Sometimes the Past Dredges Itself Up

I heard a song yesterday that reminded me of her. I suppose that I've really only loved two women. The Green-Eyed Girl was the first.

Clear back in elementary school, she was my sister's best friend. She was a tiny blonde girl who talked a lot. She was over at our house often, and she and my sister remained virtually inseperable until they were in high school.

My sister goes through phases. When she decides that she's through with an image, she often discards her friends as well. When she was a sophomore, she apparently decided that The Green-Eyed Girl didn't fit the image she wanted to portray, so she stopped calling her.

I was a couple years older. I'd been dating a girl for a couple of months, but she dumped me after I broke a date to visit a friend in the hospital after he'd had a car accident. I figured she'd understand. I was wrong.

The Green-Eyed Girl asked me for a ride to lunch one afternoon. We went and had a great time. Up to that point, I'd never really considered her dating material, but she was cute as hell and my sister didn't seem to want to hang out with her anymore. I asked her if she wanted to see a movie, and she accepted.

For the next nine months, we did the things that high school sweethearts do. She was very pleasant company and had a wild streak a mile wide. Her dad taught shop and built houses in his spare time. Her mom was a nurse. Neither one of her parents was around much, and they essentially left her to mind her two younger siblings. I think that the increased responsibility of being a sort of second mother coupled with her absentee parents made her needy and attention-starved. She wanted attention any way she could get it, and in my hormone-crazed teenage state I was happy to provide attention. Given the way things would go for her in just a couple of years, I still feel guilty about that. But, she was a knockout.She was wild.She looked amazing in that little cheerleader uniform.She liked to leave the lights on.She didn't care who was in the front seat of the car. It didn't matter to her that her parents were upstairs, or that the parking lot was full of people.

I left for college the next fall. At the time, she planned to go to a different college out of the state, so we just sort of decided that we would part ways. She visited me at college once, then...it just fizzled. I met the woman that I would marry that year and that was pretty much the end of The Green-Eyed Girl and me.

Her plans to escape the state for college fell through. She attended good old UW, and started hanging around with my sister again. They did wildly irresponsible things and took great risks. The Green-Eyed Girl was pregnant before she finished her freshman year. I visited her in the hospital after she had her daughter. It was one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had. Her parents were in the room, as well as her little brother and sister. The baby was in a basinette beside the hospital bed. Among the many thoughts racing through my head at the time was the sobering realization that things could have been very different. It could have been mine.

She gave the baby up for adoption and resumed classwork. The next year she was pregnant again. She dropped out of school, eventually marrying the father.

The last time I saw her was at my brother's funeral five years ago. She had aged considerably and was a bit heavier, but still gorgeous. She seemed happy. I'm glad that she was able to pull back from the tailspin. She and her family have since moved far away. I know that she stays in touch with my sister, but since I don't stay in touch with my sister I don't get much news.

I pulled out the few photos I have of The Green-Eyed Girl this morning. Seventeen years have passed. A lifetime. I honestly don't think we would have worked together even under different circumstances. There were too many differences between us. But I still think about her occasionally, and I'm thankful for those few months.