Julie

Our fathers were brothers, so that made us first cousins.  my father and his brother and sisters grew up in an orphanage after their father died.  My grandmother said she couldn't care for them, and even though my father's relatives offered to split the children up and put them with various relatives, my grandmother wanted them to stay together, so she put them in a home for missionary's children, which was effectively an orphanage.  Years later, when they all had married and had their own children, they remained exceptionally close. 

I can remember that from the time I could walk as a child, if she was around, I followed her like a puppy.  Whenever our two families gathered together was a happy time for me, and her presence was what made the sun shine. Wherever she went, I followed.  I do not know why it was so, only that it was.  When we were very young, our families saw a lot of each other.

Her father moved them to Tucson, Arizona when I was maybe seven. It wasn't long before his brother (my father) and sisters followed.  Within a month or so of leaving us, my father found a place to stay and sent for us.  I remember the very long train ride, and the loss of all of my comic books.

In Tucson, we first lived in the Mexican quarter, on Grande Ave.  I attended El Rio grade school, where all of the students were Mexican, except for my older sister, myself, and two others kids.  Most of the kids spoke Spanish, and I didn't understand a word.  A lot of Mexicans seem to be yelling at me on Spanish for something or other, but since I couldn't understand them, I just ignored them.  That seemed to set them off even more.

It seemed like every day of school I was sent to the principal's office for fighting.  I can still remember the principal talking to me, saying "See all the bushes around the courtyard - how they all get along with each other."  And I can remember the thought in my mind that bushes had nothing to do with people, 

I always felt kind of alone and lost in Tucson.  We moved to a new place every few months, and in the two and a half years we were in Tucson, I attended three different grade schools - first at El Rio in the Mexican quarter, then Amphitheater in a white school, then Keeling in another mostly white district.  Each new school meant learning a new long walk to school and back, new confrontations and fights. 

We did not live close to my uncle's house where she lived, so I did not see her everyday. But despite the long empty days filled with long walks to what seemed to me a foreign school, some days had special meaning - the days her family and mine got together.  I always became elated on the news of a family get together.

Sometime around the age I turned 10, my father went to Texas looking for work.  Then he sent for us.  I remember the long bus ride, seeing an old car wreck with injured people on the side of the highway, and passing old, dilapidated, abandoned buildings along the wayside. 

I was told we were going to Marshall, a town in east Texas.  But when we passed through Marshall, and I was told we were going on to Shreveport, Louisiana, I was very disappointed.  I had looked forward to being a Texan, and didn't mind traveling all this way to be so.  But now knowing our new destination was Louisiana didn't thrill me.

Our first house in Shreveport, Louisiana  confirmed all my distaste for this destination.  We shared an old clapboard house at the very edge of town which had an open well for water, and an outhouse for a toilet.  This was very much a step backwards for me.  And to make matters worse, the people in Louisiana ate turnip green, black-eyed peas, collards, ham hocks, and other such food as I still don't like today. 

We had become country bumpkins.  The well was a Jack-&-Jill type with a crank and bucket.  Whenever the bucket was wound up, there would be dead grasshoppers or other bugs in the water.  We boiled out water, but the family on the other side of the shared house drank their water raw.  Sometimes they got sick from the drinking water. 

In Shreveport, as in Tucson, my parents were unsettled, argued a lot, and were discontent,  We seemed to move to a new house every few months or so.  From the 4th through the 6th grade I attended three different schools, I started off in Jewella grade school, then we moved to an apartment in the low-income housing projects, which meant another grade school. Then we moved to a tract house, which was back in the Jewella grade school district, then I was assigned to Queensboro grade school for the 6th grade.

While I attended only one Junior high school, and only one senior high school to graduation, we lived in perhaps four different houses during that time.

Then, one high school summer, my father packed us into his new '57 Ford, and we took off for a two-week vacation.  We motored our way across Texas.  God, Texas was so big, and it seemed  to take forever to cross it.  There weren't any interstate highways then and we passed through every little town on US 80.  Now Louisiana is a very humid state, but the air in West Texas was so dry that we had to wet handkerchiefs and place them over our face.  It was also summer, and very hot, and we had no air conditioner in the car.  We drove with the windows down, which meant a lot of noise from the air blowing through the car,  which becomes irritating after an hour or so on the road.  I remember how desolate and empty west Texas seemed to me.  I also remember playing "I Spy" with everyone in the car. 

After what seemed an eternity motoring across Texas, we finally got to New Mexico, and stopped in Carlsbad to see the famous caverns and bats.  Refreshed and cooled by the caverns, and after a night in a motel, we motored through New Mexico, and the only thing I remember about that state, other than the cool caverns, was how desolate and dead the small town of Hobbs, New Mexico seemed from the road.

