One Fine Day

When I was in sixth grade, I developed a giant crush on the boy across the street. He was two years older than me-- my older brother's best friend. Therefore: irresistibly forbidden. The crush continued through middle school, through high school-- even into college. In between boyfriends, I would return to my crush on the boy across the street, and in all those days of pining, I would think of this song:


One fine day
You'll look at me
And you will know our love was
Meant to be
One fine day
You're gonna want me for your girl...


ONE day, I thought, that boy is going to decide that I'm the one he wants. Maybe after he goes off to college, I concluded. He'll come home, and WOWZA, I'll be all grown up, and then he'll like me!

And funny enough, that's what happened.

So this boy and I swung from the star-hung pendulum, reaching to one end of the galaxy in passion and sureness, and then swinging to the other where we said firm goodbyes... On one end, exchanging rhapsodic utterances, on the other, watching the star trails burn out with the darkened knowledge that the ride could only ever be temporary. Eventually, we were graced with Disappointment's dreary presence, and we stopped speaking, grew apart, fell out of favor, began forgetting.

And I fell in love with new boys.

And I learned about real heart-break.

Today, on my drive home, I heard on the radio--


One fine day
You'll look at me
And you will know our love was
Meant to be
One fine day
You're gonna want me for your girl...


... And I thought of the boy across the street: now a grown-up man with a fiance, in a city far far away. All I could do was shake my head in amazement at the way time has changed things. The memory of my fervent teenage affection now seems as fuzzy and old as the recording of that song. Yet forgetting, it turns out, brings a "finer day" than the two of us ever had with one another. The consummation of the "one fine day" was not his choosing me, but his forgetting me, and choosing someone else; the deliverance of the "one fine day" was not me receiving him, but forgetting him, and throwing open the doors of my heart to the great wide spaces of promise. Perhaps it isn't forgetting even, but rather remembering in a different way: this fine day's remembrance is colored-- not with longing and regret-- but with innocent nostalgia.

* * * * *

I say all this, because I'm forgetting again.

"I fell in love with new boys. And I learned about real heart-break."

Or rather, remembering in a different way than I have been remembering.

It is such a mercy to forget. Such a mercy to remember in a different way. Such a mercy to hear an old song, and realize that one fine day, I hear it with a different heart.