Spirals, kisses and paths not taken

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.

Rosalie de Castro

(1837-1885)

This weekend I've been thinking about time, overlapping pathways, roads not taken... and kisses.

I've always liked the idea of time as a spiral rather than a straight course from A to B. That's how it feels to me anyway. I experience time not entirely unilinearly. And not as a circle, going over exactly the same ground again and again, but in definite cycles - like a spiral - the coils sometimes overlapping, possibly even touching (as in déjà vu) as they pass through similar territory again. Like a spider's web, although even more multi-dimensional - in both vertical and horizontal space - like the inside of a shell or a spiral staircase. Some people learn lessons on the first pass or notice everything there is to see and so their lifetime's spiral may draw essentially a single, large coil. Some, like me, apparently need to face the same or similar things more than once before they truly get it, and so there are many turns. Mine's not perfectly symmetrical, although it is perfectly mine. Some coils of my life's spiral are wide and shallow and slow moving, some are tightly wound and steep and fast... Some are smooth and crystal clear, and some have several built-in obstacles, or forks and intersections I can't see down unless I choose to travel them. I'm not sure if I'm travelling up or down overall and I can't see very far ahead but I can reflect back on the way I've come and sometimes recognise familiar territory approaching again as I round a bend.... It's an elaborate if not very scientific construct, my little theory. I don't think Stephen Hawking would approve. Some might even call it a ball of rubberbands, but to me it's a beautiful, glowing, colourful, textured thing. Perhaps one day I should try to draw or paint it.

Anyway, one of many ways it manifests for me is in the fact that certain people come into my life, add significantly to it, then pass back out completely, only to reappear at a later stage when their spiral and mine intersect again, sometimes unexpectedly and inexplicably.

Last week I received an out of the blue email from a person who I knew and loved almost 30 years ago. And then another reconnection, this weekend, with someone I loved slightly further back even than that. The former was from the first boy I kissed. But he was not my first love. That was my second reconnection. Seriously. Both of them. In the same week.

My first love was K. We met in grade one and went all through primary school together. We were firm friends but I announced boldly to the whole of our second grade class that I was going to marry him when we grew up. He didn't return my ardent affections - in fact, when we were about 8, he seemed very taken with my best friend. I was unfazed. She could bowl a very snappy overarm cricket ball and was a marble queen, so I could see why he might like her more but I remember walking home from school when I was about 10 and thinking that this was not puppy love, it was the real thing, and that one day he would eventually see me as friday-afternoon-movie-in-the-school-hall date material rather than just his friend. I should probably mention that this involved sitting next to each other and sharing sweets, nothing more. Not even holding hands. He never did, we never did.

When I was 11 we moved away and I didn't see him again until I was in university and had already met and fallen in love with the man who did become my husband. K and I bumped into each other off campus one day and spent an hour sitting on the pavement catching up. He was still lovely. And was studying to be a missionary. I knew then that, although he would always have that first part of my heart, we were a path better off not taken. One that was not to be regretted. I married M and lived happily, if not ever after, for a very long time.

Between the two was D. He of last week's email. He had deep dark chocolate brown eyes, a cheeky smile and an off-hand bad-boy manner. And a motorbike - 150cc. It sounded not unlike a sewing machine on speed but I was smitten. He didn't acknowledge me openly at school for ages, which strangely I didn't seem to mind too much. I think all those surreptitious glances just heightened the attraction. But, like clockwork, he would arrive at my house on a Friday evening and sit on the verandah with me and listen to music and talk and I would look into those dark eyes and was lost. When I was 15, we went on a school camping trip (and nearly got ourselves arrested for trespassing and swimming in a drinking-water reservoir, but that's a whole different story) and he kissed me.

I didn't have anything to compare it to at the time but I gathered from the weakness of my knees that he was quite good at it. We kissed a lot. Subsequently I am able to confirm that he was a great kisser. Those are still benchmark kisses. And then, for reasons that are still a little unclear to me but involved a short note (that I still have) explaining how he cared about me but did not want to be tied down (a classic "it's not you, it's me" dumping!) he stopped coming to see me and started dating one of my friends. I cried my heart out but she was a lovely girl so I didn't hate her. She couldn't bowl overarm but she did wear a great pair of lime green skinny satin pants and a tiny sequined tube top (that were the envy of all the girls and caught the eye of all the guys) to a party that preceded the change in circumstances. I hated to think he was that superficial but I'm just saying...

I missed the sound of the sewing machine pulling up outside, the long late night chats, and the kisses. But I moved on. The spiral turned and I went out with other people and then on to university, where I met M...

I don't do regret, at least not for long. Never have. But I do sometimes consider where I might have been now if different paths had been taken. And I do wonder what brings personally historically significant people back into my orbit? And why? Especially after so long. And two in one week? Maybe I over analyse (err, just a tad!) but I do wonder what I'm supposed to take from this, apart from just being happy to catch up with them.

They are both married with beautiful children and happy with where they are on their own spiral paths. And they both live on opposite sides of the globe to me. So clearly it's not to rekindle old sparks (besides, I still can't bowl overarm or carry off shiny skinny trousers and a sequined tube top). And I don't think the Universe just wants to rub salt in old wounds either. It doesn't feel like that. I find that I still feel great affection for them. And for what they meant to me all those decades ago. It's made me smile to think of that younger me. So maybe it's just to remind me that caring for someone is not enough to make them change the way they feel or behave? And that kissing can be delicious? I was pretty sure those were lessons I'd already learnt and have not forgotten though.

So, I wonder?

I'm sure, in time, it'll become clear. Or perhaps not. Either way, it's caught my attention.