“Guess who” signed on several valentines has changed my life forever. Those two words set my life’s journey on a glorious path. For years I couldn’t guess who they were from, but I never forgot them. Years later I found out that a beguiling little girl sent them to me. At the time I was a young teen. She was a tease, and I teased back. We were both very young.
All the students in Junior High School would wait outside in the parking lot before the school bell rang and they let us in. The buses would drop all the students off there. Sometime it was very cold and snowy, and they would let us into the cafeteria – it was Buffalo, need I say more. Mostly we stayed outside in various groups. The social stratum was clearly defined then. But I knew this girl’s sister, who was a year older than me, although her sister and I never talked very much. We had met in the Yorkers club, a New York State history club. It was a unique institution in Junior High. Her sister was now in Senior High School.
She was two years younger. I was a ninth grader, and she was a seventh grader. My first attempts at dating were taking place that year, but not with her. It was 1963, and the Beatles were just beginning. School dances were held at the end of school day in the gym with boys on one side and girls on the other – staring at one another. I was on the swim team having had the benefit of an above ground swimming pool, a first in our neighborhood. I was also the president of the Yorkers club, and she was in it too. So I knew who she was and I knew her family. She lived a short bike ride from my home – less than a mile.
The shift from being the top in Junior High to beginning again in Senior High took me years to overcome. I felt very awkward, emotionally immature, and socially inept. I don’t think I regained my self-confidence until after I graduated from college, if ever. So the next time she and I were in the same school was my senior year in High School, and she entered as a tenth grader. Her family was involved in AFS (American Field Service) after hosting a student from Austria. This included an open house at her home, and briefly seeing her parents. Another time the club rode our bikes to the Buffalo Zoo. She and her girlfriend were there. Unfortunately I showed more interest in her girlfriend. The remainder of the school year was a blur from SATs tests to National Merit Scholarships tests, and culminating in my college acceptance.
At university I joined a fraternity. There was insufficient undergraduate housing and over fifty fraternities and sororities. Doing it seemed appropriate, and it has provided numerous memories of good times. Yet I spent many hours working at the computer center and there I met someone. It never progressed very far, but it knocked me for a loop. She had a boyfriend yet I thought we had something special. I totally flipped over her, she encourage me, but in the end she stayed with her boyfriend. Seeing her after all this was so emotionally trying that my legs would feel weak when she was in the same room.
Later that semester at home on holiday break I was still in a funk and my mother suggested that I call “the little girl who had sent me those valentines”. So I looked up her number and phoned. She was now a senior in High School. I expected her to say no, but her reply was totally unexpected. She said that her father had just died that week. I didn’t know what to say, but she made it easier on me by saying that I should phone back when I was in town again. I did, and another enduring theme in my life began.
My dearest Kathleen, we’ve had so much to learn, and we have learned so much together – now over forty years later you are my friend, my partner, my love, and you will always be my valentine as I am yours.