From the Beginning

That's me - bottom right.
That's her - top center.
Circa 1978.

Post of the Day at Authorblog!

(Louise)

There's a story here, and you know I'm one to tell it. I can't resist telling a good story, particularly a terribly romantic one.

I was between 9th and 10th grade when my parents announced we were moving from our big city home in Texas to a small town in Georgia. Horrified, I threatened to tie myself to a tree, to run away, or to join the circus - anything to avoid moving back to the sleepy little farm town my parents came from. Sure, we went there every year for several weeks in the summer, and during that time I would hang with my country cousins, fishing, playing softball in a field dotted with cow patties, and learning how to drive the golf cart my cousins zipped around the farm in.

That was all nice - for a few weeks - but my friends were all in the city. Every weekend, they were at my house or I was at theirs. Several of us girls hung out together on a regular basis like that, and I couldn't imagine all of it coming to an end.

Yet come to an end it did. That August we packed up everything and left the city. A wire art sculpture I had worked on for many hours went spinning out from beneath the soft-sided luggage cover on the roof and landed in the road behind us. Dad refused to turn around and go retrieve it (he never turned around - ever), so I watched helplessly as another car ran it over. It flew up into the air and came back to Earth with a crash, bent and disfigured.

Once we arrived in the deep south, life really changed. Things were more tense than ever between my parents because the money was gone. You see the reason for the move was that Dad was sick with cancer and was given about six months to live. He wanted to be back "home", near his mother and his brothers. His run as a big time general contractor was over as soon as he had that first surgery. We were living on very little money and that seemed to make things a lot worse.

My first day at school was a strange one. In the city we always dressed in our finest for the first day of school, but at school in that small town, things were different. Day one was the same as every other day - jeans and t-shirts or jeans and flannel shirts. These were farm kids, rural kids, who didn't dress up - period - unless it was for a school dance or church. Maybe that's not fair...some did dress up from time to time, but on that first day, I felt like a spectacle. I showed up in a black jumpsuit with high heels and a silver ring belt. I had on a silver necklace that looked like an inverted pyramid and silver earrings. For the first day of school in the city I would have been fabulous. In the country? I stood out like a sore thumb.

One of the classes I had to take was World Geography, a 9th grade class that was required and that had not been required at my last school. So in I walked to that first period class on the 9th grade hallway, decked out in my city clothes. One girl, by the end of class, asked bluntly if I was a "ho"! LOL!

It was on that day or one that followed when I first saw "Thelma". She was wearing what everyone else wore, the style I had not yet acquired, and looked up at me. We locked eyes. She would soon become one of my closest friends, a girl I would hang out with as often as I had with the girls in Texas, but she was different. There was something about that intense gaze of hers that shot right through me. I remember returning that gaze on a regular basis, especially during those sleepovers (in which we were NEVER alone....). There was a deep connection between us. She was not my first girl crush, but she certainly made the biggest impression.

I left that school halfway through my junior year because of something bad that happened to me in that town. I never told her why I left, and we lost touch over time. I never forgot her, though.

When I returned to town to see my mother in 1984, with my (ex)husband and little girl (who was 5 1/2 months old at the time), Mom told me that Thelma was gay and that she had moved to a big city with one of our mutual friends. My jaw dropped and I blurted out, "Why not me? What was wrong with me?"

I know that shocked my mother, but she got it. She understood. She had seen us together. My husband was likewise not shocked, because he swore he always knew that about me. But the fact remained that Thelma was gone - with another woman - and I was married with a child.

Over the years, I thought about her a lot. When times were really bad, it was her face I held in my mind, her intense gaze. I hoped I would see her again someday, and I always wondered where she was and what she might be doing.

(There's some stuff I'm going to skip here because it's quite personal to her, and I'll let her tell that part...)

About 6 years or so ago, I began doing internet searches on her name and trying to locate her. I kept coming up empty. She was nowhere to be found. I wondered if she was even still alive, because well, you never know.

And then in March, a mutual friend of ours contacted me through Classmates and MySpace. One of the first questions I had for him was, "Have you seen or heard from Thelma?" He said he had not and that she had not been at the high school reunion he had attended some years before. My heart sank, but I refused to give up.

I joined Facebook in late March, and after hearing from our mutual friend, I thought, "I haven't searched for her there yet..." and I did it.

BOOM - there she was, but she was MARRIED!!!

My heart sank again. I thought, "Well, I at least have to contact her and see...What if there was something there for her, too?"

I'll tell more of this story next time. She's ailing tonight and I'm being selfish, sitting here typing to you. Next post maybe I can tell you that she's better and can swallow without feeling like there's fire in it.

Peace - L