A Life of Love

Childhood

Grass rustling. Birds chirping. Children shrieking in delight. A boy sat on the swing in the local park, watching as the clouds rolled by overhead. He stared into the sky, imagining what wonders awaited him. His eyes were filled with curiosity as he processed more and more of the surroundings that were so familiar to him.

A cry began to emanate from somewhere in the nearby trees; it was a soft, sweet cry that stirred the boy from his thoughts. He hopped off the swing and slowly trudged through the grass towards the source of the utterance. As he pushed his way through the bushes, he came across a girl crying in the grass. The boy sought the cause of her distress and came across a doll a few feet away, the arm broken and disfigured. He picked up the doll and returned it to the girl, who looked up with shiny tears in her eyes. Though he could not repair the damage, the girl thanked him for his efforts. The two sat down for a while and talked, talked about birds, talked about the bugs that crawled through the dirt. Eventually, they resorted to lying down on the fresh bed of grass and stared up at the wisps of white floating across the sky. As the sun slowly went down, their hands touched briefly...but the girl had to return home for dinner.

Time progressed, and the two converged on their original meeting place every day. They talked, and laughed, and sang, all the while having a merry time. Soon, their parents discovered their activities, and they smiled as they watched their children grow up together. Days became weeks, and weeks became months. Though the children occasionally visited each other's houses, they spent most of their time wandering through the park, talking and discussing the wonders of the world. And as they talked, they learned much about each other as well as themselves.

By the time the children had entered middle school, they were practically inseparable. Always together, they rose up to the challenges of middle school, be it new classes or students whom they had never encountered before. It even seemed as though the school counselors and instructors knew, as they placed the couple in the same classes time and time again. By now, the couple spent a large portion of their time in the community library, working tirelessly to perfect their grades and even begin a friendly competition to see who could maintain a higher grade. Soon, their adventures in middle school came to an end, and they prepared to face the new onslaught of challenges that would await them in high school. As the promotion ceremony came to a close, the couple vowed that they would face those trials together as they had done before...