Summer of '68

          A warm night-time breeze filtered across my thirteen year old body. Roland and I rode our bicycles in awkward silence, side by side, as we headed towards the safety of the old mill pond. Cutting across the dirt trail behind the abandoned Thompson-Ford Lumber Company office, we found ourselves hidden behind the tall willowy grasses. The other kids would play for hours before they even missed us.

            The south-eastern Texas sky was brimming to over-flow with an abundance of stars.

            We stopped our bikes, parallel to each other, on the bank of the mill pond. Roland took my trembling face in his hands and turned it towards his. My lips quivered as he tilted his head to a slight angle in order to reach my lips. His fingers combed slowly through my long brown hair and then his shaking hands slipped gently to my bare shoulders as our lips met in my very first kiss. I stole a peek, from under my half-closed lashes, to see his reaction. A hot blush rose on my face and a dreamy cloud encompassed me as he murmured my name. His warm breath on my cheek made my blood roil through my veins as my heart beat a staccato rhythm against my chest. I closed my eyes, leaned into his virile fourteen year old body, and returned the kiss with ardor. His taste was exciting to me.

            The moon light reflected on the ancient pond’s still surface and all of heaven’s stars were visible there. A mirror image of the soft southern sky, left imprinted on my eager young memory, on a night by the old mill pond in mid-summer of 1968.