It occurred to me that a broken heart never really heals.  You learn to cope, you learn to move on, you learn to love again, but you never fully get over the loss.  I realized this yesterday when a song came on the radio that made me think of the first girlfriend I ever had, 23 years ago.  It’s pretty silly when I think about how long ago that was and how much has happened to me since then.  I was lying in bed, next to my wonderful wife, the love of my life, with our beautiful daughter just waking in the next room and Up Where We Belong by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes came on the radio and I was a twelve year old boy all over again, dancing in the dark, holding her for the last time.

My sisters, Kathy and Brenda, were always active in sports and both played on the high school softball team.  Kerri was the team’s bat girl and her mother was a coach.  I think I had only seen Kerri once over the summer before the school year started and I moved from elementary school to junior high.  She was in my health class and we clicked on the first day of class.  I had never had a girlfriend much less ever asked a girl out so I wasn’t sure what to do or if she even liked me.  Two days later, we had health class again and it became clearer she was interested in me.  When I got home from school and told my sisters, they encouraged me to call her and ask her out.  That evening, I looked up her number in the phone book and called her.  I don’t remember what I said and I’m sure it wasn’t very smooth, but she said said “yes” anyway and we were officially “going out.” Three days into seventh grade and I had a girlfriend.

Kerri had grown up on the other side of town from me and I knew little outside of my neighborhood.  She had gone to a different elementary school, hung out at different places, and had a whole group of friends I had never met before.  I latched onto her and her friends and her world became my world.  Her friends Aaron and Brian became my new best friends and since they each dated two of Kerri’s friends, the six of us hung out nearly every day; we were inseperable.  We went to the Museum of Science together and hung out at Aaron’s house and the library nearby.  They also introduced me to the monthly dances at the Congregational church where we went on the first Friday of every month and slow danced in the dark.  It was there that I remember dancing with Kerri and listening to Up Where We Belong.

We dated for most of the school year but after about five months, things started to go off course.  Aaron had broken up with Karen, Brian had broken up with Linda, and then things started going sour with Kerri and me.  We stayed together for a little while, through the arguments and the make-ups.  I remember toward the end being moved by and asking her to listen to Think of Laura by Christopher Cross, a particularly melancholy song popularized at the time by Luke and Laura on General Hospital but actually written about a friend of Cross’ girlfriend who was also named Laura.  I tried to patch things up with Kerri and held out hope that we’d make it work.  But then, at the next dance, I saw her dancing with another boy.  I was crushed.  The dances were our place and I felt violated.  In retaliation, I asked another girl to dance and Kerri confronted us in the middle of the dance floor.  We yelled at each as the other kids watched and then it was over.

I stopped hanging out with Aaron and Brian and eventually lost touch with them altogether as they moved away or went to different schools.  I made new friends and made new girlfriends.  I even continued to go to the dances after Kerri had stopped going.  I would still see Kerri around school, but we never spoke again.  During our senior year of high school, she dated a boy who had grown up across the street from me and was in my homeroom, and I remember even then, five years later, feeling a little bitter about that as if it had anything to do with me whatsoever.  Coincidentally, a couple years ago before my wife left the hospital where she used to work, she ended up training Karen for a similar position - small world.  I think Maggie and Karen may still email each other from time to time, but neither she nor the rest of the gang from that year have attended any of the class reuinions, so I haven’t seen Karen, or Kerri for that matter, since high school.

I haven’t thought much of Kerri in the years that have passed and have had many girlfriends and several loves since then, including those on a more intimate, mature level.  But, every once in a while, when I pass some place that we shared, or hear a song like I did yesterday, I might think about her and that time of my life.  It’s not that I wish I could do it over or I wish that things had turned out differently, because I don’t.  It’s just that sometimes that old wound opens up for a little bit and I’m twelve years old all over again.

"To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.”
Margaret Fairless Barber