Friday, August 17, 2012

Mary Elliott: Summer-Loved and Lost

Mary Elliott is a Morsel from the Class of 1988 who married Steve Elliott from our class.  Mary writes a blog from time to time.  Click below for her latest post . . . about friendship and the First Kiss:

Friends we’ve lost: What about the ones we’ve fallen out of touch with, the ones we’ve let go?  This conversation came up on Real Life Survival Guide’s Episode 52:  “Redefining Friendship.”  Some friends were particularly important, inspired us, listened, consoled, brought insight to our lives just when we needed awakening, stole our hearts, broke our hearts.  But they were all friends nevertheless, critical to our growth as people, and it would be nice to go out and grab a drink with each of them—the special ones—to find them again, to tell them, “You mattered.  You’ll always matter.” There’s one I’d like to tell.

My First Kiss happened at a certain Chamber Music Institute I attended that summer between seventh and eighth grade.  I was thirteen and he (let’s call him Jiminy—to get even) was fourteen:  older, smarter, and fine-featured with bird-like yet beautiful bone structure and wavy dark Vidal-Sassoon locks you’d expect in a fine artist.  I took him for a prodigy; Jiminy could already perform the major cello concertos by then:  Saint-Saens, Dvorak, Elgar.  His solo with piano accompaniment in the massive college music hall floored me.  I treasured any glimpse my way from his searching brown eyes, windows into a keen mind that had already scored a perfect 1600 SAT.  He called himself an “agnostic atheist,” whatever that meant.  And even though he was smaller and skinnier than I, he attracted me with his worldliness, quick intellect and humor and his lovely, aristocratic face.  He was better and he knew it, and I could scarcely believe my good luck that he was making out with me on those hard, orange-carpeted stairs in the empty band room.

Mary Elliott: Summer-Loved and Lost | Bruce Barber's Real Life Survival Guide

No comments: