The song had recently entered Alan’s thoughts, and stayed. He’d sung it to himself wordlessly over and over, sometimes humming the melody. Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch…a long, lonely time. If asked why, he would have said it was probably related to the invitation to his 30th high school class reunion. Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much….Are you still mine?
After his parents died, he’d lost interest in visiting the small Midwestern town where he’d been raised. But now, with the arrival of the invitation, long-buried memories of his high school years surfaced, along with a song that had once been popular. Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the sea. Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me. I’ll be coming home, wait for me.
He found himself thinking about his first true love, a girl in his class named Janice. He could picture her smile, her dark eyes, the deep brown hair that framed her face, and he could remember the rush of emotions he’d felt when her soft lips met his while they parked out by the lake, or on a country road late at night. The radio would be on, playing the music everyone listened to. Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered, hungered for your touch. How he missed her now!
Nothing had come of their relationship, but he couldn’t remember why. He remembered only that they’d begun drifting apart shortly after he’d left for college. For a while there had been phone calls, then nothing. Had he stopped calling, or had she? He couldn’t remember. If she’d felt abandoned, she kept her feelings to herself, or least so it seemed now, though he had to admit he may have been too absorbed in his new life to notice. He hoped he hadn’t been so thoughtless as to leave her by the roadside, feeling used. This didn’t seem like who he was today, but he couldn’t be sure what he might have done thirty years ago.
Everything he’d encountered at college had been different. The students, the professors, the ideas, the challenges. Though he’d been forced to study harder than ever before, he did well. By the end of his first year he knew he was on the path he wanted to be on, and that it was taking him far from home.
He remembered learning from a cousin with whom he occasionally corresponded that Janice had stayed in town, and had soon married. Alan hadn’t been surprised. Most of his classmates had done the same. Some years later his cousin, again passing on bits of local gossip, had mentioned that Janice’s marriage hadn’t lasted. If she’d remarried, his cousin hadn’t mentioned it.
*****
Alan’s path had taken him to graduate school, and from there to a position teaching literature in a liberal arts college in a small New England town, many miles from where he’d begun. Along the way, he’d fallen in love, or so he thought, and had married. Though Alan’s teaching position had turned out well, the same couldn’t be said of his marriage. After a few years, his wife revealed that she was tired of being a faculty wife in a small college “doing nothing in the middle of nowhere.” They tried to find ways for her to enjoy her life as much as Alan enjoyed his, but nothing had worked out. She was “dying a slow death,” she said, so she left him and moved away.
Still single five years after the divorce, Alan was lonely. There weren’t any single women on the faculty to whom he was attracted, and if there were any single women in town who might arouse his passions, he didn’t know where they were or how to find them.
*****
Alan attended the reunion, his first ever. Dinner at the country club the first night, along with speeches by the class president and a few others, all praising the group for keeping the class spirit alive.
Alan’s heart leapt when he first saw Janice. As he approached her, she recognized him immediately and greeted him warmly with the same smile he remembered so well. Though Alan was pleased that she seemed comfortable as they recounted their lives since last seeing each other, he saw no sign that she, too, had been re-living those long-ago moments when they professed their love for each other. After a few minutes, she excused herself, adding “It was nice seeing you again, Alan. I’m glad you’re doing so well.” He left soon afterward, disappointed.
Later that evening, Alan changed his flight to return home earlier than planned. He was embarrassed by how readily he had succumbed to nostalgia, and was thankful he hadn’t said anything he’d regret.
He also found himself feeling glad for Janice, seemingly happy and contented with her life. She hadn’t needed him all those years, and didn’t appear to need him now, despite being single, or as she’d put it with a broad smile, “between marriages.” Besides, he understood their paths were no less divergent today than they were thirty years ago. To think otherwise was to indulge in fantasy. He knew he should leave her in peace.
Even so, the melody and the feelings it evoked lingered. He found himself powerless to set aside the image of her face, and to quit thinking about how it would feel to kiss her again. He ached with longing, and wanted to try again. Are you still mine? I need your love. Godspeed your love to me….
Before drifting off to sleep, he thought about giving her another chance to let him know if their meeting had stirred any of her old feelings. Perhaps he could drop her a casual note, one that told her how much he enjoyed seeing her, one that touched gently on their past together. Then he’d let it go. Or try to, at least.
