Holding the Flame...

Do you remember first love, dear reader? The way your heart flopped around in convulsions on sight? Your eyes dilated, your brow began to sweat, your heart would race, butterflies scrambling about in the depths of your stomach? Among other bodily functions, as I'm sure you know...

Sigh...

First love... And when you see them again, twelve years later...? Well, let's just say your heart starts all over again, but because it's twelve years later, you wonder if it might be a stroke or a heart attack and not first love bursting forth from the corner where it's been hiding...

Now understand, dear reader--this is not the "How I broke up with Richard" story. Far from it! While first love is powerful, occasionally forgotten but just as potent, second love? Well, that's the keeper, isn't it? While first love teaches you about whirlwinds and tides and pain and lust and sex--oh, GAWD, the SEX!--second love is about maturity, love by choice, commitment--I know, I know, boring adult stuff, but sweeter yet in many other ways. The companionable silences... The automatic knowledge of the other's thoughts... The twenty minute conversation conveyed in a glance... Little things like coming home and realizing he bought your favorite brand of potato chips, or cooked your favorite meal, or even just that smile when you walk through the door and feel at home... And the sex?--oh, GAWD, the SEX!--can be just as good... :)

I didn't realize how powerfully first love would come back--I never expected to hear or see from him again. It doesn't hurt that he's only gotten hotter in the missing years either! (This is what we like to call "motivation" for our own waist lines...) But it does--as it should--remind you of how good you have it when you have it. Who knows where first love would have led? A romance like the one I have now? Disaster and heartache worse then the original loss of said love? No one knows, and perhaps that's part of the tight-fisted grip of first love--the "What ifs...?" The not knowing if you could have made first love work if only you hadn't been so young, so head-over-heels, if the distance hadn't been so great, if the sex hadn't been so----oh, GAWD, the SEX!-- Sigh... First love...

I know the flame will always burn bright and hot for him. It's just a fact. But I also know the flame I have now far outshines "What if...", even if "what if" does flare up occasionally...

To my first love, you will always have that piece of my heart, and I'll cherish it always. But to my second love? You hold the flame...