Howling at the moon…

I wish I could say, “you never forget your first love”.

Not because I don’t believe in it… I’ve written about love so much and given so many people advice on love that I do believe in the concept. I’ve just never got to experience it. Yet. I don’t think.

I know I’ve been in love or what I think that is. I had a pretty loving marriage and have been in a couple of relationships since and am in a relationship now that were and are all about the things love should be about, I think?

I have never howled at the moon, though.

But, I think I got close once…

No one knows about an infatuation I have carried for the past 30 years. One that started when I was in Standard 4. One that I could never discuss because it started when I was too young to even understand about these kind of things. One that started before I was old enough to even know what a howl was. But… old enough to know that she made me look up at the moon and go, “aaaah… woof?”

We had actually known each other for a couple of years before that when she and her family lived across the road from us. We were the same age so we fell into the same play groups. We moved away after a year but two years later, when we were in Standard 4, she moved to our town and I recognised her immediately. And that’s when my infatuation began. And where it also had to be seen to end. Mostly because the school bully in primary school fancied her and threatened to beat me up if I ever talked to her. And after that, mostly, because she was way more than would ever be interested in someone as young or as lost or as un-surefooted as me.

But the infatuation never ended… We were always, somehow, connected. We were at different high schools but her brothers were in the same boarding school as me so I was able to, without making it seem obvious, keep track of her. I’m not even sure why I did that. Maybe, as I was growing up and becoming a little more sure-footed I was waiting for an opportunity to stick up my hand and hope she saw me.

But… No matter how much I saw her. She never got to see me.

After school there was no more contact. No more news. We both started new lives as adults on very different paths and I lost all contact. But I never lost the infatuation… Her name was the first word I ever Googled. She was the first person I looked for on SA Reunited (a social media site that connected school friends) and she was the first person I looked for on FaceBook. But I never found her.

Until recently.

One of her brothers popped up on FaceBook a couple of years back and I connected with him immediately but no matter how often I would search through his friends’ list she never appeared. The closest I came was when I eventually sent him a message to ask, “so… How is your mum? How are your brothers? And how is your sister?” His reply that she was married and living in Cape Town and had two children should have satisfied my curiosity and put an end to the story.

But it never did. I still needed to understand the infatuation or what it was that made me look up at that moon all those years ago.

And then… It finally happened. She joined FaceBook. And the pretty girl had become a beautiful, gorgeous woman. And I am still infatuated. And I am still pretending I am above it all. I’m pretending I don’t look at her photos and read the things she says and I’m pretending that I don’t want to spend hours hearing her story.

I think I now know why I was infatuated but I want to know why she makes me smile. Makes me cry. Makes me feel alive.

I want to know why she makes me howl at the moon.

And I want to be able to put up my hand and hope she sees me this time.

~ by Norm on June 5, 2011.