Missed Chances.

I wasn't going to write a blog tonight.  I'm tired and I have a lot to do tomorrow.  But, floating through facebook, I received a particularly touching message.  I had to share it, because it is about missed chances and true love.

Some background.

Last year, my favorite buddy (maybe, my best friend) in high school and I found each other on facebook.  He gave me his phone number and we talked for hours, just like we'd done, oh so many years ago.  It was great to find the years meant nothing.  We were still just as close as we'd been discovering the newest "Who" album together, sitting on his bed at 3 in the afternoon.  We never "dated."  We went to some things together when neither one of us had "a date."  We loved each other in a way that supported us both through all those difficult teen-age years.  I lost touch with him as we went off to separate universities and separate lives.

He is married now, with a daughter.  (How lovely!)  He is happy and very successful.  He is a journalist and broadcaster in a very large market.  I recently commented (yes, on facebook) that I was continually amazed by him.  He wrote me a private letter back thanking me for the compliment and asked what I was doing.  I told him I was going to South Africa and how I'd never been that far away from home.  I (jokingly) asked him to go with me.

He replied, "I would have, in 1972..."

I smiled.  I smiled a sad little smile.  I'd no idea!  I was too stupid to see the love in front of me.  He was too smart to risk spoiling the wonderful relationship we had.

We have lived our lives apart, marrying and having children (or in my case, nieces and nephews);  both happy with our choices.

I wonder, if I'd known, what I would have done.