THE NARRATIVE ARC | MEMOIR
I Found Myself in the Middle of a Dan Fogelberg Love Song
When I saw my high school boyfriend in the bookstacks at Barnes & Noble, I had a choice
“Met my old lover in the grocery store…”
That is one cosmic opening line, if not the absolute best breadcrumb lyric.
Who wouldn’t want to find out what happened after he reunited with his lost love over frozen butternut squash?
What did they talk about? Did they go make-out behind Walgreens, fall back in love, leave their children and run off together? Irresistible.
Same Old Lang Syne from the master messenger Dan Fogelberg, is well worth a listen, even just a read through of the lyrics.
Hearing it for the first time, I remember wincing with sisterhood empathy for his old lover, hoping she had at least changed out of her pajama bottoms, put on lipstick, and slapped some foundation across her face, before heading out to the store that night.
Good Lord, I remember thinking, I hope she had a good bra on.
I must confess I would sometimes daydream about my high school boyfriend when the tune popped up on the airwaves. Never in a stalkery, plotting to get him back kind of way, just a lovely, wouldn’t it be nice to see him one more time before I exit planet Earth, kind of way.
The song ends up being quite melancholy, romantic tones delivering the sad, grasping confirmation that sometimes it is best to leave things in the past, where they can remain fuzzy and soft.
What did not happen in that beautiful song, was that the bitch spotted him first and chose to completely ignore him. That would make for a pretty horrible love song. That would be bad, right?
That would be me.
It was a dreary New England winter weekend, and I was jonesing for a fix.
My lifelong addiction has always been books; new, used, library, nicked from my friend’s bookcase — doesn’t much matter to me. I sought and bought them as if filling a bunker for a very boring apocalypse.
I had been on a spiritual run for a few years and was looking for some reflections for Lent and a specific Anne Lamott book. As I was chatting up a book associate, I noticed a very tall, older man behind her in the history section.
My mind weirdly and immediately thought, That is one tall drink of water over there, reminds me of M… And then he turned his face to look at another shelf and lo and behold it was him — my high school boyfriend, my first love, in the flesh, cruising the Civil War section.
I can’t even believe I recognized him because he had changed a bit with time. He was kind of balding, had gone pretty much whitish-gray, and had grown a beard. Those are not judgments; he was wearing it well, damn well.
Me? I looked kind of — meh.
I was not afraid to see him in the sense that I was worried about my appearance. I was holding up okay-ish.
My turkey neck had not arrived yet, roots were up to date, brows and chin plucked, and I was rocking my favorite pumpkin colored sweater. My now post-menopausal curly hair was up in a clip, and for some random reason, I had actually put on earrings.
If I had to drop my mask, the icing on my confidence cake, was that the gods had somehow nudged me to put BB cream on my face and run a splash of 621 Covergirl over my lips. I had left the house feeling pretty put together.
But admittedly, I had gained weight over the years. After having three kids and enduring multiple tragic losses, it simply was not a priority. I had other things and other people to take care of and I never seemed to make it to the top of my own list.
My small children seemed to like their Teletubby-chubby mom, and I had learned to make peace with my ever-rounding body — most days.
With all that said, I did not look unrecognizable, and that was my downfall.
If I had really gone to full pot, I would have simply been an unidentifiable orange blur and he would have pulled a Dionne Warwick and just walked on by.
The B&N gal cold-plunged my walk down memory lane, ushering me to an adjacent section. Apparently, history and religion still do not mix well.
My insides were buzzing as she crouched down to look for Lamott’s book. I was now completely distracted with the fact my pubescent, hormone fueled past, was in the next stack over.
I heard his voice and man was I glad that I had made it safely to the spiritual side of things, where I could hide.
She could not find the book and left to look it up on their computer. As I began to search for a backup, I sensed someone had entered the small, shelved space.
My very brief peripheral glance confirmed my worst fear. He was now standing in the witchcraft section parallel to me, close enough to create an elevated rise in my temperature.
The truth is the middle-aged shells we wore didn’t concern me. I was more afraid to talk with him because I knew he had also experienced a great deal of unexpected losses. Oddly similar, in fact.
There would be a mutual recognition of the pain we had endured and neither one of us would be able to avoid acknowledging it. It would all be on the table.
The mirror I would be looking into if we spoke, might just blow apart the carefully constructed bridge that hovered precariously over my broken heart.
That would leave me way too vulnerable and exposed to more pain.
To make matters worse, the thought of being ziplined back to one of the most pure, joyful, love-infused times of my life, scared the shit out of me.
My heart, mind, and body instinctively knew I would be reminded of what I did not have in my life at the moment, what I had not had in my life for quite some time.
The hot knife of that knowledge would pierce me through and the little strength I still had, wouldn’t be nearly enough to cauterize that deep of a wound.
Nope. Abso-freak-ing-lutely not.
As much as I had hoped and wished to see him just one more time before I breathed my last, every cell in my body was already in on the ruse, well before I had made any conscious decision.
I would simply pretend I did not see him standing there waiting, while he feigned interest in the occult and dark magic.
All I could do was stare ahead at the bookshelves and try to pick up an interesting read without the tell of my shaking hand blowing the whole wretched plot. My Academy Award winning performance of engrossed reader may have very well involved an upside-down book.
I had to pretend I did not see him, ignore that I had recognized his voice after forty-plus years, and make peace with the fact that life would probably end without us speaking.
All this seemed to congeal in mere minutes in the electrified space between Hexes and Exes and The Universal Christ.
That excruciating moment lasted the briefest of eternities.
I don’t know what made him walk away, but I suspect he may have been onto me. He must have sensed he should let me be, not spook the horse. My post encounter heart tells me he probably did just that; let me mercifully off the hook.
He had membership in the terrible club I belonged to, and if I knew of his losses, he probably knew of mine. I believe in my bones he would have taken that into consideration. He had always been a kind and generous soul, offering understanding in a way that put his fellow clunky peers to shame.
What a life-giving thing not to push into someone’s protective wall, to have the grace to show restraint and compassion.
I will always be grateful for that charitable bow out, even if he never learns I knew it was him standing there, pretending to learn about gluten-free Wiccan recipes.
Yes, I did see an old lover, but not in a grocery freezer section, in a much warmer place.
We did not buy a six-pack at the liquor store and drink it in the car, nor did we have a toast to innocence or the here and now.
There was no emptiness to reach beyond, because whether intentionally or subconsciously, we had both decided to keep the memory of our love in the past, where it could remain forever lovely and full.
And as I turned to make my way back home, the snow did not turn into rain.
It had already been raining.
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