Recently I’ve had several conversations with individuals my age and beyond that have all contained a similar theme: the mind doesn’t always register your physical age as much as your body. Whether the individual I have been talking to has been in their 60s or their 80s, we all agree we don’t feel much older mentally than our mid-twenties. Often I don’t feel any older than that 17 year-old prom goer pictured above. In some ways I look at those two kids and see how very young and naïve they were. In others I look at this photo and simply see us.
Scott was a year ahead of me in school. After graduating high school, he went off to college 700 miles from my hometown. Before the days of email. And cell phones. And social media. In the days when you paid by the minute for long distance phone calls. As a result we wrote a lot of letters to each other that year. We still have the letters I wrote him in a shoe box in our attic. I’m not 100% sure what happened to the letters he wrote me, but I think they were part of the things that were damaged in a water leak while being stored at my mom’s. I wish we still had those letters to be able to follow the full narrative of the year.
We had been dating about 8 months when Scott’s parents loaded him up to drive him to Minneapolis for the start of his freshman year. I had A LOT going on that August. My parents had just separated. Their divorce would NOT go smoothly over the course of the next several months. My first (and only) boyfriend was going to college so far away I wouldn’t even have a chance to see him again until Thanksgiving. And I was starting my senior year of high school. Needless to say, it was a SUPER stressful time in my life. I honestly only remember bits and pieces of that year. Looking back, I now see I was simply in survival mode. Just hanging on, going through the motions, counting down the days until I too would pack up and move away from it all to start my own college journey.
In many ways our relationship helped to keep me grounded that year. It was not without its challenges simply given the distance. There were times I didn’t think it was worth that challenge. Times when I just wanted the ease of having someone physically present to help support me through the stresses I was facing outside of our relationship. When I was worried we wouldn’t make it, I had a friend, Traci (who interestingly enough was present during Scott and I’s first date), who would make me look at her and say Scott’s name. And then she’d calmly tell me that it was all going to work out, that we were meant to stay together because when I said his name, my eyes smiled. Minus a short 6ish week break-up the spring of that year, it did indeed work out as she predicted.
I’ve been thinking about those kids pictured above a lot lately. Our youngest daughter and her boyfriend of 6ish months are the same age now that we were then. We just ordered her prom dress for her junior year prom, the same year this picture was taken. I see so much of us in them. Seeing them together often reminds me of those easy, carefree days of young love. Times when your eyes smile and your stomach flutters anticipating the next time you’ll see each other. How easily my mind can feel 17 again, even when my body reminds me how many years have passed since those days. I even find myself with butterflies in my stomach now and then as I reminisce. The mind is a powerful and interesting thing.
I am thankful to have met my person at such a young age. While growing up together through our late teens and early twenties, a time when you’re just really starting to figure out who you are as individuals outside of your relationship to each other, wasn’t always smooth sailing, I am convinced sharing memories from those days has been a HUGE part of keeping us young in spirit. I’m hoping I feel that way well into our 90s. (Yes, yes I am a hopeless romantic thank you very much!)
(It also may be why we live in a house that often feels more like a frat house than a grown-up family home, but that’s another story for another day.)
Thanks for reading, Jenn
Woman After... 