When you were a kid did your neighborhood friends ever gather for a pickup game of football in an open field on an early autumn Saturday afternoon? And did you ever find yourself clinging to the ball after a pass received or an end run or a fumble recovery, under an ever-growing pile of sweaty, stinky kids with your face in the dirt and grass in your mouth? Each flumping body added to the heap cost you a little more breath, as the air was slowly squeezed from your lungs. The experience was both terrifying and oddly comforting, an early test of your strength, endurance and resolve. A literal test of your backbone. There was even a much less nuanced game called Kill The Guy With The Ball, in which the sole purpose seemed to be the direct execution of that bone-crunching pile of bodies. It has probably since been outlawed. 

This is what the collected, compounding years are beginning to feel like, a relentless pileup. Somewhere under that pile is the muffled heartbeat of the kid I’ve always been. The years have been merciless and wonderful, breathtaking and harrowing. They have elbowed and scratched at, bloodied and bruised me. Torn at my clothing and tried to dislodge, as I’ve clung desperately to that part of me that was. That part of me that I clutch close to my heart, protected under the pile but constantly in danger of being ripped free. It is that vital part of me that is free and good and happy and hopeful. That pure and purposeful part of me that loves and is in love; in love with life, in love with people, in love with hope. Though my outward appearance is a mess, though the years have coerced and conspired to wrench it from my grip, I still cling desperately to that vital part of me. Maybe it’s just constructed memory onto which I hold tight, but it might be my actual soul. At any rate, it is worth protecting. 

She was sixteen going on seventeen, just like the song. Fairytale pure and Hollywood, girl-next-door beautiful. I was seventeen going on eighteen, older not wiser and desperately in love with the idea of being in love with this wonderful person for the rest of my life. Maybe I was wiser after all, leastwise wise enough to recognize my soulmate when I met her. The accumulating years inevitably grant a measure of forced wisdom while they simultaneously rob memories. It is a cruel contradiction which the indifferent calendar ignores but we under their pile, are painfully aware of the losses and the gains. Our ledgers would look very different if only we had access to an eraser but time and circumstance are holding the pen and leaving permanent marks. Like it or not we are at their mercy. 

1982 was a time when Jenny and I were far too young to take notice of the advancing of years. A time when we lived only in the moment and those moments were fresh and fantastic. Clouded in the blissful arrogance of youth we believed those days could last forever. Life was so unencumbered, the horizon so bright, I believe when together we were both lighter than air. May 27^th was the day, actually the night we committed ourselves to each other and though in retrospect it seems trite to say, this was the date we first started dating. More significantly, this was the moment we began our lives together, forever intertwined from that evening on. I hold the date in fabled regard as we have never really been apart since. Sure there were stumbles at the beginning, teenage romance is nothing if not passionate and dramatic. I was a knucklehead and she was patient, with endless options should I prove beyond repair. “I am seventeen going on eighteen, I’ll take care of you.” Turns out that lyric is flawed and upside down, she has always been the caretaker. She has taken care of me in every imaginable manner of being. She takes care of everybody, that is who she is. Though I may have dropped the ball, I have never dropped that part of me that I cling to under the pile of these years. That part of me that still feels seventeen and smitten. That part of me that understands and appreciates just how lucky I’ve been. That part of me that still longs to be her hero. I will never let that go no matter what the coming years bring. 

I am still under the pile and at times it is dim and claustrophobic as the years close in. With time, I have come to appreciate that Jenny exists under her own pile, separate and unique. Separate but near enough mine that the weight of the years has flattened both our dreams. Flattened but not destroyed. We all do what we can to survive our piles but under mine, when things seem most grim, when the weight has become unbearable, I peer out and I can see her under hers. She still looks sixteen and in her eyes is the same light that captivated and captured me forty years ago and with it, the ever-ready smile and the willing laugh. The very tangible grace that has swept me along and sustained me for so many years. It is in these moments of clarity, when I wrestle my hand free from the tangle as she does hers and we reach across the years and simply hold hands, that I realize the truth of our time together. Like magic, we are teenagers again, the years dissipate and we rise up to our full height, our shared strength, our intended happiness and I thank God.