d heard about a thousand times, she asked, “Well? What’s the name of this unusually handsome young man and how did you meet him?”

It wasn’t so much the way Melanie rambled on and on about her new love but the words she used that worried her mother. They were not the all-too-familiar words she’d heard a thousand times. This time the emotion sounded different – much different.

“Mom, Johnny is in the same class as Collette’s brother, Tommy. I love him, Mom, but he doesn’t even know I exist. I mean, he says ‘hi’ when he sees me but that’s all. When we’re with the group, he rarely looks at me but his face lights up when he laughs, so much so, I doubt we’d need a lamp in a dark room. Oh Mom, what am I going to do?” Melanie looked at her mother with desperate eyes.

All at once, Mrs. Harris felt her heart being torn in two as her head spun in many different directions. Her daughter was hurt and therefore, so was she. Yet, Melanie was only sixteen, way too young to commit herself to a boy who was one year younger! She wanted to be glad that Johnny ignored Melanie – and yet also be angry that he did.

She wanted to tell Melanie that Johnny was too young for her but found no way to justify that idea since she was one year older than Melanie’s father. She wanted to remind Melanie that she was too young to go steady with any boy but remembered how often she told Melanie how she and her father met. Mary was fourteen, standing on the corner with her friends when Frank, only thirteen, and his friends were skating in her direction. Mary liked the way Frank looked and stuck her foot out to trip him so they could meet. Twenty-eight years later they were still together and still very much in love. How could tell Melanie to do any different?

Melanie’s heart ached as she plopped her chin in her hands whose elbows now rested on the kitchen table. “Mom,” she asked again, “what am I going to do?”

Mrs. Harris gave the only advice she thought appropriate. “Smile and be attentive. When he speaks, listen as if he’s the only one around. When he looks at you, look directly into his eyes as if you were trying to see his soul. If that doesn’t get his attention, nothing will.” She squeezed Melanie’s hand and kissed the top of her head. “I just hope you won’t be hurt if things don’t work out but if they don’t, I’m here. Never forget that.”

Melanie followed her mother’s advice and within two weeks she was known as “Johnny’s girl.” She walked on air and felt like she’d never stop smiling. For the next few months, they spent every available minute together. Melanie and Johnny began planning their future. Each wanted to join the Navy and have careers, Johnny as a Naval officer specializing in electronics and Melanie as a nurse. They planned to enlist the day after his high school graduation. They talked about how many children they’d have and what their names might be. Their lives would be perfect. But then, an unforeseen dilemma burst any happy balloon they created. Johnny learned that his parents wanted to move and while that didn’t seem too earth-shatteringly bad, the location was devastating.

They sat with their fingers entwined, their eyes staring blankly into space, their voices muted with disbelief. They were about to be torn apart. Their dreams shattered into a million tiny pieces. Their hearts deflated just like the balloons after a Thanksgiving Day parade.

The next month, Johnny was gone and Melanie’s dreams along with him. Although they vowed to write as often as time allowed, their letters waned in frequency and then stopped completely. She withdrew into a quiet world where no one knew how to reach her. Her parents pleaded with her to go out with her friends. Her mother reassured her that there “would be other boys” and she’d “definitely find someone else.” Melanie knew her mother was right but for the time being, all she wanted to do was mourn her lost love.

Eventually, Melanie did begin making her way back into the world. Unfortunately, every young man she met reminded her how much she missed her Johnny and yet, she knew life had to go on, even if it meant going on without him. She became determined to start her life over without all those cherished dreams and plans once made with her one true love. She never joined the Navy as she’d planned. She never became the nurse of her dreams. She reminded herself that being a secretary was a noble profession and one that should make her proud. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t. She considered it hum-drum.

Years later, she met a man who was the complete opposite of Johnny. Where Johnny’s hair was dark blond, Pete’s was almost black. Johnny’s eyes were a soft chocolate brown; Pete’s were icy blue. Johnny was tall; Pete was medium height. Johnny wasn’t around; Pete was. One year later, Melanie and Pete became husband and wife. While Melanie loved Pete, she never stopped loving Johnny. She often wondered what he looked like, did he ever join the Navy as they both agreed, where was he living and did he ever think of her.

As time passed, the marriage between Melanie and Pete produced two handsome sons and a husband who wanted no part in being a father. She watched as her marriage fell apart bit by bit until there was nothing left to save and as soon as their older son turned nine years old, Pete left. Once again, to ease the hurt of her broken marriage, Melanie’s thoughts turned to Johnny. “Does he ever wonder where I am? Do I ever cross his mind at all?” The memories they made helped her through these rough times. But, again, she knew, life goes on and once again, she picked up the pieces of her life and moved on.

Melanie watched her sons grow and meet young women who would make her an enormously proud mother-in-law. And she thought of Johnny. “You’d like my sons,” she often spoke to him while lying in bed alone.

Her eyes glowed with undeniable love when she held her grandchildren. “Oh, Johnny, if you were only here,” she thought as she wiped a tear from her eye.

Yes, Melanie’s life was filled with love and happiness but also with the one gaping hole that Johnny’s absence left. That was the only hole that no one could fill. Years ago, she stopped trying to fill it and just walked around it. It was her way of, as she put it, “putting my life in order.”

Now retired and her life in order, she sat at her computer trying to figure out a way to put her memories on paper. She never kept a diary and thought that by leaving something behind, her sons might have a better understanding of their mother and why sometimes they’d find her crying for what seemed to be no reason.

As she surfed the ‘Net, she found a website for her old hometown. It seemed the person who constructed it was trying to contact some of his old friends and thought a website might help others do the same. “I wonder …” Searching the site, she found the link to a neighborhood bulletin board where you could place the names of old friends in hopes of finding one or two. She listed several – including Johnny’s. After a week, she shrugged her shoulders, sighed deeply, and thought, “Well, that was a waste of time, but I tried.”

Melanie concentrated on all the blessings she had in her life. She was healthy and still vibrant, even though she was now past sixty. She maintained a close relationship with her sons, their wives, and children. She also had many wonderful friends. Yes, she knew she was blessed in so many ways. Yet, there was still that hole in her heart.

Early one sunny afternoon in May, about one week before her 63rd birthday, she heard her doorbell ring. Opening the door, she saw a tall handsome man with soft brown eyes.

“I saw your post. It took a bit of searching but I finally found you and now that I have, I’ll never leave again,” he said as he put his arms around her.

As tears filled her eyes, she also felt the hole in her heart fill and even overflow. To Melanie, it was the best birthday gift she’d ever received. With her head pressed gently on his chest, she whispered, “Oh, Johnny,” and her heart filled with happiness and love – just like it did way back when.