Think of Me

Mary's Song (Oh My My My)

She told me about the first day she met him. She was in the first grade when he moved in next door. He had a white t-shirt that was covered in dirt and his brown-blonde hair was messy. His blue eyes shined and she felt butterflies in her stomach when they looked into hers. Immediately her parents invited his family for a welcome-to-the-neighborhood barbeque. At first she was shy, she told me, but he led her to the field behind his house where his dad had already tied a tire swing to a branch on the biggest tree and he pushed her until she felt sick and then they would do it all over again.

She showed him her tree house that she'd had in her backyard since her dad built it when she was four. They would play games and talk and he would help her with her homework. And when they climbed down their dads would smile and joke about them falling in love and getting married.

Sometimes he would tease her about how he was bigger than her and tell her that he could beat her up. He didn't scare her even though he was a third grader. He never did hurt her. And the time she actually did get sick from the tire swing and threw up on the grass he didn't tease her about it. Not even once.

She was sixteen when he asked her out. She'd dated before but she had always felt like something was missing. When she was with him nothing was missing. She fell in love faster then she could've thought, and their dads would still joke about them.

They would lay by the creek in the back of his truck and look at the stars for hours. Sometimes they went back to the tire swing or the tree house and just talked.

One time they got in an awful fight, yelling at each other all the way up to her front door until she slammed it in his face. And in the morning when she looked out her window she saw him curled up on her front steps and knew he hadn't left since last night.

Years later they sat in the field by the tire swing. He told her he needed to ask her something. He got down on one knee and held out a diamond ring.

The whole town came to watch their wedding. It was beautiful. Their mothers couldn't stop crying.

They moved into her house and had two daughters. And I moved into his house, ready to start a new life in a new town. She would talk to me a lot about him. And she would continuously fantasize about the future, where she could clearly see him with her on the front porch. She'd be eighty-seven, and he'd be eighty-nine, and she would look at him and watch his eyes shine the way they always had.

Sometimes I look out the kitchen window where I can see the tire swing that his dad put up so many years ago and I hope that someday I find what they've always had.