Stories Along The Way

Do we ever really forget our first true love?

Not our first boyfriend. Not our first kiss. I mean the first person we truly loved—the person who somehow finds a little place in our heart and stays there, even as the years turn into decades.

I was only 13 when I first met Miguel.

He lived in a house next to mine. I remember seeing him and immediately being attracted to him. He was older than me—okay, maybe more than a little.

Looking back now, I realize just how young I was. But one thing I remember without hesitation is how he treated me.

Miguel was the most respectful person I have ever met.

Our relationship was innocent. There was never anything sexual between us—nothing more than kisses. He never pressured me or expected anything more from me. In fact, he was always careful about my reputation. He wouldn’t even allow me to go inside his home because he didn’t want anyone talking about me.

There was no malice in our relationship. No games. No hidden intentions.

At 13, I didn’t understand love or relationships the way I do today. I simply knew how I felt.

And to my young heart, I was in love.

I used to work at a little spot in a swap meet. Miguel would come and wait for me for hours, standing at a distance, just for the chance to see me for a few minutes.

Hours of waiting for a few minutes together.

There were no cell phones. No text messages. No FaceTime. No social media.

We simply found whatever little opportunities we could to see each other.

I had older friends who were interested in Miguel, too. Some of them tried to date him, but he always turned them down.

They couldn’t understand why. They would even joke that maybe he didn’t like women because he wouldn’t give any of them a chance.

But Miguel didn’t seem bothered by what they thought.

His answer was always simple:

“I’m a loyal guy.”

At the time, I was probably too young to understand just how much those words said about him.

But I understand them now.

He wasn’t interested in proving anything to anyone. He knew where his loyalty was.

And somehow, it was with me.

Then suddenly, my family moved.

We moved to another city about an hour away. To an adult, an hour doesn’t sound like much. But to a teenager in love in a time before cell phones, it felt like another world.

I was devastated.

I honestly thought I was going to die from sadness.

We continued talking over the phone, although communicating back then wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today.

Eventually, we would lose contact.

But here’s the thing:

Miguel and I never really broke up.

There was no big fight.

Nobody betrayed anyone.

Nobody ever said, “It’s over.”

We would simply lose connection.

As I got older, I started dating other guys. But Miguel never completely left my mind.

He was always somewhere in my heart.

And throughout those years, I would call him.

Whenever enough time had passed and I found myself missing him, I would pick up the phone and reach out.

And Miguel always answered.

He would always agree to meet me.

There was never an awkward conversation about what had happened between us. Somehow, we would simply pick up where we had left off.

The feelings were still there.

The familiarity was still there.

We were still there.

And every time we met again, there was something about the way Miguel looked at me.

He always looked at me with loving eyes.

I don’t know how else to describe it. I could see the tenderness in his face. Whatever connection we had shared seemed to still be there.

Then life would happen again.

We would lose contact.

Time would pass.

I would continue living my life.

And eventually, I would call him again.

He would answer.

We would meet.

And there were those loving eyes again.

You may wonder why I was always the one who called him.

The reason was actually pretty simple.

My phone number would change, and Miguel was always careful. He didn’t want to call my house and risk getting me—or himself—in trouble with my family.

Looking back, I think there may have been another reason, too.

I think part of him knew just how young I was.

Maybe he understood something I didn’t understand yet—that I was still growing up, still immature in many ways, and still trying to figure out what love even meant.

So he never chased me.

He never pressured me.

He let me come to him.

And when I did, he was there.

I would call.

He would answer.

I would ask to see him.

He would meet me.

And somehow, we would pick up exactly where we had left off.

Maybe that was another way Miguel showed me respect. He allowed me to decide when I was comfortable reaching out, and he never demanded more from me than I was ready to give.

At the time, I didn’t think much about it.

Thirty-seven years later, I do.

For years, that was our pattern.

Maybe that’s part of the reason I believed there would always be another time.

Every time life separated us, somehow I could reach out and find the same Miguel waiting on the other end of the phone.

But there was always something standing between us.

My fear.

Even as I got older, I was too afraid to ask my mother for permission to openly be with him.

