FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME

FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME


Meanwhile, I attended night school Monday to Friday from 7 to 11 PM and did very well academically, my afternoon nap allowed me enough sleeping so as to be able to endure the four hour night classes and wake up at 3:45 AM, work eight full hours during the morning and still be good at school, so much so that, at the end of that school year, I was among the awarded students in the third level of the School

It was at about mid year in 1958, at the age of 16, while I was the bread delivery man at the bakery shop that I fell in love for the first time in my life, or I thought so, anyway... It did not happen all of a sudden. Slowly, but consistently I started to feel this strange need to be close to this nice looking, black haired, 5’ 5”, round faced brilliantly white teeth, small, perfectly shaped nose 18 year old brunette girl, whom I interrelated daily with, because she was the cashier at the bakery. She was the cashier of the shop and I had hand to her the money I collected from my daily deliveries. Her name was Rosita, and she was the daughter of my brother in law, Lolo, and a woman in Pallatanga he had a short lived love affair with when he was still a single and handsome young man with a reputation of a lover, much before he married my sister Lilia.

I had known Rosita since our childhood in Pallatanga, and we were good friends, we used to play innocent games together when we were younger, but, as time passed and she started to show her beauty as a young woman and I began to grow as a teenager, I knew my feelings were changing, I was not seeing her as a friend to play games with anymore, instead, as my growing boy’s hormones started to boil, I started to see her as a girl I wish to have as a girl friend.

I felt this compelling need to approach her, embrace her and talk about my inner feelings, I just needed to say I loved her, that I was having constant dreams about us being in love to each other. My problem was I didn’t know how to tell her, or worse than that, I knew what to say, but was terribly afraid of saying it. In many occasions I was just about to tell her, but at the last second I backed off and started to talk to her about anything but what I badly wanted to say. I must have looked like an idiot to her. I felt I was a dumb coward, and many times I said it to myself, “Come on Rafico, don’t be a coward, tell her, she’s probably expecting you to say it”, but I did not find the guts to do it, it was just as frustrating as it can possibly be. At least three excruciating months passed before one day I was able to gather the strength I needed to do it. It was a day only she and I were at the front side of the bakery shop, there were no customers in the shop to mind for, she was working with her morning cash numbers, reconciling actual cash received, with her morning bank deposit, or something like that. I was trembling, my legs were barely holding me standing up, I thought it for a while, and finally I decided to take and hold her right hand with my sweating right hand. I looked at her right in the eyes, I just mumbled and said, “Rosita, I want you to know I have fallen in love with you and hope you would consider giving me a chance”. I must have looked like begging to her, which I certainly was. She looked at me right back in the eyes and said, “Rafico, there must be a mistake, we are friends from childhood, aren’t we?, and added, “I’m sorry to say it, but you must be terribly confused, what you feel for me can’t be love, it just can’t be, please think about it and you will finally agree”. I cannot accept you as a boy friend, we are just friends, and that can’t change all of a sudden, you understand? “I´m just too old for you, or putting it in a different way, Rafico, you are too young for me, you are just a child”. What a disappointment, I wanted to die, here’s this girl telling me I was just a child while in real life I was already a man, doing things just a grown up man can do for a living. I felt terrible!

Even though she was very polite, she was firm, she left me no room for expectations, and it was clear she just did not, much to my regret, have a bit of a girl’s feeling of love for me. It was hard to accept it, very hard. There were a series of nights I lost my sleep thinking of how I could drop this deep love feeling for her; it seemed that it was going to be impossible; I used to think of her as the love of my life, the love for a life time. I tried insisting one day but the answer was as polite and firm as it could ever be, it was clear to me that she knew how to say no, and get her point across. It took several weeks; perhaps even several months for me to accept it, there was simply no way, Jose!

My life continued uneventfully for a few months afterwards, with intermittent but dimming flashes of desire to try it again with Rosita that I was able to control through hard work and intense studying. Finally I was able to overcome that terrible feeling of anxiety, of defeat, of frustration as I submerged myself deeper in my job and my night time classes.

I had seen Rosita only a very few times after I left the Bakery shop, the last time I saw her, she was not a shadow of what she was back then, she had become a great grandmother of three, a grand mother of three and a mother of four children. Her skin was wrinkled, her eyes were sad looking, her hair was totally grey, she was missing several teeth, she seemed to have serious difficulties to see and hear, and had been living in almost abject poverty for the last forty five years. I felt terribly sorry for her and wondered about how different our lives had turned out to be, in spite of our identical origins.

I kept my job as the tricycle driver and bread delivery man for the “Panaderia La Delicia” (The Delicious One Bakery) for about a year and a half. One day, however, the man who had the job before me approached my brother in law, Lolo and asked him to if he could return to his old job. El Mono (the monkey) as he was called this man, was a 5’5” man who had a wife and four kids and badly needed the job back, my brother in law gave it back to him as soon as he requested it. I did not have any objection to this change since by the same time, I had applied and was in the final steps of being hired for a new job at a Spanish book store which was soon going to be opened in town. I felt happy for El Mono whom I also knew from my childhood in Pallatanga. He was about six years older than me and was a very smart man. Years later he became a free lancing photographer and I used his services several times in our business as much as in some of our family’s social activities. El Mono passed away a few years ago as a result of a massively invading cancer in the stomach. Another childhood friend was gone.

In my next posting: THE FEELING OF POWER AND INDEPENDENCE