The first time I really understood that boys and girls had relationships other than friends, I was in kindergarten. I fell madly in love with a boy in the other class—I think his name was Ricky? Rich? Something like that. He was in gym the first day we got out the parachute. We rippled the chute up and down, popping balls out of it like popcorn; we ran in circles, making swirls of the chute’s stripes; we threw it up high, groups of us running underneath, frantic to change places before it came back down. In the hustle, somehow we ended up next to each other. Finally, it was time for the best part of parachute day. Everyone flapped in unison up and down and up and down and UP!—and pushed the chute as high as it could go and then ran inside, pulling it down behind us and sitting on the edges to stop the air getting out. And in that magical moment, sitting next to each other, trapped inside a big red and orange striped bubble and laughing hysterically from the joy at it all, I looked over at him and I knew he was something special. He was taller than the other kids, for one thing, and he had the most beautiful dark hair. And of course, he had the lure of the exotic—he was in the other kindergarten class, after all.
I learned a lot about love from Ricky. About three days after parachute day, I recall sitting in class, daydreaming about him, and about our love and eventual marriage. I loved him so much, I thought, that I wanted to become part of him, just let go of everything but that love, let go of me, let go of life, melt into an appendage. ‘But wait’, I realized after a day or so of wishing I could melt into him, ‘that doesn’t make sense. If I’m not me any more, how can I continue to love him?’ There I was, all of five years old, sitting on the floor in the upstairs hallway at home, having an existential crisis. It isn’t possible to both be and not be, and I couldn’t not love him, so I had to not be absorbed into him. But I could still dedicate myself to him entirely, make loving him everything I thought about, and I spent the next several days attempting to do just that. And again, the tiny voice of reason spoke up (with some help from my kindergarten teacher, who was, I felt, somewhat unreasonable about my desire not to be distracted by taking a spelling test). ‘It’s not possible to let someone else be the center of my universe.’ I realized. ‘The rest of the universe goes on, since I’m not the center of it, and I need to pay attention to is.’ I would have to live my own life, loving him in the background, only letting it take my full attention when I had free time, even when he was there. So from Ricky, tall, dark and handsome Ricky, I learned one of the most important secrets of relationships: it’s important to have a life outside your partner, because if you don’t, you’re not really able to live in the world.
My love affair with Ricky lasted for a whole three weeks. It was a romantic flurry of a time, stolen moments when our eyes met across the hallway, when I passed by his lunch table in the cafeteria, and the most precious of all, when our hands brushed once as I was leaving the art classroom and he was entering. It was a difficult time, never knowing when I would see him. And of course, it was made all the more difficult by his complete oblivion: not only did he not realize that we were in love, he didn’t appear to know who I was. Undaunted, I planned our wedding daily, marching us down the aisle, me in a huge white meringue of a dress, him waiting at the altar. “I do’s” were said, and at that point things broke down into a rosy haze. Married people had children, I knew, so they should probably turn up eventually, but since I had no idea where from, I left them as hazy, indistinct shades. It was a good time, a happy time, but eventually I realized that I needed more from the man I loved than a complete lack of recognition, and I regretfully said goodbye to the idea of Ricky.
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