What if the boy or girl you fell in love with in the first grade suddenly reappeared in your life, say half a century later, and it felt to you as though the decades between had never occurred? It can happen, you know. It did to me a couple of years ago, after an ugly and protracted divorce sent me rushing for the security of my idyllic childhood life in Yonkers, New York, where my sister still lived with her husband.

As soon as I had unpacked my bags, and taken a nap, Jessica knocked on the door of my room, announcing there would be a surprise guest for dinner, and that I was to wear my fabulous blue dress. Before getting showered and dressed, I spent some time downstairs in my unwashed jeans, no makeup, and scruffy hair helping Jessica chop salad for dinner. The doorbell rang, and I wiped my grimy wet hands on my jeans to answer it, thinking it was Jessica’s husband John coming home early from work without his key. To my surprise, I was suddenly staring into the big brown eyes of Eddie, the boy I had loved so long ago, and hadn’t seen since right after college. 

He was grayer now, and a little chunkier, and that well chiseled jaw was nowhere in sight. But the twinkle in his eye was bright as ever, and that smile that caused my heart to flutter could still work its magic. I felt embarrassed he had caught me looking my worst, but he insisted I looked better to him than ever.

I never did wear the pretty blue dress that night. The jeans worked out just fine. So fine, in fact, that, three months later, I was wearing a sapphire engagement ring to match it.

Eddie and I have been married a year now, and doing our best to make up for the years we weren’t together. Last night, we saw the latest “Indiana Jones” movie in which he finally marries his longtime love. An anonymous wedding guest in the film pondered the subject of lost years, and mused to himself, “How much time is lost to humans in waiting.”

But Eddie and I have no regrets for the 50 years we were apart. We met again at a time in our lives when we could appreciate each other more than we ever did at 20.

Ah, the wisdom of maturity.