Fiftieth Anniversary )* sob *(

Today -- or roughly today; I didn’t keep a diary at the time --  is the   Fiftieth Anniversary   of my heart-rending,

soul-searing,

tragic breakup with …  Karen.

    )) *s-s-s-SOB * (!) ((

She was twelve;  and I was twelve;;

we had been going steady for a little less than a year,

during which time, she   Wore My Ring,

on a little gold chain around her neck.

(That was the custom then, in our village in New Jersey.   1962.)

‘Twas bliss, in that dawn to be alive:

but to be young, and in something like love,

was very heaven.

Yet --    it    --      was not ---      ---          ---

-- ‘twas not to last.

(  *sob*  *sigh* )

Vacation was fast upon us;  we would be departing for distant summerspots unknown, with our respective families (the Montagues, of Northern New Jersey; and their Bergen County compatriots, the Capulets), and in all practicality, well … (for lasses are nothing if not practical) …

She did not (let the record show)  have the courage or decency  to do the deed herself:

she sent an emissary.

A squat little  go-between (blonde as I recall, and a bit tubby; later probably some shill, for the Republican National Committee, or a Las Vegas realtor), who simply came up on the playground and, without preamble (indeed one rather suspects she would  in any case  have been incapable  of any seriously Shakespearian effort  in that regard), plopped the ring into my own plump hand, and said:

“Karen told me to give you this” (kthxbai)

(or non-iambic, un-iambic words to that effect).

I survived, and sped, and wed;  and thou …

God willing, your surname is not what it was:

or you married, and took your husband’s name,

or entered a convent, and became Sister Such-and-Such, sans plus.

Our faint  young-fluttering love, was but a hatchling, gawky-necked,

and with as yet unfledgèd wings:

and yet and yet,

receding now, as to the Western skies,

I yet look back,

upon that nest wherein good things were nursed.

Bless you, and bless all young-ones going steady:

blushing and kissing, holding hands, and eventually breaking up,

trying their wings, for their later ascent,

to one or another

Sacrament.

(World Without End…….)