A Story For the Fans

So . . . a boy falls in love with a lovely, serious and soulful young girl. It is their time of innocence and discovery. Their lives are made whole by their devotion to one another, and so they marry. For five years their happiness is complete, and every day brings a new episode of delight. Then, sadly, she goes away.

The boy grows older but never finds another to compare to his beloved. He visits their old haunts and keeps pictures of her on his wall. He watches the home movies they made together over and over. He keeps her memory alive in his heart.

Then when he is much older, more cynical and less easily impressed a vibrant young woman falls in love with him, and she wants to become his wife. She is laughing, elegant, wickedly witty. But she is very different from his first love. When he is with her he can only see those differences, and not the charms she is offering to him, and he says to her, “No, I cannot marry you. You are not serious. You are not soulful. Because you are not like her, I cannot love you.”

And he misses his chance for happiness a second time.