The Latin Lover
I was 16 and had been chosen as a delegate from my hometown to attend a international leadership conference in Washington D.C. the summer before my junior year of high school. I had been to both the city and statewide versions of the conference and while spending a week sans parents in the Nation's capital sounded fairly enticing- I couldn't imagine giving up an entire week of my summer with my friends and the 19 crushes I was pursuing at that time. After quite a few back and forth arguments with my mom, I agreed to take part in this "resume builder" and got on my first solo plane ride across the country.
It was just after the opening ceremony on the first night during one of many 'dances' at the conference, that I spotted him. "Umm that guy is staring at you" Dana from Georgia said as I returned the favor and flashed him my best sixteen year old version of a geisha glare. He was standing across the room surrounded by a posse of Puma wearing, dark haired and brown skinned friends, just staring at me. I guess you could say it was love at first sight and despite the extremely difficult language barrier, we spent the rest of the week wrapped up in each other's company. His name was Alfredo and he was a soccer player from Mexico, sent by his own school to better his English and represent his country. Alfredo and I spent hours together, post-conference sessions, just being together. I would watch him school his buddies in soccer and he would listen to me intently as I desperately tried to explain to him what fettucini alfredo is and why his name was so funny to me. At the end of our seven days in D.C. we had one final formal dance. Alfredo showed up at my door with flowers and a TY beanie baby dog, asking to escort me to the event. "He loves you, I can see it in those eyes" my roommate Shira from Israel said.
And, well it turns out he did. Or at least he said he did. That night Alfredo and I danced 'til dawn, we stayed up until my early morning flight in the dorm hallway holding hands, kissing and trying to make sense of our whirlwind romance and the deep feelings that had come from it. Upon my return home, I had 17 love interests waiting to be pursued and the flame that burned between Alfredo and I faded with time. He frequently expressed his feelings for me via AIM for months after the conference and I often times led him to believe that I still felt the same, though I really had no intention of trying to make an international relationship work, especially before Skype was even on anyone's radar.
Alfredo called me the summer after I graduated college, proving two things. One - yes, I still have the same phone number that I did when I was 16. And two, I found myself thinking that his love really was endless- that when he said he would never stop loving me, he meant it. It was endearing and made me feel needed, unforgettable even. That is, until last year when I hadn't heard from him in a while. I had been going through a dry spell and needed a little positive affirmation that I was still on someones (anyones) mind, so I bit the bullet and reached out to Alfredo via Facebook just to say hi, see how he was and to maybe check to see if the love was still there. I dont exactly know what I was expecting him to say, after all- it had been years. I guess I should have seen it coming when to my dismay, Alfredo wrote me back a four line message only to say that he was seeing someone new, they were in love and that he wished me a nice life. Right...he really let me down easy that Alfredo, and that was when I told myself that the language barrier we once encountered as love struck high schoolers, still existed.
The High School not-so Sweetheart
I met Dan at youth group during high school. Being the party loving jock that he was, i'm fairly certain his parents forced him to go every Wednesday and even more so- forced him to attend the spring break mission trip to Tijuana. We were in the same housing group in Mexico and became infatuated with each other while building a home for a family of four that greatly needed one. It was real love that we created while spending nights talking in the courtyard at the orphanage where we were staying. I say it was real because at the time, I had cornrows and neither of us had showered for the better part of a week. We were vulnerable, broken by the reality of the circumstances around us, we were open to the experience, to emotion and to each other. I loved the way he interacted with the kids at the building site and he loved watching me try to hammer something together, most always failing. We became inseparable that week and upon our return home, immediately began dating. Time passed, and unfortunately Mexico became a mere memory, the feelings became harder to conjure and with the pressures of modern day high school we began to encounter problems that any typical high school couple faces on the reg. He would drink and make out with other girls, I would drink and send him hate/breakup text messages, only to get back together with him days later. We struggled daily to get back to the place where we had started, to the realness we felt in Mexico and one rainy night we met in a parking lot, both knowing full well what was coming. We sat in my green Jetta and sighed as we both finally accepted the inevitable - it was over, we were done. And as he got out of my car to head home he said "I love you and always will". It was the first time he had ever said those words in such a way and for a moment I saw a glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, that glimmer was short lived and I don't know why exactly I was the least bit surprised to hear that he had sucked face with some hussy that night at a party only hours after our break up and his confession of love, while I most definitely was simultaneously drowning my sorrows in a bucket of peanut butter and chocolate ice cream and a chick flick on my couch.
I went away to college soon after that and though our communication was sparse, it still existed at times. That is-until I got word that he had a new girlfriend, quit drinking and became the committed boyfriend that I had always wanted him to be. Dan sent me his personal statement to edit one day during my first semester at college, signing the email "can you edit this for me? love ya girl" and I edit it I did - rewriting everything and fixing the thousand or so grammatical errors found on the first page alone. I mailed it back to him, including a personal statement of my own, and never heard from him again. It's been six years since then and while I sometimes wonder where he ended up or who he loves now, I mostly just wonder if he used the personal statement that I wrote for him to get into his dream school.
The One That Went Away.
"You're going to be an actress someday Miss America" he used to say to me when we were riding through the orchards and hop vines in his white pick up truck. "You show all of your emotion through your eyes" he'd say smiling at me from the drivers side, chewing on his ever present toothpick. I would giggle and ask him if we could stop to pick an apple before heading home. Summertime was our time. Every year, my parents would drive me the three hours to my grandparents farm in central Washington only to leave me there for weeks at a time. It was during these summer visits that my grandpa taught me everything about life and it was during those life lessons, that I loved him the most. He calmed me, he brought me back down to earth and he showed me that shared silence is powerful and more importantly, okay. We would drive through the hills, monitoring the harvest and sharing our favorite- peanut butter and honey sandwiches in complete silence. He would stop at the lake so I could run out my energy, then we'd head to his bird sanctuary to check on the soon to be hatched eggs before returning home for dinner. We would watch TV together, and plan out my life.
Though we were close, my grandfather rarely told me he loved me, or anyone for that matter really. As much of a softy as he was, he had a hard time expressing his feelings and was very intentional when he did. When he got sick we made the all too familiar trek to the farm to visit him in the hospital. True to form, he made me laugh as I walked in the door, making faces at me and smiling through the tube that was placed down his throat. He communicated at that time through writing on a white board that was on the nightstand in his hospital room and while I was visiting we would play tic tac toe and draw pictures of the freaky nurse that was tending to him. But it was on the last day of my visit, just before I left that I told him how much I loved him and that I would see him soon. He then grabbed his mini white board and wrote "I love you always Miss America".
Weeks later, I gave the eulogy at his funeral. A young girl shaking at the microphone, I spoke to friends, workers and our extremely large family, reminding them of all the incredible attributes my grandfather possessed. Losing him was like losing a piece of myself, and I always wonder if he'd be proud of me today, if still thinks I should be an actress and if he could still read my emotion through my eyes.
*Though these three boys don't talk to me anymore by choice or by circumstance, they are all still very much a part of me. Whether they think of me on a random day and care what I am doing or not, or whether they even remember the time in their lives that they loved me, I remember them. Our timing may have been off or cut short, but at one time they made me happy and at one time they told me exactly the exact words that I needed to hear.
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