This is exactly what I had feared.
Sitting on the couch, stroking my daughter’s hair as she cried over a boy who broke her heart when I had warned her right at the start that he would do so. But isn’t this the trajectory of life? My mom did the same for me.
Between sniffles and sips of hot chocolate, she asked me, “mom, who was the first boy that broke your heart?”
“Ah…” That was long ago, yet I still remember it like it was yesterday.
“Never mind, I’ll never find a love like yours and dad!” She cried.
“I was in college…” And the story began.
There was a boy I really liked, and I knew he liked me too. The thing with girls, I’ve noticed, is that they are overly aware of their feelings. But the thing with boys is their egos get in the way.
I was young and naive, and when he asked me to share ice cream with him in the tiny lane behind the college building, I thought that was it. He was mine forever.
“Then what happened?” My daughter asked me eagerly, sensing a turn in the story.
“Then, well, everything was great. We went out together, just the two of us, and had the best time, neither of us ready to admit our feelings.”
I took our silence to be an unspoken commitment. I didn’t realize it could be interpreted in other ways too.
We had a college dance coming up, and I had picked out a red dress, his favorite color, and done my hair up and everything. But when I reached the venue, he was nowhere to be found.
I went over to his house to find him lazing around doing nothing.
“What did you do then?”
“Nothing.”
I was so angry that we had talked about this dance all week, but because we never formally agreed that we would be going together as a couple, he never made the effort, while I looked like a fool in a red dress.
“Yeah, he came to me the next day and apologized, and soon we forgot all about it,” I told her.
“So that wasn’t when you broke up?” She asked.
I shook my head. That was when I found him with another girl in the same alley I always thought was ‘our thing.’
Her mouth was left hanging open, “Oh my god, he did that?”
I nodded. “You need to give boys time to grow up. To give love a second chance, you must be smart enough to know that.”
She rolled her eyes but snuggled in closer.
“I don’t think I’m that emotionally mature yet.” I smiled and kissed her head.
We sat in silence, watching trashy reality TV on the big screen as we sipped on our hot chocolate, now gone cold.
A minute later, she asked, “by the way, whatever happened to that first college crush of yours?”
I smiled again, “well, he became your father.”
(Picture credits: Pexels)
