The first time I fell in love, I was 10, a shy 5th grader attending Menlo Avenue Elementary in Southeast Los Angeles (not too very far from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.)
The object of my affection was named April…she was, in the golden-hued halls of memory, an amazing goddess with golden-brown skin and dark, twinkling, utterly beguiling eyes.
I was smitten at first sight.
As far as I know, she never knew I was alive.
I watched her talk with the other girls during recess and I imagined what it would be like if she would talk so easily with me. I listened to her give answers to Mr. Daniels’ questions in class and knew that no music could ever possibly sound as sweet as her voice.
I never, except in the feverish realms of wishful imagining, worked up the courage to speak to her.
And then she was gone.
She left, without warning, in the middle of the semester (I believe we were told something about her father…who apparently was in the military…being transferred elsewhere but I was in a fog at the time so I might be misremembering that part.)
That evening, I was sullen and uncommunicative unto the point where my mother demanded to know what was wrong with me. “April’s gone,” I said plaintively, a tear tracking slowly down my cheek.
My mother didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry…so she hugged me instead.
April looms in my heart…shy, unrequited, illogical first “love”…and the memory of her, however faulty or foolish, warms me still.
Happy Valentine’s Day, April…wherever you are.
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