Childhood Emotions

We, hopefully, will live long and fruitful lives. But the most intense period of our lives, for many of us, are those four coming-of-age years we spent in high school. During that time we gained our first tastes of independence, we made blood friendships and, of course, we did a number of things for the first time.

That first girlfriend, the one we will never forget, introduced us to pleasures that will never be duplicated. But maybe even more vibrant was the pre-girlfriend. The girl you yearned to be with, even if it just meant walking next to her down the hall. The girl I would gnaw off my left arm at the elbow if she would just give me the time of day and maybe a few pleasantries. A touch or a kiss were absolutely unfathomable. A glance and a smile from her kept me satiated for days. Now that girl is probably a stepgrandmother in some far off Texas hamlet or some such thing. But that's not the point. The point is that the intensity of feeling could only happen back then in our teenage years. Never to be reproduced yet many continue to try for years afterward.

That was the effect I was trying to get in the relationship between Utah and Jill. Especially in Chapter 8. The nervousness of the moment. The blood rushing to the head and other extremities. The uncertainty of what to do next. Yet the exaltation of the connection far supersedes the profound consternation. The relationship is strong but it is clunky. A struggle between commitment and freedom. Her interests versus his. Sensations ebb and flow.

I tried to draw on the purity of the emotion. Back then, it didn't matter in the least if her family had money or if she lived in a homeless shelter or a mansion or that her father is unemployed or mayor. Stuff we think are important now had no meaning to us back then. The connection was one-on-one, myself and her, spiritual. Yet for almost all of us, material and status and "career" issues grow in importance as we get older and the spiritual aspect lessens. We know why, but it's sad all the same.