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I know I am quite knowledgeable about the world of physics.
More so than the average American or the average human, if I had to guess.
And still I can’t for the life of me explain why I still remember everything about the moment I fell in love with her – except for the specific date.
Strangely I had known her before. And I mean the first before and after she brought into my life, even if it was hardly the last one.
How could I not have known her – she was my baby sister’s best friend after all. A friendship forged basically in diapers and with dolls in hand. I knew of her certainly. My annoying little sister had made sure of it with her incessant talk about “Mia this and Mia that”. Still, it took me quite by surprise to find myself irrevocably in love with her even at such a young age.
My parents, Lilly and I had gone skating, because physical exercise was deemed good for a young boy like myself and because I chose ice- hockey, it was decided that we should go skating. After all, if I wanted to play hockey like the Mighty Ducks I had seen on TV in the small hours of Saturday morning, I had to learn the basics of skating and ice-skating first. So, skating it was.
And because we couldn’t leave my little pest of a sister at home – she had a knack of finding ways out of the apartment and into trouble even at the tender age of 7 – we made a family outing of it. Believe you me, my sister was NOT happy about being made to go to the park for something she wasn’t particularly found of or good at. And that is why SHE came along. Lilly’s best friend – Amelia.
With her long limbs in constant disarray she reminded me of a baby woodland creature. Graceful, yes, but without the sure usage of her limbs, the effort of her battle against the skates and gravity a strain on her tiny features. She paid dearly for it, falling to her knees, hitting her hands into the dirt and scraping her knees.
Still, for every time she fell she got up again. Her tiny brows set in a straight line, ready to take on the task and beat it into the ground. Her determination shone brightly from her showing the world at large just what she thought of it holding her down.
And so she got up again and again.
Every time with her shoulders tense, brows furrowed, lips pressed into a straight line.
The sun illuminated her in the late afternoon sun. Even after all these years it is still one of my fondest memories of her. The glow behind her tiny form giving her an ethereal shine, the look in her eyes not yet marred by the world and her big will to handle any challenge the world could throw at her and she would not stay down.
I hadn’t known it then, thankfully, that she would become my obsession for a long, long time.
Even I didn’t notice at first. But she had a way to crawl into my brain at the most inopportune moments: when I was sitting in my room, reading a book about the fast dark chasm that is space; when I was alone in bed at night; when she was going off to school with Lilly, her mouth going a mile a minute;when the first boys and girls on the playground and school had their first “relationships” – it was always her face, her eyes, her laughter, her lips that my mind went to.
The stories my sister told, having her here at the apartment nearly every weekend and the way her smell seemed to linger long after she had left certainly didn’t help, either.
And yet, it still took me some time and many years of growing up to admit it even to myself.
I was in love with Mia Thermopolis.
She saw me as nothing more than her best friends’ older brother.
I was fucked.