Puppy Love

I was thirteen when I first saw the boy who made me blush and left me breathless. It was with baited breath that I stood near my stepfather and heard him contract the young man to come back and bale the back hayfield in those giant round bales that were just making the scene way back then in 1978/79. I had the mother of all crushes on that blonde haired, blue eyed boy. The following year again he was engaged to bale the hay in the back fields into those big round bales. I had a birthday and was now fourteen and he was everything to my young heart. I spent time riding on that big John Deere tractor as it pulled the bailer. I was willing to do anything just to have time with him. Over those first teenage years I saw him off and on. Sometimes because he was doing work for my stepfather. Once because he showed up on our doorstep on Valentine's Day evening with a box of candy for me after months of not seeing him or hearing from him. I stood blushing and stammering and not knowing what on earth to do as my parents and little sister looked on. I never had a real boyfriend and only dated sporatically because I always held out hope he would notice me more. I was always second place to another girl also named Angie but I always held out hope he would see she was just there because he had a truck and wealth. Though I never met her I always got the impression from others who knew her she wasn't really interested in him it was more about what he had or better stated what his family had. For a while he did take a real interest in me. When he entered GMI I went with his mother to visit. I watched him graduate. We wrote letters all the time. On the weekends he was home I spent sunday afternoons over at his house to see him off for the week. His mother even held out hope that one day we would get married. We were just teenagers but it was said. My parents let me go and do more because of him than I had ever been allowed in the past. Our families were farmers. Simpe people making a living off the land. We worked together and played together and went fishing and hunting together. In my stupid girlish dreams and my stupid girlish heart I truly believed I would grow up to marry him. He was my first crush. He gave me my first kiss. He was my first love. I kept away from other boys because my heart ached at the thought of him and I always told myself if I had a boyfriend when he came around I wouldn't be able to spend time with him. In eleventh grade I asked him to go with me to my high school prom. I had a beautiful yellow dress and he was to wear his military school uniform. A few days before he called and cancelled. He said he couldn't come home that weekend. The commander had issued orders that everyone was to remain on campus. It was supposedly for some type of discipline or punishment I can't remember the details, it seemed odd but I believed him. I held it together until we got off the phone. The huge hot lump of tears in my throat couldn't be held back. I cried myself to sleep that night. That is the last time I talked to him. The last contact I had with. I saved every card and letter he wrote me. I tucked them away in the heart shaped candy box long since empty of the chocolates sweets. For one little instant I had been his valentine. I would pull them out and read them over and over again. They were hidden in the bottom of my closet in a box filled with a big sweater and a heavy blanket. Those were my love letters. The one real proof that for a while he loved(?) liked me a whole lot too. I kept those letters until they began to fall apart and the ink was fading. A freak accident with burst water pipes and a septic tank flooding brought an end to those letters. For many years they were the most important things I owned. It was when I was 9 months and bursting at the seams pregnant with Colby that I happened into an old country store and ran into him. My cheeks turned red. My heart slammed in my chest. I was breathless. As we pulled away from the parking lot I had a hard time pulling my eyes away. Once my sister ran into him. Then again he came into the place she was working. I will NEVER forgive her for trying to get a date with him. Red corvette or not. Me married with a child or not. All those years later were of no concern. He was my first love and she had no business sniffing around him. It was and still is a hurt I can't explain. His grandfather was killed in an aweful farming accident a few years before my divorce. Just aweful. I sent a flower and a card as is fitting. I know his grandfather meant the world to him. I never received a thank you or any type of acknowledgement from him or his family. I often was on the road that passed his family lands and watched sporadically as he built a house near the tree line at the back of a field. I always scolded myself and felt ashamed for the thughts that jumped into my head when anything stirred the faintest memory of that blonde haired boy. I had a dream about him last night. In that dream he treated me like I always wished he would. He even apologized for the prom incident. This morning I woke up wanting to cry. I woke up confused as to why I would dream about him all these many years later. I googled his name. The #1 googled entry for his name is the post on another blog that asked about a first kiss and young love. I have a giant fear that he might google his own name and find the comment I left. Maybe I can get her to edit out his name. They say you never forget your first true love. It is true. At least for me. My heart has never forgotten either.