My Own Personal Fairytale

For anyone that missed it over on my other blog, let me bring you up to speed. I'm currently in a serious, long-term relationship with my best friend from grade school. We reconnected via Facebook last summer after 19 years of separation (we lost touch in summer 1993 when my family moved) and have been rather constantly in each other's presence ever since (aside from things like work and sleep and school which tend to separate us).

We became friends in 3rd grade in TAG class. We weren't in the same homeroom class that year. By 4th grade we were spending a lot of time together outside of school. I liked to go over to his house because his parents were wealthier than mine and he had cooler toys (like a GeoSafari... we're TAG kids, remember?), and his mom took us to OMSI fairly often. I also remember his mother as being the one who taught me how to swim, and I was sad to learn that she passed away a few years ago.

I'm musing this evening on how things eventually come full circle. Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time there was a 10 year old girl who was friends with a 10 year old boy whose parents were in a decidedly different tax bracket than that of her parents. The 10 year old boy's parents decided one year to take him to Hawaii. When the boy returned, he brought the girl a ring carved from a single seashell in the shape of a leaf. The girl wore the ring all the time (on the ring finger of her left hand, she seems to recall) until the day it was tragically broken in a freak bleacher-crushing accident. The girl picked up the pieces from the floor and took them home and put them into the locked "treasure box" where she kept all sorts of priceless items like a purple, heart-shaped bead a Mexican boy had given her in kindergarten. 

Later that same year, the girl's parents decided to move to a town far away to have a house with more space. The boy managed to persuade his mother one time to drive him out to visit the girl, but eventually time and distance separated them.

Almost 20 years later, the girl (now 29-going-on-30) received an unexpected message on Facebook from the boy (who had just turned 30). "Remember me?" he asked. "Like I've ever known anyone else with a Finnish last name," the girl responded, as she had grown up to be rather sarcastic. Fortunately, it seems the boy liked this. The boy and the girl began spending Saturdays together. Then Friday nights and Saturdays. Then Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sunday afternoons which included the girl's son (who, interestingly, was about the same age the girl and boy had been when they'd last seen each other).  

Another year later, the boy decided he should take the girl and her son to Hawaii, as he remembered going when he was about her son's age and remembered it fondly. Plans had been in the works for  several days before the girl finally remembered the shattered ring that she was pretty sure she still had in a box somewhere at her parents' house. She ran into the other room to tell the boy excitedly, "I just remembered that I remember when you went to Hawaii before! You brought me a ring and I used to wear it all the time, then it got broken and I was really mad."

"Aww," he said, pulling her into his arms. "Well, when we go in December I'll buy you another one."

This story, by the way, is completely true. And the bit about me suddenly remembering this ring I hadn't thought of in probably 18 years or so just happened tonight.  Yes, this is the fairytale that has been my life for the last 13 months.... I'm dating and not-so-secretly planning to marry (at some indeterminate point in the future) the guy who was my best friend in grades 3, 4 and 5. You hear people all the time say, "We were high school sweethearts." Well, we were elementary school sweethearts... let's see you top that. And he already gave me a ring a long time ago. Yeah, it broke, but he already said he'd get me another one. And until then, I still have the pieces in a box... which I intend to retrieve the next time I go out to my parents' place.