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| Rosemary 1968 |
In Buenos Aires in 1952, when I was 10 years old, I fell in love for the first time. It was in my 5th grade class and our teacher was Mrs. Zimmerman. We read excerpts of Great Expectations. I soon came to understand that I felt something I had never felt before. I was in love with the remote Estella. I, indeed, to this day, can state that she was my first love.
While I rejected Miss Havisham for being unresponsive to her
ward’s coldness to Pipp I was attracted to her cold non-involvement. This might
have been because I was a nerd before the term existed, and I was afraid to converse
with the women in my class. I was their Pip.
It was in 1967 that I met Rosemary, who was not in the least like Estella. She was warm but at the same time she reflected a cool withdrawn remoteness that reminded me of Miss Havisham.
In my 52 years of marriage I saw in her a combination of Estella and Miss Havisham. Unlike Estella at the end of Great Expectations, it took Rosemary not more than a couple of days to fall under the spell of this Argentine nerd.
Rosemary never did mind as she understood what Miss Havisham, Estella and she represented in my life.