MY TWO LOVE STORIES© Fred Natividad
When I learned that one woman I once fell in love with was diagnosed with breast cancer, the tragic news brought me sadness that at the same time triggered pleasant memories.
She was not my first love.
But I fell for her. For some years we dated - old style. Mind you, this was in the fifties. Sometimes – actually, most times - we were chaperoned by her sister whom we chaperoned in turn – double dating style. I am surprised to recall now that even if I was in love with her I – we both - maintained the illusion that our relationship was nothing but platonic.
I never had the nerve to steal a kiss even at our intimate moments alone. For one thing, such moments happened rarely. Kissing was normally forbidden conduct in courtships in those times. The most physical romance we ever had was harmless holding hands or a dreamy cheek-to-cheek dancing to slow music at dinner dances.
It was at one of those affairs - some sorority ball - that she said we should enjoy the night because this may be our last dinner dance date. She did not elaborate and I did not even ask her why. I was in love to pay attention. I was dizzily mesmerized by the slow music so popular in the 1950's. This was the age when entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Patti Page were then the rage with their sweet and slow love songs.
Our “romance” was the poor-boy-rich-girl variety. Not a very original scenario, I admit, but hey, it was my love story... Well, maybe, it was not totally that kind of a scenario because even if I emerged from very poor peasant roots I was already holding a job along the lines of my college major. I was not just like any fellow who remained a janitor for some years even after he passed the Philippine bar. So I was no longer exactly as poor as my peasant grandfather.
And she was not an heiress either. She was a high school home economics teacher and her family was not really that rich. That her family was certainly more affluent than mine was, however, true and in a small town, a family with, say, half a dozen hectares of rice land is “rich.” Its members are counted among people in what passes for "high society." I did not belong in that stratum. She did.
Anyway, eventually, I proposed. Twice.
The first was during our town fiesta. There was the usual carnival at the town plaza, with sideshows complete with a Ferris wheel. We rode the Ferris wheel and at the dramatic moment when our seat was at the highest point I asked her if she would consider marrying me sometime in the very near future. I did not even ask if she loved me. I arrogantly presumed she did.
"Whoa, we are not even engaged!" she said feebly. It was her feeble response that gave me hope.
"Then let's get engaged," I said, clutching one of her palms in mine.
"Give me time," she said, without attempting to withdraw her hand.
I enjoyed the illusion that we were an “item.” We were oblivious of small town gossip that we were such. Maybe she did enjoy the illusion, too. That was not impossible. After all we continued our platonic dates publicly even if, for now at least, she rebuffed my proposal for an engagement.
We were both working in Manila. One holiday weekend we agreed to take an early evening four-hour bus trip to our provincial hometown. For the second time I proposed. She passively allowed me again to hold one of her hands. I whispered, “Let’s get married.” I was more audacious. I asked her to marry me unlike at the Ferris wheel when I merely asked for an engagement first.
It was another disappointment for me, a deja vu. She clasped my hands with her free hand and with slow, deliberate, friendly but patronizing emphasis she said this was our last date. She cannot accept my proposal. She firmly said that we should not see each other again.
"I am not trying to be hard to get. I know you will find a better woman," she said. She knew, and I knew, that she merely mouthed a hackneyed line.
All the way to the end of our night trip, still holding hands, we sat in silence as our bus monotonously droned forward, its headlights slicing the darkness soundlessly,
For weeks I pouted, deliberately staying away from her. I thought we had a temporary falling out and that things will be all right after a while.
But, not long afterward, I heard she was engaged to someone else! Just like a corny movie plot! I didn't know I had a rival, not a serious one anyway. She never mentioned any serious suitor nor had I heard of one from our mutual friends. Then I remembered that at our last dinner dance date she did whisper that we should enjoy our last moments while we danced cheek to cheek to some slow music.
She did not have a long engagement. In a few weeks she got married in a presumably posh setting. I say presumably because I was not there. That I was not invited did not surprise me. She explained to a mutual friend that the reason for the absence of her “best friend” at her wedding was that it was too late to send out a new invitation to me after she discovered that the original one was accidentally crumpled and discarded along with some other paper trash.
It was quite a shallow excuse that hit me hard.
But I did not get drunk like some jilted character in a movie. I put out a brave front even if memories of our dates haunted me. I flirted with so many other girls that it did not bother me that most of them rebuffed me. In other words, my attempts at being a gigolo did not help me in my misery. However, as another trite saying goes, it was not the end of the world after all.
Two things happened.
First – sour grapes if you will - I realized that I was not in love with a girl with a next door homeliness. I was unconsciously in love with what she represented: a trophy from "high society.” I self-inflated my ego with the thought that I was able to get to first base where no other suitors had even come close. That was an illusion. It was shattered when I was out after first base.
So I began to see other girls again with more realistic eyes. This time I appreciated them as human beings, neither as trophies nor as attractively packaged mannequins.
Along with this fresh perspective something else happened.
I had a cousin, a nurse, who dragged her brother and me to an excursion and a picnic to historic Corregidor Island. She promised that I would be meeting lots of her fellow nurses she worked with, quite a few of whom were single, attractive and unattached. No red-blooded, single man nearing thirty like me can ignore that kind of a carrot.
She admitted, however, that she had another reason for inviting me. She needed me to help her brother carry boxes of food for the picnic!
My cousin made good on her promise. It was the best thing that happened in my life. She introduced me to a lovely creature, a pediatric nurse who became my wife. As a nurse she was able to tag me along to immigrate to America where there was an acute shortage of nurses.
But that’s love another story.
Suffice it to say that it is a love story that has endured for 45 years now - and still counting... So in my mind I keep the violins playing not just for this ongoing love affair but also for a past unsuccessful love affair with a woman that I learned had breast cancer.
©Fred Natividad
Livonia, Michigan
July 15, 2010
