No greater love

Back in the late '80s, the high-school girl who would become my wife was simply a tall, skinny girl named N, who was around our house a lot, a friend of my little sister. N and my sister were part of a larger group of girls, whose main recreational activity during their junior year in high school involved driving around in somebody's 1965 Mustang and teasing fraternity boys at college parties.

Among this group of girls was a girl we'll call Marie (not at all her name, but it's better than a pronoun.) Marie was a bit spoiled, and she knew it, and she was OK with it, best I could tell. I didn't know Marie as well as I knew my sister's other friends, but what little I knew of her suggested she was the one of that group with the "reputation."

She was also the one who ended up pregnant that year.

Marie was by no means the only person I knew in high school who became pregnant. She was the only person, however, who ever showed a visible sign of it. Marie chose to carry the child the term.

I can't imagine this was an easy decision, even for a girl who herself was adopted. She had to put up with the stares and the pointing and the ostracism and the talk of those who simply said it confirmed her "reputation." None of that mattered to her.

As the rest of the group drifted away from Marie, N stuck by her. This foreshadowed the adult N, by the way; the girl who stuck by her friend in a tough situation became an intensely loyal woman, a woman who people can depend on no matter what. This is cool, and is one of the things I love about my wife. Back in 1987, though, she was just a girl who was trying to do the right thing.

Marie's child was born on N's 17th birthday. N was there for her at the hospital. I'm pretty sure he was the first newborn boy she ever held.

A few days later, Marie's child was headed home, home with his new parents. Marie went home, too, back to her parents. She was back in school a few weeks later.

Even at 17, a girl has maternal instinct, and that instinct would rebel mightily against separation. Marie had to be convinced that he was going to a better place, a place with people more qualified than she was to provide what that baby needed. I can imagine nothing more beautiful, and more painful.

Life went on. Marie never quite reconnected with that group of girls; she had been forced into adulthood, and acted accordingly. She and Natalie were still close, sort of, but nobody would ever fully grasp what Marie had been through, and it probably didn't matter to Marie if they did. They all graduated from high school a year later and went their separate ways.

Marie contacted my wife by e-mail several years ago. The electronic reunion was brief; a couple of messages exchanged, then life moving on.

Natalie still mentioned Marie's boy on his birthday the first few years we were married, but hadn't for many years. As I was giving the new Dixie Chicks album its 249th spin on my iPod, I gave a close listen to "Voice Inside My Head," a heart-shredding song from the perspective of a woman who gave a child up for adoption.

Immediately I thought of Marie, a person who I hadn't thought of since we received that e-mail four computers ago. I did some quick math, and I said to Natalie: "Remember Marie's baby?" She said, "Yeah, he was born on my birthday."

I said, "Yeah. He would have just graduated from high school a few weeks ago."

"Oh. My. God."

My wife has recently developed excellent research skills. If your name has ever been snared by Google's spiderbots, she'll find it. She found Marie. Marie is now living in a large East Coast city; she married exceedingly well, has two little girls and by all accounts wants for absolutely nothing. They're exchanging e-mails again.

That little baby boy that N held is off to college, or a job, or the military, or whatever. We'll probably never know. Life went on, and it went on very well for Marie, which is as it should be.

Marie called upon some serious strength that day 18 years ago, and that strength is having to carry her through the rest of her life. I admire her, and other women who made the same decision. Unplanned pregnancy brings up complex questions that can't be answered the same way for every person. They most definitely cannot be answered politically, or through legislation.

The 16-year-old Marie, even though she likely didn't know it at the time, came up with the right answer for her situation. Things worked out for her. Hopefully they worked for that little boy, too.

I still have to think that no matter how gilded your life is, though, that's gotta be a hard memory to carry with you, and that you wouldn't be able to help but wonder how things might have been different if ...

20 years now; where'd they go?

Rumors keep circulating that my high school class is going to have a 20-year reunion this summer. A few days ago, I received an e-mail detailing the program. Looks like a lot of fun; a golf tournament, a cookout, a trip to a Class AA baseball game in Anytown. I'm still not sure I can bring myself to go.

For one thing, we're 1,400 miles away, and even with the absurd amount of airline miles I've amassed in my recent travels, it's not enough to get all five of us there. I'm not sure I can pull off going to Anytown without my wife and kids; the rest of the extended family back in Anytown would be profoundly disappointed. Plus, I have a fair amount of business travel scheduled for July. Since my recent promotion, I'm not doing as many five-day trips, but I still have to do a lot of one- and two-day schmooze-fests, and I have many of those in July.

For another, I don't need people pointing out that 20 years ago, I had hair past my shoulders and weighed 100 pounds. I have dramatically less of the former and quite a few more of the latter now. I'd take the under on how quickly I get sick of people pointing those facts out.

I rather liked most of my high school classmates. I had a lot of friends in high school, many friends who crossed many of the different strata of a high school class. You remember The Breakfast Club? At one time or another, I would have hung out with all five of them.

I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not having kept better track of these people over the last two decades. I've done quite well over the last 20 years, in my career, as a husband, as a father. The thing I sacrificed to do all that was my friends. Truth be told, I was like that before I left Anytown, probably, but I became even worse when I could use distance as a weak excuse. I'm a shitty, awful, rotten friend. Too busy for this, too busy for that, too busy to send a simple e-mail or Christmas card.

In short, I suck. I'm not sure how squarely I want to face that fact.

So I toss this out for feedback: Should I go, or should I clean out the garage that weekend?

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-SHADDUP!

No vacation here, sorry. Still trying to figure out the mysteries of ASCII characters 0D and 0A. For now, everybody's having fun around me. Oh well; my time will come.