Unbreak My Heart

Eighth grade was a long time ago.

Still, I remember when my girlfriend broke up with me. Sitting on the stairs at home, I cried in my mama's arms.

The indescribable sweetness of one's first love is no match for the inevitable pain when that love dies.

Yesterday, as the tears welled up in my daughter's eyes and I held her close, I flashed back some 35 years and found myself surprised that I still remembered.

I turned back toward the coffee pot to hide my own tears.

Was the wetness of my eyes a reflection of her pain or a deep-seated memory of my own?

I'm not sure.

If Lu asks about going to Starbucks on a school day, my usual response is, "Hell no, woman, you've got to get to school."

But yesterday, a trip to the coffee shop seemed appropriate.

On the way, I told Lu I could still remember my first breakup.

She was surprised when I told her who my girlfriend had been and that she'd lived near where we live now.

"That house? Really?"

On the way back home, after dropping her at school, I got to thinking.

Was it the girl who lived near where we live now?

Or was it the girl who lived across town?

Earlier, talking to Lu, I'd been certain.

But now?

Not so much.

Was it the girl for whom I saved all summer to buy her a gold necklace?

Or was that the girl for whom I begged my dad to take me to school early just so I could spend fifteen minutes holding her hand?

Maybe it was the girl I stayed up all night talking to on the landline, hoping my parents wouldn't pick up and tell me to go to sleep.

Or maybe it was the girl for whom I took the battery out of my watch so that when I was an hour late getting home, I could play dumb.

I don't know.

I can't remember.

Decades later, all my adolescent loves are scrambled into an inseparable amalgam, a bittersweet mixture of childhood love and love lost.

Looking back, it's all sweet and cute and funny and childish.

But standing in the kitchen with my daughter yesterday, there was no sweetness.

Only bitter.

Only pain.

Very shortly, it will fade. Perhaps even before the weekend.

Still, I remember well how the first day back at school after your first breakup is a very, very long day.

Especially when your ex-boyfriend is in your last-period Spanish class.

So, for now, I hope the Grande Coffee Frappathingy with extra vanilla helped.

Even if only for a minute.