Way Back When

Way back when, before life got the best of me and changed me into the woman I am today, I was that girl, laughing at my friend who had somehow gotten gallons of gas in the street.  It was utter chaos.  I had no reason to be there except it was a reason to get away from the desk where I was doing summer penitence for a keg party gone way wrong.  I had no idea, when I begged Momma to let me leave the shop that morning, that it would change my life forever...but it did.  Today, I cannot help but remember that moment in time and the boy I met that day who ended up totally changing my life.  We were so shy and silly at first, looking at one another, blushing furiously, being altogether too quiet but the sizzle in the air was undeniable.  I was so young then as was he.  I can remember he bought me a coke that morning and I left there thinking I would never see him again.  The friend that spilled that gas in the street that fateful day was also the reason I did, in fact, see that boy again.  A short time later, I went to visit my friend James as he worked on his SS Monte Carlo that ran faster than anyone else's car I knew and it just so happened that the boy I met, the boy who bought me a coke, was there helping James do that dirty work and that was the beginning for us.  Funny how we meet people in life that never leave us, no matter where time or life takes us.  Funny how after years pass, you can hear a song, or hear a name, or see a certain place even in pictures and are instantly transported back to that time and place and to that person who is so permanently etched inside your mind and heart they cannot be erased.  It is true when they say life is not about days, it is about moments.  The person I shared all those moments with lives inside my heart in a place that nothing can touch, nothing can change, nothing can shake...even if I am or have.  Circumstances came between us, the foolish years of being a kid tend to make you do things you may regret for the rest of your life and I know I did and do.  But standing before him on his wedding day, I told him the words my heart still speaks, even though it would all be changed from that day forward and might never be again.  I would say those same words today if I saw his face.  Some people find a way into your heart and no matter what happens, those feelings never die.  He is that for me.  He will always be that for me.  I write this with tears streaming down my face for that boy and for that love that just cannot die.  Just the name, just the name was all I needed to see and I am here, back in a time and place where everything was exactly as it should be.  I cannot help but to be there at the end, to be there as I promised I would be so long ago.  But don't we all have one of these...one person who so took our hearts that in truth it, our own bleeding heart, was never really ours again?  I can only hope we all do.  I can only hope we have all been blessed to love, at least once, like that!!!!  I thank God I did and do....