First crush

Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Walking down to the beach one sunny vacation day I watched Phoebe swing her arm around my husband's shoulder, double-stepping to keep up with his 6-foot frame. Phoebe is 10, the daughter of a very good friend of mine, and she has a crush on my husband. She is teasing him, trying to talk him into sharing his huge cinnamon roll with her, which he says he won't because it's his birthday.

When I was about Phoebe's age I had a crush on a man named Terry Hollar, who was the lifeguard at the swimming pool where I spent every daylight moment in the summer. He was married, though young, and I don't know who found him first -- me or my dad, but eventually my dad hired him as a furniture salesman. I also don't remember if he was particularly handsome or not, but he was sweet to me, and a man, and he took me seriously. He used to spend hours sitting by the side of the pool talking to me. With his finger looped through his whistle string, he'd twirl it back and forth, flipping the whistle from side to side. He would send me to the snack bar to get a drink for him, and I did it, even though the guys at the counter teased me for it. "They won't give you a hard time if you tell them it's for me. They know you're my girl."

Slice of life

Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:00:00 +0000

When I was growing up, we always spent a month of the
summer on the North Carolina coast, in a house my mother's parents
built the year she was born. It was an eight-hour drive from
our home in the western part of the state, and we would always arrive
famished, hot and sticky and cramped. Those first few moments of
release from the car were sweetest. We would race through the sea oats and grass down to the water's edge, picking up sand spurs as we
went. The Bogue Sound, with its familiar smells of rotting fish, salt and mud, was truly welcoming. Then we would race through the cottage -- its musty, closed-up smell gradually blown out by the sea breeze from all the
windows my mom was opening. Everything we touched that summer was sticky -- sticky
from the salty, dense air and from my mother's vacation from housekeeping.

Salon.com > Maurine Shores

First crush

Slice of life