The Boyfriend I Never Had

A friend emailed these pictures to me today.  She knew me when we were in high-school together and although I'm still not clear how she got these photos from the set of "The Boyfriend" (circa 1970's) it was an eye-opener.

In more ways than I care to imagine.

When I look at this and the other photos she sent, I see a lively, attractive, confident teenager belting out tunes and showing her comedic range fearlessly.  Not the awkward, shy, wallflower who was terrified of being found out for the even more frightened, awkward, geeky looking person she felt like inside.  I skittered along the edges of a potential but never realized social life in constant angst, assuming no boy would ever find me worth dating.  A reality made visible by my own illusory projections and acceptance of the status quo.  Never kissed during my high-school years, I was on the decorating committee for the senior prom and after I spent two days putting up flower pom-poms and shiny disco-balls at the local hotel ballroom, I went home.  I didn't have a date. Disappointment was tempered by my belief that this was just the way of things.

     How could I have been so blind?  'Youth is wasted on the young'.....whoever coined that phrase knew what they were talking about.  I look at that girl in the photo and cringe.  I can't time travel and go back to her and give her the benefit of my hard-earned wisdom, I am simply left with the mystery of why I was so hard on myself and why I couldn't look in the mirror and see things as they really were.  

     She was so skinny, this Val-child of mine.  I did manage to hang on to my figure until recently but now I'm currently working on losing the spare tire around my waist that has somehow attached itself to me like a leech; prying it off has taken a humbling visit to Jenny Craig and a lot of frozen food portioned out by a schedule on my fridge.  

See, I'm doing it again!

     Old habits are hard to break.  I want our daughter Mimi to grow up knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she is beautiful, powerful, resourceful, and worthy of being a treasure.  I have no control over her physical  features, that will be her own affair, but I can instill in her a kind of knowledge well, deep in her DNA, that we will continually refresh as long as we are able.  

     My mother's only comment when I once asked her if I was pretty was that I had a classical Roman nose.  When you are surrounded by Barbie dolls dressed up like the vixen Madonna, this comment would be perplexing and very unsatisfactory (as it was).  Mimi has the kind of regular, generous features that turns heads (life is unfair this way), so she's never asked me the same kind of questions.  But our job has been to focus on the inner life she will inhabit and share with the world, because that is something we can have a say in. She is learning her worth comes from being a good and honest person, from trying hard at things, from respecting others, and from loving and being loved by people that she trusts.  

     I want her to look to us first in times of doubt, and drink from that well, and be the voice of reason in an unreasonable world.  And when she stops listening for those years when we all stop listening to our parents, I want to believe that no matter what swirls on the surface of her life, she will never quite lose touch with that deeper sustenance.  

     Unlike my mother, who was unconscious to her crushing insecurity and fearfulness, unable to provide her girls with much more sexual advice than Victorian-era sayings like "just close your eyes and think of England," I hope my magic-bus of a relationship journey has netted me enough insight into the male psyche that I will have more to offer in the way of weaponry in the dance of the genders.  I was so unprepared, and unaware of my own honeybee charms that I mucked about for far too many years and nearly toppled my dreams in the process.  

     Having said this, I am content with the way things have gone despite the late blooming, but damn, I  would have liked to have felt the power of what I had much earlier on.  When I had hair that flowed like the Goddess Diana and a very, very flat stomach.

     Back to the menu on the fridge.  I think tonight is a teeny-tiny lasagne.  And veggie chips......Bye, bye spare tire!