Oh, Rona, this is an excellent story and visual! I learned a few new words and read some of the stirring sentences twice.
I was smitten with my Costa Rican Outward Bound instructor, and he knew it. During an ocean kayaking day in ferocious surf (as practice for whitewater river expedition), he got clobbered on the head with his paddle, and I gleefully stayed behind to drag him and his boat along the beach, and serve him rusty water from a spigot I found in a chicken clutch. He honorably held me at arm’s length and whispered, “Meet me after the course.” I then faxed him from Ecuador and Peru for the next two months when we visited a town, stinky and unshaven from wilderness trekking.
My longing almost hurt. The prospect of seeing him again kept my spirit aloft during extreme adventures that nearly killed a few of us. We reunited and stayed together 3 years and he proposed marriage.
I invited him to Chicago to meet my parents. My father had an obnoxious friend over one day and in talking he blurted out, “Just tell us—is he Black??”
Say and I exchanged love letters aplenty. His Spanish poetry made me swoon, and I was reading Neruda and thirstily learning Spanish, and trying to write odes to our unlikely, searing passion, too.
Judaism is not a proselytizing religion. I said, “I can’t ask you to convert, but go to the [one] synagogue in San José, and talk to the rabbi. I warn you, he will turn you away.” I told Say he’d be dissuaded three times to test his determination. But he came home and said, “That rabbi was a jerk.” My family put a lot of emphasis, shall we say, on us girls marrying in the faith.
Anyway, our lives were too different. He wanted me to live in CR and I was getting a master’s degree… I wanted him to live in the States, and perhaps be a paramedic.
Fast forward twenty years. I found my old boyfriends on Facebook and asked them to send my love letters back to me.
Only Say had saved the entire lot. He mailed them to me in a binder, with each one enveloped in a plastic sheath, arranged in chronological order, along with a pound of Costa Rican coffee. If I interleaved our letters, this would make a HOT book of mutual long-distance longing, that was doomed from the start.
Someday I will go ahead and interleaf my letters with his… They’re stored in my childhood bedroom in Chicago (I’ve lived in New York for 30 years). My daughters have got to discover this treasure someday.
Say and I keep in touch. We each married and had children with different people… but if a twin flame exists… we are living proof, and we know it.
There are so many layers to this story, written in your ever-curious, beautiful voice. The fact that you kept the paper-clipped love letter really emphasizes to me how you always were a story teller, perhaps before you even knew. I feel safe in this exploration of difficult subjects of the time that still plague us today...meaning we still don't have all the answers. Whew. This feels like it should be a short story in a collection of your profoundly clear recollections of issues facing different periods of your life, how you dealt with them then and how you might now. It's simply brilliant. And sorry, unlike you, I didn't see the stories in any love letters I've received and sadly, didn't keep them!
My first boyfriend was Bradley too! Bradley Jones. 1956 in grade one. He walked me home from school. Yes, six year old children used to walk alone! (Mom was often busy with two younger babies at home. “Use your head” was my basic training.)
Anyway. Bradley called me his ‘raisin pie’. He was very devoted - holding my hand all the way - a man of six years already taking charge. I did feel loved and safe. One afternoon mom found us changing clothes in my room. You’d think we were going to have sex the way she reacted. He wasn’t black - just male. Although now I wonder why we were exchanging clothes. Maybe he just wanted my dress. Hmm. Hadn’t thought of this for ages until your wonderful story. To your much more important story though Rona, not until my parents moved from Montreal to Cleveland in 1972 did awareness of prejudice occur to me. Men were always presumed a danger - now black boys were double threat. If you could find one. The war had taken young men of all colours.
The U.S. was so wierd. My sister and I didn’t stay. Back to Canada- where the boys were.
The notecards! How earnest and sincere he was. What I appreciated about this essay is your exploration of the contemporaneous context of interracial dating and your own critical self-awareness of your own race.
