Deja Vu Blogfest

Today, I'm participating in the Deja Vu Blogfest (details here) and I've chosen to re-post an entry from December 2009. Thanks for reading, and please check out other participants' entries when you get a chance!

(Side Note: Just realized that I even used the words "deja vu" in my entry! How fortuitous!)

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Image Source: Here

I was seven years old when I received my first marriage proposal. We were living in upstate New York at the time, in a house on the corner of a quiet street surrounded by lilac bushes and Japanese maple trees. Our backyard stretched out to an oak grove in a tangle of wildflowers, sweeping up a slight hill on which our next-door neighbors lived. They were a young couple with a son my age named Kyle. He owned a shiny, battery-powered Kawasaki two-seater in cherry red and one day he sped down the hill into my backyard. I was sitting on the raised deck my dad had built to accommodate his giant barbecue grill, wearing a rhinestone tiara and my mom's silk scarf. When I looked down, there he was staring back up at me with a charming gap-toothed grin.

He gave me a friendly wave. "Want a ride?"

"Okay," I said, even though I didn't think we had anything in common. He was the kind of boy who dug up worms and climbed trees to see how far he could fall, and I was spoiled and prissy and liked to keep my dress clean.

I descended from my wooden, umbrella-tabled tower and climbed into my new prince's steed of choice.

"Hold on tight," he advised, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. We must have been going about ten miles an hour - if that - but it seemed like the fastest, wildest ride of my life.

That summer we were inseparable, spending every minute of playtime our moms allowed us with each other. I came home with filthy hands, grass-stained skirts, and an acquired appreciation for bugs and dirt and other things I would have once called yucky. I like to think that he had an acquired appreciation for books after he met me ... or at least, he didn't hate them as intensely. We never kissed because kissing meant cooties, but sometimes he held my hand on the swingset.

Like most summer romances, ours came to an end.

On my birthday in September, my parents announced that we were moving. My dad's company was transferring him to a different branch and Kyle and I would be separated forever.

After school I ran over to tell him the sad news. We sat together on the swings, brown hair and black pigtails close together, thinking hard.

"We could run away," he suggested.

"What would we eat?" I asked doubtfully.

Kyle thought for a moment. "Dunkaroos. I know where my mom keeps them."

"We'd get sick of them really fast," I pointed out.

"Okay. How about you marry me?"

I made a face. "Gross, I can't marry you! You're my neighbor."

He didn't seem put off in the least. "What's wrong with that? My mom married my dad and they were neighbors." He picked up a blade of grass and chewed it like gum. "We could live in my treehouse."

I was sold. Kyle had the most amazing treehouse complete with windows and furniture. So I agreed to marry him and we made rings out of the dark green twisty ties from the supermarket. Unfortunately time ran out before we could hold an official ceremony. The moving van came and my family left our house and our neighbors behind for the chilly New England fall.

Flash forward seventeen years. I'm chatting on the phone with my friend Callie and somehow we get onto the topic of the first boyfriends we can remember. Kyle hadn't crossed my mind until this conversation. When I hung up, I decided to see if he was on Facebook out of curiosity. And there he was, a much taller, broad-shouldered version of the boy I remember, with the same charming smile sans missing teeth.

You know how sometimes you look at a person or a photograph of a person you knew when they were little, and you can still see them as a child? That same sense of deja vu hit me and I just had to laugh. He had changed, yet he was exactly the same - and I know he'd say the same thing about me.

I think writing is a lot like that. We change and we grow (and hopefully improve) but there's always a little something that reminds us of the way we once were. Can you see bits of your old self as a writer in your work? I definitely can. Sometimes all it takes is a sentence to trigger my memory, and I'll smile and feel nostalgic for rhinestone tiaras and the smell of freshly mown grass.