Enduring Love

I was ten when my father and his friends bought a hunting camp in the Pennsylvania mountains. It smelled like moth balls, cigarette smoke, and burning wood. I wasn't enthralled to be embedded in a group of noisy adults in a cabin without a bathroom, so I opened up a crossword puzzle book and climbed in.

I must have looked lost to my mother's friend. She handed me a black and white photo of a blond boy sleeping on a couch with his back to the camera. "This is my nephew, Eddie. He'll be here this weekend."

My stomach fluttered. My face flushed. My ears rang. Maybe the promise that I wouldn't be the only kid among the campers gave me a rush. Maybe his little boy essence on the hunting camp couch remained to capture my little girl innocence. Perhaps I was rattled by the soundless voice in my head. "This is who I will marry." (Eight years later, it proved to be the latter.)

Sometimes, I wish I had the photo, though it would be no clearer than the flashbulb memory still on display in my mind's gallery of indelible moments.

For the next seven years, Eddie and I were campsite companions. The first summer, he menaced me daily with the lizards he collected in a galvanized tub. I stopped that nonsense by dangling one of the orange mini-monsters in front of him at dinner, chiding, "You forgot one." (It seems my deep resentment of being underestimated was seeded long before I fought for equal wages.)

We had all of puberty and adolescence to figure out that we had little in common. Eddie knew nature, I knew music. He knew sports. I knew books. He knew my secrets. I knew his struggles. I knew the future. He did not - until we graduated from high school. We went to separate proms with our high school steadies on the same night and started our real lives the next day. We were married within the year. The private vows we took were bittersweet. If this marriage failed, we would not disrupt the generations of friendship between our families, and we would not sacrifice our friendship.

I transferred from the University of Pittsburgh to Youngstown State University. We moved to a tiny apartment in a country home. We worked full-time and went to school full-time on opposite shifts. On the weekends, he worked with his father, a recovering alcoholic who judged no one. I spent the weekends at the laundromat, the grocery store, and the library doing homework for both of us. Intoxicated with freedom from my mother, I changed everything about my life. Eddie changed nothing.

When my young husband was drafted into the Army, I was on my own for the first time. I thrived. I was on fire. I chose more change. I moved to the city, graduated from college, and began a career charmed with "right time, right place" magic.

I was tired of being good. My belated adolescent rebellion singed the edges of denial. When Eddie and I divorced after five years of marriage, we renewed our bittersweet vows to our families and their friendships.

Half a century later, with everyone else long gone, we remain faithful to each other in a friendship that was more deeply rooted than our marriage.