Now that my children are starting to think something besides “ew” about the opposite sex, our conversations have gotten quite interesting. “Mom, who was your first boyfriend?” “Did you love anyone before Dad?” “Tell us about your first kiss.” Oh, Lord, if I’m going to go there I feel like I need to settle in with an old Outfield album and a glass of peppermint schnapps…

Let’s see, children, hmmm, Mom’s first kiss. Okay, I lived in Atlanta, where everyone was kissing long before we ever moved there. That town is fa-ast. I was thirteen and had a crush on my neighbor. He kissed me, and I think he had braces. My first real love was after that. He was older than me, a football player, and went to private school. He made me mixed tapes, often, and even recorded himself singing along to “I’ll Stop the World and Melt with You.” I wish I still had that tape, even though we’d have no way to listen to it. He and I used to fog up the windows of his Toyota Supra, and I thought for sure I was going to marry him. One night he pelted rocks at my window, and my friends and I were serenaded by his entire football team (You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your li-i-ips…). If that wasn’t romantic, I’m not sure what is.

My next real love was a guy I dated when I was a senior in high school. I went off to college thinking we would stay together all four years and then get married. But we (I) didn’t even make it through rush. I’d had no idea how fun college would be, apparently. My senior year college boyfriend followed me to Austin. I thought for sure he was the one, but then I met someone else at a wedding. Then I bought my first house and fell in love with my neighbor. Then I got a new job and met your dad at a press conference. I thought he was the one, and he was (in one way)…because now I have you. And after him I loved a man, but I was too chicken to tell him so he married someone else and is living happily ever after in Sausalito. My forever love will be easy to spot, because he will love you guys as much as he loves me and you will notice me laughing all the time.

I may be forty years old and wear glasses, but my memories are in sharp focus. I can remember the excitement, the anxiety, the fluttering in my stomach. Will he call? Will I see him? Will he ask me? I remember feeling so happy I thought I would explode, like fireworks were going off inside my head and heart. And I remember feeling so devastated, like my heart was broken into a million dusty pieces that were falling into a black cavern with a lava pit way, way down below. I was never going to school again, I was never talking to him again, I was not ever, ever going to get out of bed. Do not open my curtains. Wait, the phone is for me? Who is it? Give me that. I need some privacy, please. And a ride to school…but I might be late, I need to do my hair.

I will never think your romances are silly, or that you are too young to feel things for real. Because I know it is real, every time. I have all my old diaries. We can read them and laugh at me so that you can feel better. I will hold you when your heart breaks and help you search for every last fragment, piecing you back together again like Humpty Dumpty. And I will be as excited as you are when love turns your world wonderfully upside down and inside out. I won’t minimize your experiences, and yet I’ll do my best to help you keep them in perspective. I will help you hold on, and teach you how to let go. I will live my whole life reminding you that no matter what love brings, it always teaches, you can always mend, and it is and you are always worth trying again.