The Unopened Present
December 26, 2023
There is so much I could write about at Christmas. We all have vibrant memories associated with this time. Unfortunately, although I have been experiencing many inspirational thoughts and memories, I was racing against the calendar and clock to finish a major knitting project I had undertaken for Christmas. To be honest, it became an all-consuming time grabber which, while undertaken with love, sucked up all of my time, energy and Christmas spirit. Why do I do these things?
Here’s hoping I can remember some of those things I wanted to write about.
This memory begins in mid-September, shortly after the start of the new school year when I was a freshman, although in those days the grades were divided a little differently. Elementary school was grades 1-6, Jr. high school 7-9, and high school was 10-12, although the college prep permanent records officially started in 9th grade (Freshman year).
Stop me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I was living in housing reserved for staff and students of the Newport Naval War College at Fort Adams. This time around, Dad was on the staff, so we had a tour of duty there that lasted four years (grades 8-11 for me). Families of the students (all ranking officers) stayed for a 10-month duty station. Those of us living at The Fort, with few exceptions, attended the Newport City Schools, and ALL of the staff kids as well as the townies looked forward each Fall to the “new batch” of Fort kids.
So, I’d just gone through the most miserable year of my life and had spent the summer reinventing myself for a better start in the new school year with a new batch of potential friends. As young teens do, I was wandering the streets of Fort Adams with a friend or two, doing everything we could to accidentally meet up with some other “new” wanderer(s) to strike up a fresh acquaintance.
And there he was….
Details outside of his person escape me like how many other people were twitching around and who they might have been. I looked up into his golden-brown eyes beneath his chestnut hair which loosely wafted across his forehead, a light sprinkling of freckles across his nose. He gave me a slightly crooked smile and I’m sure I started blushing all over. It was an immediate and wonderful connection. Thus evolved my very first “boyfriend” relationship with the dreamy Brian Buck. What a wonderful name!
Just like that, I was no longer “Squaw Greenteeth” as my older sister liked to call me, no longer dorky, under-groomed Barbara. I was a young lady with infinite possibilities, or at least one.
The year before, eighth grade, I’d gone to the dances at the Teen Canteen each Saturday night, hoping against hope to be asked to dance, to discover some glimmer of romance, or simple acceptance. It took me most of that year, and the nudging of some other people, to catch on that I needed some self-improvement if I ever wanted to go home from the dance happy. And those were the things I’d been diligently working on in the past two summer months when only a few staff kids were there, and the Fort was a pretty lonely place if you didn’t have townie friends to fill the gap.
Even though Brian was a big Sophomore at the high school, he was my actual boyfriend and we danced and danced every Saturday night. We never spent hours talking on the phone, though, because he had been restricted from using it due to a mishap with a girl the year before. There was an emergency on his father’s ship while Brian was tying up the line and his father couldn’t be reached by his crew, causing some sort of serious reprimand.
So, I didn’t have an expectation of hearing from him in the evenings, just meeting up on the street sometimes and every Saturday night. But, we were mercurial teenagers and it seemed, although we didn’t speak of it, after about 3 ½ months we each began to wonder if there might be someone else out there, if each of us had “undersold” ourselves to someone who was surprisingly easy to attract. Had we actually arrived or was this a fluke?
It must have been early December. Christmas was coming and the shops on Belleview Avenue in Newport were beautifully decked out for Christmas shopping. I recall sliding on the ice and snow covering the sidewalks between them, cold wind stinging my cheeks and nose until we entered the next warm shop smelling of hot cinnamon. With very limited funds I was searching for the perfect Christmas gift for Brian, sweet but not too presumptive. This was the Christmas of 1966. Everywhere you turned was the “Peanuts” book by Charles M. Schultz, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy.” I bought a small Peanuts statuette, probably of Snoopy flying against the Red Baron on top of his dog house, or something like that. I took it home and wrapped it ever so carefully.
Then, for the next couple of Saturdays, Brian did not show up at the Canteen. I hadn’t seen or heard from him and I’d have to have been even more naïve than I WAS not to suspect that he was avoiding me. But then came Victoria Brooks’s birthday party on Friday, December 16. Her parents had rented the canteen to throw her this huge party and it seemed every teenager at the Fort and in town was invited.
Brian showed up, but kept his distance across the room for some time. He finally approached me, sheepishly, and took me aside. It was clear what was coming. He touched my hand and simply said, “You know, this happens to everybody sooner or later. I’m sorry.” He had developed an attraction to my almost best friend, Jeanne Studer, and wanted to be free to ask her out.
It hurt, but not as badly as it might have, because this also let me off the hook to see if anyone else might be attracted to me. And Brian actually had done it so sweetly that I could never be angry with him. I knew he’d put it off for at least a couple of weeks because he didn’t want to hurt me.
I marched across the room and started flirting with (and kissing) Geoff Graeber, the BMOC of our Jr. High football team. Yes, it was a shocking and immature thing to do. I was still three months shy of my 15th birthday. This was the same year that I got braces and was delighted when John Doyle referred to me as “Sparkle,” a seemingly positive form of teasing. I felt validated. AND, I don’t think that Geoff minded a public kiss, either.
By the way, after she’d aggressively flirted her way into Brian’s affection, Jeanne promptly dumped him. She was just practicing.
My gift to Brian was never delivered and remained unwrapped for at least two and a half years. I might have unwrapped it just before moving to Virginia in July 1969. I don’t recall what became of it. But I will say that Brian’s careful management of a painful situation made him the benchmark for all other boyfriends to follow. He was a lovely soul who gave me a lovely gift of acceptance, and release.
The only thing I can add to this story is that my next boyfriend showed up at the Canteen a month later. Scott Irons, another sophomore, literally swept me off my feet, called me every night, met me as I got off the bus at Thompson Jr. High nearly every morning, making him chronically late for school at Rogers High, and probably qualifies as my “first luv.”
Four months later, he broke my heart when he admitted he also wanted to date Jeanne. He got the same treatment as Brian. After that, Jeanne moved away and couldn’t lure any more boyfriends away from me. I think maybe she wasn’t my best friend, after all.