Pages

Sunday, November 24, 2024

In Love in 1952

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 She was warm but at the same time she reflected a cool  withdrawn remoteness that reminded me of Miss Havisham.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.