Snow Cherries from France
A woman goes through cycle after cycle in her life. We begin as trusting girls, looking up, wide-eyed, to our daddies. And so, in trust and in faith, we hold our hands out to the fire in the eyes of our paters, praying for warmth and security.
Until I was six years old, my father was what I thought of when I heard the word 'man'.
At six, I met a man who lay in opposite to the very atoms of my father's soul. He was kind, witty, intelligent, sensitive: anything a young girl would want in a crush. Through his very existence, I came to the callow, selfish notion that my father was not a man, but less of a man: an ape. A baboon who rages against the molting of his genetic encumbrance.
This yellow fury was washed by at the exit of my crush. And so Mister Bergstrom, the first man to ever really understand me, left my life. I still hold the slip of paper he left me as one of my greatest treasures.
Slowly, as I grew, came the influx of crushes; briefly, I experienced a sweet flutter at the heart for boys as varied as an environmentalist (Jesse...he works for a pharmaceutical company now) and a bully (who runs his own furniture store).
The bully, Nelson Mundtz, is probably the most difficult boy I've ever had the misfortune to fall in love with. A marvelous kisser, and he possessed an eagerness to please me that I could relate to. My slowness in discovering his lies surprised me, but the value of each lesson he left behind has made its mark inside of my heart.
Milhouse, whom I loved the longest, disappointed me the most thoroughly. My best comparison would be to say that he reminds me of swimming beneath the sea; it's another world under there. When you surface and clear the sand from your eyes, the world returns to existence as it always was, and one comes to believe that the underwater life is just a dream.
And then came Hugh, who couldn't meet me. We couldn't meet, tie together the ends of our lives. So for my junior year, I did something I swore I'd never do.
I moved in with Nelson Mundtz.
It was insanity from the very beginning; when we weren't fighting, we were passionately in love. A debate over the disappearance of a remote control would lead to ice skating in the park. Such a reaction within my skin befuddles me. A rational woman doesn't behave like a child on her sixth hot chocolate.
I knew it wouldn't last; he still had a passionate allegiance to Janey, and traveling up to Capitol City every weekend put a strain on his poor son. We drifted apart so quickly that it seemed like a whimper from a dying dog; filled with days better remembered than this one.
And now I ride the A-12 back to Springfield, remembering these relationships. The jagged holes and tears they have made in the wall of my self-esteem seem to heal when I see him. After so many disappointments, he believes in me. He thinks I'll do the right thing. It brings tears to my eyes.
"Hey, honey. Are you okay?"
"I think I will be, dad."