I never even asked.

Maybe I was afraid she would say no. Maybe as long as I didn’t ask, I didn’t have to hear the answer.

So our relationship remained something I kept hidden.

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder how different our story might have been if I had simply found the courage to ask.

But I didn’t.

And eventually, life made the decision for us.

I was 18.

Five years had passed since that 13-year-old girl first saw the young man next door.

I hadn’t seen Miguel in a while.

So, like I had done before, I called him.

And like he had done every other time, he answered.

I went to pick him up, and we ended up sitting underneath a tree in a park.

But that day, something was different.

Miguel told me he was getting older. He was ready to settle down.

Then he asked me a question I wasn’t prepared for.

Did I love him enough to marry him?

Marriage.

That word scared me.

I loved him. I knew I loved him.

But I was only 18 years old.

In my young mind, I believed we had unlimited time.

Why wouldn’t I?

I had lost contact with Miguel before.

Then I would call.

He would answer.

We would see each other.

And somehow, we would begin again.

Why would this time be any different?

But he told me it was.

He was ready to get married. If I wasn’t ready to choose that life with him, he was going to pursue it somewhere else.

I don’t think I truly believed he would.

So I told him I would set him free.

Before we left that park, we carved our initials into the tree and put a heart around them.

Then we kissed.

It felt like that kiss lasted an eternity.

It was innocent.

It was pure.

It was beautiful.

And then we said goodbye.

He asked me to drop him off a little distance from his house.

I did.

We kissed one more time.

And I drove away.

I believe it was June or July.

At the time, I don’t think I understood that I had just said goodbye to him for the last time.

After all, every other goodbye had eventually been followed by another hello.

My Last Conversation with Miguel

Almost a year passed.

One day, I was feeling incredibly down. I don’t remember everything that was happening in my life at the time. I just remember needing the one person I thought would understand me.

I needed Miguel.

I needed my first true love.

So I did what I had always done.

I called him.

And, just like always, Miguel answered.

But this time was different.

He talked to me kindly and sweetly for a few minutes. He was still the Miguel I remembered.

But he wasn’t mine anymore.

He told me he was getting married.

He reminded me that he had asked me to marry him and I had said no.

And he was right.

He had given me a chance underneath that tree.

He had asked me to choose him.

And I wasn’t ready.

Then, once again, Miguel showed me exactly what kind of man he was.

He told me he couldn’t continue talking to me that way because he had someone else now. He wasn’t going to disrespect her.

And suddenly, I was hearing the same young man I had known all those years before.

The one my friends couldn’t understand.

The one who had always said:

“I’m a loyal guy.”

He had told me exactly who he was.

And now his loyalty belonged to someone else.

That hurt.

But even then, I understood.

That was Miguel.

Respectful until the very end.

37 Years Later

I can still remember his beautiful black eyes, his curly black hair, and how tall and slender he was.

And maybe more than anything, I remember those loving eyes.

Life went on.

Years became decades.

Relationships came and went. Life changed. We grew older and built completely separate lives.

But Miguel never completely disappeared from my heart.

Then technology gave us something we didn’t have when we were teenagers—the ability to find almost anyone.

Thirty-seven years later, I found him.

I didn’t contact him.

I didn’t send him a message.

I didn’t try to reopen a door that had closed decades earlier.

He appears to be happily married, and I respect that.

The man I remember valued faithfulness and respect. The best way I can honor the memory I have of him is by showing that same respect to the life he chose.

But then I discovered something that stopped me in my tracks.

Miguel bought a house.

Not just anywhere.

On the same block where we met.

What makes it even more interesting is that he didn’t live on that street for very long when we were young. It was simply the place where, for a short period of time, our lives happened to cross.

Yet somehow, years later, he came back.

He bought a home just a couple of houses away from where our story began, and that street eventually became the place where he would spend most of his life.

I couldn’t help but wonder…

Why that street?

Out of all the streets, all the neighborhoods, and all the places he could have chosen, how did he end up back there?

Was it simply coincidence?

Did that street somehow feel like home to him?

