Summer Love

When I was a teenager, I was extremely lonely. I was a missionary kid and I had never fit anywhere. Most of the year, I lived in Haiti, where I got picked on all the time. During the summer, however, my family would travel back to the United States so that my parents could speak at all the churches that supported them. In some churches, people would tell me how wonderful my parents were for doing what they were doing for God. I hated how fake I had to be in response. I wasn't even sure I believed in God.

There was one small Baptist church, though, where the youth pastor was this aging hippie who knew how to play guitar and bass. He was obsessed with the Beatles but he knew all of the music I listened to too. I was shocked when I started picking out "The Man Who Sold the World" by Nirvana and he knew exactly what it was. He invited me, my brother, and my sister to go to summer camp in West Virginia with his youth group later that summer. I'd had a lot of experience with church activities that turned out to be terrible so I almost didn't go but at the last second, I decided to give it a shot.

I had a great time. In the mornings, we have breakfast and chapel. After that, we would break into groups and do different activities. In the evenings, after dinner, there was always a big campfire. We would sing worship songs together and then someone would usually share a reflection out of the Bible. 

One night, on the way back to the dorm from campfire, I saw her. I had seen her earlier that day and thought she was cute, but now she was walking right next to me. She was shivering because it gets cold in the mountains at night and she had forgotten to wear a hoodie to campfire. I introduced myself in a really smooth way: "Are you cold?" She nodded. I had an extra shirt on and I should have offered it to her but I was too nervous to think of things like that. I can't remember exactly what I said but we got through basic introductions. When we got to her dorm, I think she said, "Well, good night, John Adams." Something in her voice told me she liked me.

I hung out with her the rest of the week. We were inseparable. We kept in touch all through that year and then went back to the same summer camp the next summer. That year, we rode the same bus home for 10 hours back to North Carolina. I slipped my arm around her when she got tired and she slept on my shoulder. I went off to college that fall and she sent me a letter a day until she ran out of stationery.

I saw her again the next summer, but it wasn't the same. I had an internship at a newspaper. She had her own car and a job and new friends. I didn't know what to say. At the end of the summer, I finally poured my heart out to her in an e-mail and told her exactly how I felt about her. She wrote me back and told me she was dating someone else. A few months later, they were engaged. A few months after that, they were married. That was over 15 years ago. We haven't kept in touch.

Is there a point to this story? I'm not sure. Maybe only that if I'm still not married, it's because no one else has ever made me feel the way I felt when she fell asleep on my shoulder. I'm not sure anyone ever will.