Into the future... Steve Miller Band
New. That's how we felt. And what we were, at seventeen. In 1977, we were skinny and invincible and unafraid. We were beautiful. We were very much alive.
We had new driver's licenses and our first part time jobs. Our first cars. We had razors we never used. Striped jeans. The girls wore lip gloss, bell bottoms and crazy gypsy shirts. And we pretended that we knew how to kiss.
That newness was the hook, the chorus of our lives - and it played endlessly from our back-dash Pioneers, record players, and staticky bedroom radios. We sang, we grooved, to Earth, Wind, and Fire, Parliament and the Who. Practiced those kisses to soundtracks of Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, The Eagles and Eric Carmen.
And Steve Miller.Miller, in his soothing, synthesized tracks, warned us, though, that time was slipping away.
We didn't listen - of course. We were too busy singing and fast-clicking through our spinning slide carousel of everyday discovery.
Too busy dreaming.
Looking back, I think we clicked past some of life's best moments - before we even knew what they were. We should have opened our eyes wide, smiled, held up our hands and forced time to stand still. Taken the time to scratch "OMG" on the bottom of the slide. To annotate the moment.
But we didn't. We couldn't. We kept clicking, life kept clicking.
Most of us didn't spend time looking in the rear view mirror. As the music played, the fleeting magical moments would have to be remembered - would only be remembered - sometime in the future.
Woven throughout many of those new days was a kind of love. For some, like me, it was a magical, uncertain, indescribable thing. It was sweetly confusing. It was hard to hold, hard to understand. It could be powerful but inconsistent. And inescapably filled with teenage drama.
Some of my more special moments were with my high school girlfriend, Kathleen. Known by her friends these days as "Kate."
Our journeys took distant paths - as they inevitably would. My sisters would remind me over the years, when they'd see her in the neighborhood with her children, about what I'd missed. Tease me about a long-lost teenage love.
After we both moved away, all I knew of the girl were her occasional posts on social media.
And now, the point of this story.
Four years ago, my time-stream shifted. In that turmoil, one of my children whispered to me, "Dad, can't you see it? She doesn't love you." And, "You need to find someone that loves you for who you are."
No, I hadn't seen it. But they were right - she didn't.
As time and pain passed, I found it hard to remember how love used to feel. And, when my friends would ask why I was still alone, I didn't have a rational answer, But I knew; I was hoping to find that newness again. As it remained hidden, I began to wonder - could I even recognize it; something I didn't understand, that I couldn't feel?
Steve kept singing and time kept slipping. Then, one night in July, I had a vivid, almost lucid dream. In it, a beautiful, mystical, seventeen year-old Kathleen told me, "John, of course I love you... I know you."
There it was, that feeling. Simple and profound. How it was supposed to feel. And it was so real that I could still remember how it felt long after waking.
And so, even if I don't find it again, feel it again, I am so grateful for that memory. Of what it's supposed to be. What I'm supposed to find.
Perhaps, in 1977, our shared, innocent discovery was so new, so formative, that our souls became connected in ways that we're not meant to understand.
Maybe they're mysteries never to be revealed. Milliseconds of magic that can only be tapped in the fast, fleeting moments of youth.
These days, my seventeen-year-old cosmic love is successful, married and content. My reflections here are about moments that persist and linger in the timestream of 1977. This is about the soul. The past, the present, eternity.
I sent Kathleen a Facebook message a few days later and thanked her for a message she never knew she sent. And yet, I received a happy and tender reply, wishing me well.
Perhaps we don't just have to dream of love - a certain, special kind of love. The kind that is woven into who we are and who we were. An enduring, unknown soul-borne connection.
The kind of love that is found deeply; in the close-up, crystal depths of someone's eyes. "I love you. I know you. As if I've always known you."
The kind of love that can make us new again. Alive again. Across the cosmos, seventeen again.
The kind I'll never stop searching for.
Thank you, Kathleen. You'll always be Kathleen in my cosmos.
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