Alchemy

I’ve been a little blue today and I think it is because Valentine’s Day is just a day away. I remember an earlier Valentine’s Day when I was a college freshman. I borrowed my boyfriend’s car to go to a florist’s to buy him a dozen red roses; it was 1962 and girls didn’t do such outrageous things in those days. Then I picked him up outside his dorm for him to take me back to my dorm. As we sat in the car to say goodbye, he got serious and told me that he’d been thinking that we should break up! Startled, I said, “I feel like a fool. Here’s why I borrowed the car today.” I reached behind the seat and pulled out the roses. “I bought YOU flowers for Valentine’s Day. You might as well take them. Here!”

We didn’t break up. Not then. Painful as the breakup was when it did come ten years later, I wouldn’t trade anything for the years we had together. We shared a lot of diverse experiences I would never have had otherwise, and I grew up a lot. I had my two girls with him — the one who died the year that we divorced –I never put that sequence together until now! — and the one who today is my best friend, my daughter Heather.

Look! I just took a sad memory and turned it into a bittersweet one!

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