My Peter Pan

Once Upon a Time, I fell in love with a boy.  He was just the right age to be all elbows and knees, with beautiful, wavy, chestnut hair.  His eyes crinkled when he laughed and he moved with the supreme confidence of youth.  He could have been Peter Pan himself, caught up in the Neverland of adolescence.

I was young too, then.  I wore sundresses and bare feet and didn't much care what people thought, thankyouverymuch.  I had the pompous, blind faith that the future would work out wonderfully with little guidance from me.  All I cared about was the boy.

My Peter Pan and I, we stayed out late, gazed at the stars, and looked at each other as if we would never grow up and didn't care if we did.  We welcomed day after summer day, each one seemingly designed especially for us from distilled morning light to crickets and constellations.  Life was grand, all the stage lights were on us, and we loved it.  It was the best kind of Neverland.

But then life knocked on our doors and we were forced to choose our grown-up destinies.  I chose mine and waited.  I secretly hoped my Peter Pan would eschew his grown-up destiny and choose me - and Neverland - instead.  I looked up at the stars night after night, imagining him lighting on my windowsill and taking me away.  He never came.

No, he never came.  He wisely grew up and so I grew up too.  The boy I loved gave up Neverland for love, and in doing so, he gave us a second chance at magic. And it's breathtaking.