Oooh, Rona, thank you for this. I love reading it and a sheaf of sightly disorganized love letters past appeared, including ones I still have, and ones I burned. It will be fun to have a peek through it today. Letters seem to me to offer a thoughtful and expressive means to communicate. (My husband and wrote to each other every day until retirement - now it's more like twice a week, still a gift to write and read.)
Love this story. I didn't get a love letter but I received a watch from a Thai student studying at our local community college and working at the weekly newspaper where I worked while going to high school in small town Kansas. My father was horrified that I had accepted a gift from a foreigner with obvious evil intentions. Returning what had only been a gift of kindness hurt both of us.
Valentines Day 1981. Scene: a small but pretty Oxford college. I'm a fresher, and I've fallen properly in love for the very first time. My parents aren't going to approve of him, he's a Northerner, he votes Labour and he wears red desert boots. I adore him. In my pigeonhole I find a pretty postcard, I think it's an Impressionist painting Degas? And on the other side in his lovely handwriting, just a poem, one I've never read before, but will memorise and stumble through time and time again...When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes....
Sorry, Rona, I never replied to this when I first read it, but interestingly, it has stayed in my mind. You draw a very clear picture. I was left with two unrelated thoughts: i) I somehow felt very pleased that you didn't consider his behaviour to be sexual abuse. Young people take risks, not quite knowing what they are doing. As you said, it didn't cause you any harm. 2) I come from a good left-wing professional family but I am sure they would have had the same response back in the day. (My parents weren't particularly thrilled that I was marrying a somewhat prickly working class English guy - three strikes against him right away.) Finally, Reminded me of "Looking Who's Coming for Dinner".
Lovely writing and a stirring story, Rona. This set my mind off in so many directions at once, thinking about prejudice, first love, love letters, the people that come in and out of our lives but somehow stay forever. Wonderful.
Oh, Rona, this is an excellent story and visual! I learned a few new words and read some of the stirring sentences twice.
I was smitten with my Costa Rican Outward Bound instructor, and he knew it. During an ocean kayaking day in ferocious surf (as practice for whitewater river expedition), he got clobbered on the head with his paddle, and I gleefully stayed behind to drag him and his boat along the beach, and serve him rusty water from a spigot I found in a chicken clutch. He honorably held me at arm’s length and whispered, “Meet me after the course.” I then faxed him from Ecuador and Peru for the next two months when we visited a town, stinky and unshaven from wilderness trekking.
My longing almost hurt. The prospect of seeing him again kept my spirit aloft during extreme adventures that nearly killed a few of us. We reunited and stayed together 3 years and he proposed marriage.
I invited him to Chicago to meet my parents. My father had an obnoxious friend over one day and in talking he blurted out, “Just tell us—is he Black??”
Say and I exchanged love letters aplenty. His Spanish poetry made me swoon, and I was reading Neruda and thirstily learning Spanish, and trying to write odes to our unlikely, searing passion, too.
Judaism is not a proselytizing religion. I said, “I can’t ask you to convert, but go to the [one] synagogue in San José, and talk to the rabbi. I warn you, he will turn you away.” I told Say he’d be dissuaded three times to test his determination. But he came home and said, “That rabbi was a jerk.” My family put a lot of emphasis, shall we say, on us girls marrying in the faith.
Anyway, our lives were too different. He wanted me to live in CR and I was getting a master’s degree… I wanted him to live in the States, and perhaps be a paramedic.
Fast forward twenty years. I found my old boyfriends on Facebook and asked them to send my love letters back to me.
Only Say had saved the entire lot. He mailed them to me in a binder, with each one enveloped in a plastic sheath, arranged in chronological order, along with a pound of Costa Rican coffee. If I interleaved our letters, this would make a HOT book of mutual long-distance longing, that was doomed from the start.
Someday I will go ahead and interleaf my letters with his… They’re stored in my childhood bedroom in Chicago (I’ve lived in New York for 30 years). My daughters have got to discover this treasure someday.
Say and I keep in touch. We each married and had children with different people… but if a twin flame exists… we are living proof, and we know it.
