HELLO!

That’s what’s on the front of the tattered box of greeting cards I found in the attic when my husband and I finally decided to make a dent in emptying out some of the cardboard boxes we had stored the last time we moved four years ago.

The greeting cards were made by my then twenty-six year old boyfriend, which is pertinent since I was sixteen at the time. We worked together in a summer camp in Starlight, Pennsylvania. He was a janitor and I was a waitress. I served and cleaned up after a table of ten- year old boys and their sarcastic jock of a counselor, who was very handsome, but not my type.

Nick drove upstate with his friend, Joe, to visit Joe’s girlfriend, Marci, who was the camp lifeguard. Two long-haired hippies arriving at a camp filled with spoiled rich kids made my life much better. It was a very beautiful place and they liked it so much there, they applied for jobs and stayed the summer.

I can’t even remember how it happened, but we quickly became a couple. We went on lots of afternoon hikes and made night time campfires day after day. We drove a fast three hundred miles to New York City on our night off, and explored his favorite spots in Manhattan. We ate at his beloved Italian restaurant. It was the first time I’d eaten eggplant parmesan or cannolis.

Nick was an artist who made his living making greeting cards. He was also a poet and wrote beautiful poetry to me all summer long. It was wild and fun and he was a loving and respectful guy full of life and wonder.

The summer ended, I finished high school and went to college. We visited a couple of times. One day he wrote me that he was marrying his best friend, someone he’d met in an art class. It was OK with me. While I really liked being with him, I didn’t know about love and had my whole life in front of me.

Marriage was not in my plans.

The years passed and eventually I did marry and have my own family and a messy attic. Fast forward. I took that box of cards and Googled him. I saw that his wife wrote a cooking column and that they had written a recipe book together. He seemed happy.

After thirty five years I decided to take chance. One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy.

“Hi, is Nick there?” I ask in my friendliest voice.

“Yeah, he is, who’s calling?” the woman on the other end said.

“Oh, my name is Gloria. I’m an old friend of his.”

“NIIIIIIIIIIIIICK, it’s your old girlfriend!” she yelled out.

I guess she’d heard of me before.

He was totally blown away when he came to the phone. I hadn’t expected to talk to him because it was a business line. It turned out to be the same number as their home phone. We couldn’t talk long, but even in the shortish conversation we had, it was clear that he was the same, sweet guy I’d known so long ago.

Our life is made up of experiences we have and people we meet along the way. It was affirming to reconnect with another person who knew me in another time that seems like another dimension from so far away.

By Gloria Saltzman

Labels: Gloria Saltzman

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