Growing Pains

Nineteen eighty–I was fourteen in September, soon to be fifteen, and I was excited. I was about to begin a new milestone of my life, and I stared into the mirror with a dreamy gaze. I wasn’t looking at my real reflection so much, not the chubby-cheeked girl with wide blue eyes and a face that looked twelve if I was lucky. I saw, through a haze of cloudy puffs, a mature, burgeoning woman full of ninth grade sophistication and womanly wiles. I was about to embark on my first date.

Unlike many mothers I’d heard of and seen on the sitcoms that were my companions, my own mother was acting very unsitcom-like. She seemed more excited than me as she fluttered around with giddy childishness, rhapsodizing over “your first date!” I’d always known my mother was “different,” but sometimes all I wanted was Florence Henderson with an understanding smile. Instead, what I got was an eccentric Suzanne Sugarbaker during a time when Suzanne had yet to grace the airwaves. Sometimes I thought of her as a shorter, plumper Scarlett O’Hara. With just as many annoying traits. The way my mother was acting, I thought with trepidation, you’d have thought I’d won the Nobel prize...but my mother wasn’t one to be impressed by something like that. No, the first date with a BOY was all it took to let her know I was ACCEPTABLE. I knew my mother loved me regardless of boyfriend status, but I also knew that her dearest wish was to be a wife and mother of country club status, something she could never seem to attain. And so she transferred those wishes onto me, to my great chagrin.


“Let me see what you’re wearing,” she said breathlessly as I stood in the middle bedroom of my grandmother’s home, a predominately pink bedroom with antique white furniture and wooden floors. Even in nineteen eighty there was an undercurrent of mustiness, of times-gone-by in the bedroom that had once been my mother’s, then my aunt’s, and now mine. Family pictures adorned the faded pink walls, but I paid no attention to them, not at fourteen.

I felt a quiver of excitement, but I was resentful of sharing the moment with my mother. “Mom, please,” I intoned as I turned away from her. “I’m not going anywhere for five hours, and it’s just Gary.” Just Gary. I’d known this boy, a senior, since I was only a child. I remembered him bouncing up to the door of the house, knocking and asking for my older brother. They were friends, my brother and Gary. I never thought of him as anything more than that until one day when, standing on the porch of my house, he stared at me with an intensity that shook me from the inside out. I’d been thirteen then and in the seventh grade.

“Hi,” he said when I opened the door. That seering gaze locked into me and I stepped away from the door. I was curious, buzzing with electric current I didn’t understand, and overwhelmed.

“Hi,” I breathed. I called for my brother, and as soon as he appeared I stepped aside and away from confusing emotions I wasn’t ready to feel.

“Your sister’s sure growing up,” I heard him tell my brother, and I leaned against the wall, breathing hard, completely weak and jumbled up inside.

“Whatever,” my brother said with an odd look at his friend. And they were gone.

From then on the current between Gary and myself was unmistakable. He started looking at me with blue/green eyes that seemed to pierce straight through me. At my young age, I was really more uncomfortable with it than anything else. I liked boys-always had. I was not one of those girls who ever thought boys had cooties. No, I was holding hands with a little boy under the “reading table” in first grade. So that wasn’t it. With Gary it was different, scary; I’d always thought of him as old, sophisticated, and suddenly he was paying attention to ME? It boggled my mind.

I thought of Gary’s intense, intelligent face as I stood before the mirror in “my” room, alone again since my mother had drifted away, and I pictured his tousled, golden-blonde head, his muscular, quite grown-up physique. I shivered. He wasn’t handsome like Scott Baio or Christopher Atkins, but he was very attractive–and he wanted me. A daunting thought for a very inexperienced, sheltered fourteen-yr-old.

I curled my hair with a curling iron while my hands shook in anticipation. I had to apply my dusky blue eyeshadow ultra carefully to keep from smudging it, and thankfully my mother wasn’t present. She was a nurse at the local nursing home and had an evening shift; I thanked the gods of luck for that. So Gary stood once again on our porch steps, but he was waiting for me instead of my brother. When I stepped off that porch and into his car, my heart racing like a frightened colt’s, I knew I was stepping into a new world of dating and romance on a level I’d only read about in many, many novels.

He took me to a company picnic for McDonald’s employees-at seventeen he’d already become a manager and was gregarious and outgoing with his peers and employers. I, usually the goofy, talkative girl who couldn’t shut up, stood aside at this party in my new peach shirt and Levi 501 jeans and felt awkward, young, and out-of-place. All the food I forced into my body tasted like rancid sawdust. I’d never felt so out of my element. Several girls-high school girls older than myself-whispered in clusters and pointed at me with thinly-veiled hostility. I felt like an interloper and a child., and I was dizzy with relief when we left in Gary’s bright red Mustang.