After what seemed like days on the road, we went through a pass in the mountains with a lot of boulders and rocks, and stopped there for a picnic meal.  We were finally in Arizona again.  Within a few hours we reached Tucson.  My little brother and I were shuffled off to another Aunt's house to stay, which disappointed me until I learned she was also shuffled off to the same aunt to make room for my father to be close to his brother - her father, my uncle.  

It was already night when she arrived.  She was put in one bedroom, and my brother and I were put in another.  In the middle of the night, the husband of our aunt came in to the bedroom and asked me if I would sleep in the other bedroom with my cousin so he could sleep in the bed I was in.  Seemed like he and our aunt had a bitter argument, and were heading for a divorce. 

Now, I would have like nothing more than sleep near her - she that I admired from afar.  Immediately the thought of sleeping in the same bed with her crossed my mind.  But I wasn't so sure that she would feel the same way, and maybe if I asked her, she might just tell my father and her father, and I might find myself with a bloody beating by both of them.  So, partly to keep my own secret feelings in check, I declined, and my uncle slept on the couch.  But the next day she was "reassigned" to another aunt, and any chance to repeat the temptation evaporated. 

The following days in her company were to me like being in heaven.  Wherever she went, I was pulled to follow- as if pulled by a giant magnet.  Then, all too soon, vacation was over,  At the end of the last day, on saying goodbye, we kissed a goodbye kiss.  Just one kiss, but some flame inside myself and her flared up.  I know what I felt inside, and I could see it in her eyes.  I also saw the look of concern that suddenly appeared in our two father's eyes.  A cousin romance and marriage wasn't something the families would accept.

Nevertheless, on returning to my home, I wrote her letters, and she wrote me back.  I called her on the telephone a few times.  But as the months and years dragged by, we lost touch as the events and people within our separate circles filled our life and our memories.

Three, maybe four decades had passed. I had traveled the world, found new love and lost it more than once. Finding myself divorced and very alone, I took a trip coast-to-coast on my motorcycle. I left Virginia, and rode to California.  I spent a few days in San Marina, just north of San Francisco, California, in the company of new friends attending a John Grey seminar, the author of the popular book "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus." 

Afterwards, I drifted southward on California Highway I, enjoying the great coastal scenery, and eventually stopped in Phoenix, Arizona at the home of my mother's sister and her husband.  My aunt and uncle welcomed, me and talked me into staying the night.  We talked of my mother and her family, and of all the events in the past. 

I mentioned I might ride on down to Tucson to see my cousin.  Then my aunt said to me - "You know, she lives here in Phoenix now,"  I replied that I would love to see her again.  She immediately called her on the phone, who replied that she would be over in the hour.  My aunt looked at me, perhaps the expression on face, and said, "you know, she's married now, to a really nice man."   I blanked my face to hide my thoughts, and engaged my aunt in banter about my mother's side of the family.

Then a car drove up and stopped in front of the house.  I walked outside to greet her, and stood at the rear of the car as I watched her get out.  She stood by the door of the car and turned and looked at me, We sort just stood there, awkwardly looking at each other without saying a word.  It was as if no years had intervened, and we were back at that moment just after our first and only kiss. 

For how long we stood there looking at each other I can't recall.  I don't know if that pause was noticeable to others around us. What was probably only a few seconds in real time, felt like a very long time as the old memories tumbled into my consciousness.

Eventually she introduced me to her husband, and we all walked into my aunt's house.   She sat down beside me and we reminisced.  I told her that I had been divorced, and that an affair of the heart after that had soured, and I was now unattached.  I spoke of my children, and mentioned that one of my sons and a niece of mine had a child together, though they never married. 

On hearing that, she turned to me and exclaimed rather emphatically "We could have done that." Those words shocked me, because I hadn't until then realized how strong her feelings for me were.  I replied finally, that I didn't know that we could have, and I remembered the night so long ago that the opportunity existed and I has passed it by,

In the pause that followed, her husband looked over at me, and in a kind and understanding voice reminded me that we cannot go back into the past.  And she then said to me that she was happy, her husband was a good man, she had a good life with him, and she did not want to disturb that relation with an affair - that we were not sixteen any more. 

So I realized then that though the pilot light was still on in both our hearts, other lives had intertwined, and no good would come of fanning that flame.  She and her husband bid me goodbye, my aunt showed me my sleeping quarters, and in early in the morning I mounted by motorcycle, rode east, never to look back.

I never again contacted her.  I respected her wishes.  Eventually I found new loves in new places in my adventure across the globe. What I carry from this one is that a single kiss can kindle emotions that endure for decades, and unrequited love lingers long after all hope for consummation has evaporated.

- Simon Revere Mouer III