There are so many layers to this story, written in your ever-curious, beautiful voice. The fact that you kept the paper-clipped love letter really emphasizes to me how you always were a story teller, perhaps before you even knew. I feel safe in this exploration of difficult subjects of the time that still plague us today...meaning we still don't have all the answers. Whew. This feels like it should be a short story in a collection of your profoundly clear recollections of issues facing different periods of your life, how you dealt with them then and how you might now. It's simply brilliant. And sorry, unlike you, I didn't see the stories in any love letters I've received and sadly, didn't keep them!
Enjoyed this, there’s a lot here. Thank you….
My first boyfriend was Bradley too! Bradley Jones. 1956 in grade one. He walked me home from school. Yes, six year old children used to walk alone! (Mom was often busy with two younger babies at home. “Use your head” was my basic training.)
Anyway. Bradley called me his ‘raisin pie’. He was very devoted - holding my hand all the way - a man of six years already taking charge. I did feel loved and safe. One afternoon mom found us changing clothes in my room. You’d think we were going to have sex the way she reacted. He wasn’t black - just male. Although now I wonder why we were exchanging clothes. Maybe he just wanted my dress. Hmm. Hadn’t thought of this for ages until your wonderful story. To your much more important story though Rona, not until my parents moved from Montreal to Cleveland in 1972 did awareness of prejudice occur to me. Men were always presumed a danger - now black boys were double threat. If you could find one. The war had taken young men of all colours.
The U.S. was so wierd. My sister and I didn’t stay. Back to Canada- where the boys were.
The notecards! How earnest and sincere he was. What I appreciated about this essay is your exploration of the contemporaneous context of interracial dating and your own critical self-awareness of your own race.
Well-done! So many thoughts of the 60’s-70’s came to mind.
Oooh, Rona, thank you for this. I love reading it and a sheaf of sightly disorganized love letters past appeared, including ones I still have, and ones I burned. It will be fun to have a peek through it today. Letters seem to me to offer a thoughtful and expressive means to communicate. (My husband and wrote to each other every day until retirement - now it's more like twice a week, still a gift to write and read.)
So rich with implication and the only barely suggested: the unknown life of Bradley.
So many things we don't know...because we don't take the chance ask.
Love this story. I didn't get a love letter but I received a watch from a Thai student studying at our local community college and working at the weekly newspaper where I worked while going to high school in small town Kansas. My father was horrified that I had accepted a gift from a foreigner with obvious evil intentions. Returning what had only been a gift of kindness hurt both of us.
Such an interesting story to read. Thank you for sharing.
Valentines Day 1981. Scene: a small but pretty Oxford college. I'm a fresher, and I've fallen properly in love for the very first time. My parents aren't going to approve of him, he's a Northerner, he votes Labour and he wears red desert boots. I adore him. In my pigeonhole I find a pretty postcard, I think it's an Impressionist painting Degas? And on the other side in his lovely handwriting, just a poem, one I've never read before, but will memorise and stumble through time and time again...When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes....
Rona, I love this piece. As per usual, your writing is layered and seeking. It’s a joy to follow the paths it leads you and us along.
Sorry, Rona, I never replied to this when I first read it, but interestingly, it has stayed in my mind. You draw a very clear picture. I was left with two unrelated thoughts: i) I somehow felt very pleased that you didn't consider his behaviour to be sexual abuse. Young people take risks, not quite knowing what they are doing. As you said, it didn't cause you any harm. 2) I come from a good left-wing professional family but I am sure they would have had the same response back in the day. (My parents weren't particularly thrilled that I was marrying a somewhat prickly working class English guy - three strikes against him right away.) Finally, Reminded me of "Looking Who's Coming for Dinner".
This story really resonated with me. Why is it so hard for men to put their feelings down on paper....?
Lovely writing and a stirring story, Rona. This set my mind off in so many directions at once, thinking about prejudice, first love, love letters, the people that come in and out of our lives but somehow stay forever. Wonderful.