All I knew was that he played center position in football, that he’d come to our town from the enormous city of Columbia, had a cool nickname and played sports … along with football, track–high jump and pole vaulting to be exact. Enough to spark a young girl’s fancy.

Filing out of the school auditorium one Wednesday, someone poked me saying, ‘That’s the new boy,’ moving my eyes to a tall young boy in front of me, almost near enough for me to touch. My heart fluttered like a trapped bird in a brand new cage as something tried to take my breath away and eat it. I would have fainted had I not cared what others thought. Instead, I walked like a zombie, staring, wondering what on earth had just happened to me. What made those feelings introduce themselves simply by seeing him from behind? What on earth would happen if I saw him from the front? Who cares? my heart was thinking, so I let it keep thinking on its own. This was something new for me … this fluttering, these feelings, these thoughts.

Teen Canteen on Saturday night was filled with giggly girls hoping for boys who might miraculously know how to dance. Our town was not loaded with dancing boys, so girls danced with each other, twirling, laughing, and sliding across music-filled floors. I walked into the building, glanced around, saw a couple of boys who danced, smiled their way, and then headed for my friends. A gentle touch on my shoulder turned me around and there he stood … in front of me … not in front of another girl … in front of me. He was glorious! Huge, dark brown eyes, a smile to melt M&M’s in a freezer, light brownish crew cut, looking down at me … ‘Would you like to dance?’

‘Me?’ … Darn it! I could not believe I’d asked such a question. Blush … smiles … kick myself in mental anticipation, of what I did not know. He moved closer, slid his arm around my waist, took my hand in his, and gathered me close. I felt like a rag doll, thought I might faint right there. I’d never been so close to a boy before. My head was swimming; my heart pounded in my ears. He moved around the floor easily, gazing in my eyes the entire time, holding me against him so that breathing was close to impossible. Then he spoke, I thought in French, ‘Ooyay ertypay irlgay,’ and I was in love for the first time in my young life. Deeply, amazingly, in love!

With those three words, life changed for a seventeen year old small town girl in the arms of a seventeen year old city boy, both unaware of anything but each other in that moment, on a night that, fifty-one years later, I remember all too well as I read that he has died, far away, and years from then. My mind can’t seem to find the real in reality and my heart begins to shatter, crackling like those frozen M&M’s as its pieces find new places to exist.

I spent the evening pulling out mementos of those young years, reliving eyes and hands and laughter and touch. Two poems in pencil, so light they are hard to read, though I’ve memorized them both, re-introduced themselves to me in a new and saddened light. A couple of playful cards, one of two mules pulling against each other and his handwritten note about pulling together instead of apart. Probably brought about by one of my famous temper tantrums he alone seemed to understand.

My senior yearbook, first page filled with his words of the wonder of me and hopes for my future. Words that walk beneath my fingers like a storybook prince kissing awake the princess who’s died from apples, and hate, and lack of love. He was love personified. Good clear through. There is wonder beyond imagination in first young love that is pure and soft, gentle and kind. It’s a love that lives inside you, never forgotten, for all your life.

He was the one who knew my eyes were hazel. He looked into them … and into my soul.