Did those years mean more to him than I ever knew?

Does he ever walk down that street and remember the teenage girl who once lived nearby and loved him?

I don’t know.

And I probably never will.

Maybe there is a perfectly ordinary explanation.

Or maybe some places hold pieces of our past that quietly pull us back.

Our love didn’t stay there.

But somehow, he did.

Sometimes I wonder about that tree.

Is it still there?

Are our initials still carved into it somewhere, hidden beneath all those years of growth?

And if they are, does he ever think about them?

Does he ever remember that afternoon underneath the tree—the conversation, the heart we carved, the kiss, and the goodbye?

I wonder if his love for me was ever as big as mine was for him.

I wonder if I was his first true love, too.

I wonder if, every once in a while, something makes him think of me.

A song.

A place.

A memory.

That street.

I’ll probably never know.

But then I ask myself another question.

Was my love for him really as big as I remember it, or does it only feel that way because everything about our love seemed so magical?

I’ve thought about that a lot.

Maybe first love becomes bigger in our memories because it was the first time we felt those emotions. Maybe time softens the difficult parts and leaves us holding onto only the beautiful ones.

But after all these years, I always come to the same conclusion.

Yes. My love for him really was that big.

I was just too young.

Too immature.

And nowhere near ready to give him what he deserved.

When he asked me to marry him, he knew what he wanted.

I didn’t.

I loved him, but at 18, love and marriage felt like two completely different things to me.

I thought we had more time.

Of course I did.

For five years, whenever I missed him, I could call him.

He would answer.

He would meet me.

He would look at me with those same loving eyes.

And we would pick up where we had left off.

I thought somehow we would always find our way back to each other.

I didn’t understand that one day there would be a last time.

Miguel is, by far, the greatest man I have ever met.

Not because our story had a perfect ending.

It didn’t.

But because of the person I remember him being—respectful, patient, kind, faithful, and honorable.

He never betrayed me.

He never treated me badly.

He never gave me a reason to hate him so that letting him go would be easier.

He simply asked me to choose him.

And I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t say no because I didn’t love him enough.

I said no because I was too young to understand what I was being asked to hold onto.

What If I Had Said Yes?

That’s the question that may stay with me forever.

What if I had said yes underneath that tree?

Would we have married?

Would we have built a life together?

Would we have been happy?

Would we still be sitting beside each other today, remembering those two young people who once carved their initials into a tree?

Or would life have taken us apart anyway?

There is no way to know.

Maybe that’s the thing about first love. When it doesn’t get the chance to reach its natural ending, a tiny part of you is always left wondering about the life that never happened.

And if I’m completely truthful with myself, somewhere deep down, there is still a part of me that wishes we had one more chance.

Not because I want to take anything away from the life he has built. I would never disrespect his marriage or the woman he chose to share his life with.

Maybe what I wish for isn’t even another chance today.

Maybe I wish that the 18-year-old version of me could have had one more chance.

One more afternoon underneath that tree.

One more opportunity to understand what he was really asking me.

One more chance to be a little older, a little wiser, and a little less afraid.

Sometimes real love finds you before you know how to recognize it, before you know how to protect it, and before you understand how rare it is.

But loving someone also means respecting where their life has taken them.

So I don’t call.

I don’t send the message.

I don’t knock on that door.

I simply remember.

I remember those beautiful black eyes and curly black hair.

I remember a young man standing for hours just to see me for a few minutes.

I remember the phone calls.

I remember how he always answered.

I remember how we could go months without seeing each other and somehow pick up where we had left off.

I remember those loving eyes.

And I remember two young people underneath a tree who had no idea how much that afternoon would matter nearly four decades later.

I still wonder whether that tree is standing somewhere, carrying our initials beneath all those years of growth.

Maybe the carving disappeared a long time ago.

Maybe it didn’t.

And sometimes I wonder if, somewhere in Miguel’s memories, a little piece of me is still there too.

He was my first true love.

It didn’t become my forever.

But it was real.

It was pure.

It was beautiful.

And somewhere deep inside me, that 18-year-old girl will probably always have one last question:

What if I had said yes?