Dusk was falling as we drove up a hill to the top of Sunset Lake, the place where teenagers in my hometown “park.” I shifted nervously, but then Gary started to talk to me-not like a boy to a girl, but like a person to a person. He gradually drew me out; we talked about books, movies, beliefs, television shows...and after about an hour, with us inching closer and closer to each other in the fading light of the sun he stopped, looking nervous, himself, for the first time. His vibrant eyes shifted from place to place but suddenly refused to land on me. I cocked my head in confusion and alarm, wondering if I’d done something wrong, when I saw the shadow of his right hand being manipulated by his left. And he offered, with shaking fingers, his class ring to me.

“You can wear this if you want,” he said with a slight waver in his voice. He’d shifted his body so that he was looking straight ahead, not at me. I was enchanted.

“I’d like that.”

I slid the proffered ring onto my left third finger. It was ludicrously large, but I didn’t care. I stared at it, my face glowing from within. And then he kissed me, my first kiss, with the song “Thunder Island” blaring out of his car stereo. In the beginning it was sweet, lips to lips, but when he forced my mouth open and I was not impressed. I didn’t like my first taste of a boy’s mouth-I almost gagged but remained steadfast in my resolve not to be humiliated on the first date with my first real boyfriend. The kind of kissing I learned that night grew on me. After that first night, actually, I never had a problem with it, like some sort of switch had been flipped to the “on” position, and kissing turned out to be just fine. I kissed him exclusively for over a year.

I went through a lot with Gary. He had a silver tongue to match his hypnotizing eyes, but no matter how much he talked, cajoled, and reasoned, I would not be convinced to “go all the way” with him. I knew myself and had a strong enough will to resist; I was only fifteen during the bulk of our relationship, and I felt too young, knew in my soul that I wasn’t ready. He gave me a promise ring, a cute little gold band with the smallest diamond chip. I liked it because I knew it was given with his heart. I also felt guilty, because as much as I felt connected to him in so many ways, I also knew I didn’t want to be with him forever. I couldn’t imagine going through life with only one boyfriend, one tie to hold me down for the rest of my life. Just thinking about it made me breathe hard, feel suffocated.

After Gary graduated from high school he joined the Navy. I returned his class ring but we were supposed to remain committed, at least that was what we told each other. My eyes strayed, as I’m sure his did, and by the following October I knew I couldn’t let it continue. I loved him too much to do such a thing to him, and so with a breaking heart I had “the talk.” We saw each other occasionally after that; he still came by to visit when he was in town, and we still had that “spark.” But I was young, I needed to experience life. And I found other loves, unfortunately far less deserving than Gary.

The last time I remember seeing him was the summer after my first year of college. He came by while he was home to see his parents; he came at a time when my own personal turmoil was at its height. He took me for a ride, attempting to “break it to me gently” that he’d been married that winter. I slammed into the house I was sharing with a friend, threw myself on my bed and sobbed in tune to a George Michael ballad. I didn't even know why.

I know hindsight isn’t always a good thing, but quite often I can’t help it. And now, with the wisdom of age, I look at back at Gary and myself and silent tears fall for the girl who didn’t know. I didn’t know how rare he was, this Gary of my youth. We used to talk for hours about anything and everything. We shared hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, all of it. We didn’t just neck. We shared in ways I never even shared with the man I eventually married. And there’s this niggling little part of me that wishes he’d been my “first” everything. At least then it would have meant something.

As with all my relationships, I wonder how much my mother’s attitude and my father’s drunken indifference interfered with my emotions about Gary. Part of me always kept him at arms’ length, never wanting to hand myself over to someone with any measure of vulnerability. They confused me, my parents, making me feel like I was in the middle of a kaleidoscope dance, being blinded by the glare of dramatics and drink. All I knew was that I wanted peace. I wanted to be a rock, an island. Someone without the pathetic neediness of my mother–because who in their right mind would NEED someone like my alcoholic father with his abandonment issues; who in their right mind would NEED to be a "country club wife" dependent on a man for everything. Not me. "Never me," I would utter softly through gritted teeth.

Gary and I have recently reconnected, tentatively making overtures towards some sort of friendship for the first time in over twenty years. I’ve been terrible, in the past, about burning bridges and losing touch with people who should be important to me. Well, not this time. Gary and I share a history and a bond–what better basis for solid friendship? Maybe someday I’ll learn...as I think I slowly am...that rocks and islands aren’t things to aspire to. Peace has its drawbacks.