Reflections of Connie: Memories of a Sundered Love

By Shawn Michel de Montaigne

Do you remember your first love? Do you remember how it made you feel, how it changed everything for you?

In this bitingly personal essay, Shawn Michel de Montaigne, author of the beloved epic fantasy Melody and the Pier to Forever, takes us back to 1972 and his fourth-grade year at Tavelli Elementary School in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the beautiful girl who would change his life forever.

Her name was Connie. And the love she and Shawn shared would bring into sharp, contrasting relief the serious, crippling dysfunction of his family, as well as the harsh realization, learned many years later, that what so many call love, what so many worship as love, what so many rape and murder and foul and destroy as love is anything but love. The Kingdom of God is a spacious land, wholly unpopulated. It's from that land and by the side of the angel that graced Shawn's life for nine short months that he looks out and forward upon the broader canvas of life. It is a unique viewpoint, made tragically more so by the fact that the angel—Connie—would not remember Shawn or their relationship after that year out of the need to protect the innocence that is the birthright of all children, and which was violated repeatedly by one of her own family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawn Michel de Montaigne
• Release date: Mar 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201578923

Shawn Michel de Montaigne

I'm a writer, illustrator, and fractalist. A wonderer, wanderer, and an unapologetic introvert. I'm a romantic; I'm inspired by the epic, the authentic, the numinous, and the luminous. Most of all, I'm blessed.

Book preview

The Cloud of Mystery~

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And they call it puppy love

Oh, I guess they’ll never know

How a young heart feels

And why I love her so

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In 1972 I wanted to be just like Donny Osmond. He was this very good-looking, popular, well-dressed young celebrity the girls screamed for. Connie really liked him, too. That made me very jealous, of course. Being but ten years old, I couldn’t understand or cope with such a strong emotion as jealousy. To that point I’d never really felt anything even remotely like it before. Here was this really pretty girl who didn’t seem to mind talking to me (unlike every other girl in my class, pretty or not); that fact by itself inspired all sorts of protectiveness inside me. The green monster reared its ugly head from the virgin depths of my childhood soul and roared; it roared louder still when Connie announced her undying love for Michael Jackson as well, who could not only sing well—really well—but could dance lights out, too. I took it personally: it was war between me and Donny and Michael for this pretty girl’s affection—and there was no way I could win.

Or maybe there was. After all, Donny and Michael were thousands of miles away, and were each surrounded by truckloads of fawning, sighing, screaming girls. I was right here, by Connie’s side. And while I had no illusions I was anywhere near as good-looking or interesting as Donny Osmond or Michael Jackson, I did for some reason merit her undivided attention almost every day of our fourth-grade year.

How I first got there, by her side, is a total mystery. I’m not saying I don’t remember: forty-nine years ago[1] I couldn’t have told you how it happened, either. The cloud of mystery surrounding our coming together has both plagued and pleased me in the vast span of time following: plagued for the obvious reason of wanting to recall everything about her and our short time together; pleased because, even today, as the brittle and cynical rationality of adulthood has made steady forays into my spirit, that mystery remains an untouchable one, a mystery that has by its very nature rejuvenated and renewed my soul. I cannot grow up with it present, as it will be with me the rest of my days. The brittleness and cynicism cannot claim me whole. The war was lost five decades ago.

~~*~~

Adults downplay young love because ... well, for many reasons, some of which I’ll touch on here. Puppy love they call it just before smiling in an Isn’t it sweet? manner to their same-aged friends while the young smitten ones looks on, not understanding. As I did. As I’m sure Connie did. When you’re but ten years old, adults thoroughly elude you: their behavior, their mannerisms, their flighty, unpredictable, sometimes terrifying extremes.

Puppy love. I was directed by the many adults in my life at the time to minimize my feelings because, after all, I was only ten years old and ten-year-old boys couldn’t possibly have a clue as to what real love is. I was warned many times and in many ways: Don’t take it so seriously, Shawn, violating everything I felt inside. Everything I feel now. Nothing’s changed. They were wrong; I was, and still am, right.

In the decades following I have learned that very few adults themselves know what genuine love is, for it requires the truest, most steadfast, most daring courage possible in this universe—and they don’t have it. Knowing this, it becomes trivially obvious why young love is minimized with the label puppy love, and why all love worthy of being called such is, ultimately, fled from.

~~*~~

She wore a brown long coat with a belt she’d cinch up during blustery autumn or winter days. The coat came with deep pockets, one to a side, into which she’d stuff her mittened hands. On her head was a cute red ski cap with fluffy white button; she’d pull the cap down over her ears and give me a playful smile and I’d totally forget that I was immersed in biting cold and swirling snow. For Connie’s smile was the brightest, the most endearing one I’d ever seen.

Where do you want to go? she asked brightly as we met one frozen day just outside her homeroom door. I’d hurried there to catch her, afraid if I didn’t she’d troop off with friends, as she did on rare occasion. But here she was, waiting for me. She caught me gaping at her and smiled even more sweetly. Well?

Want to go on the swings? I suggested meekly, hoping it would meet with her approval. But she shook her head.

Nah, she said, it’s too cold. Let’s just walk around.

Okay.

And so we walked around the playground, kids flying all around us, yelling and screaming and laughing, Connie with her long brown coat on and her mittened hands stuffed warmly into the side pockets, me sporting my inadequate down coat and my freckled nose bright red from the chill.

My nose was an embarrassment. In any temperature less than 50 degrees it’d get red and stay that way for hours. Not my cheeks, not my forehead, not even my chin. Those would stay a perfectly normal whitish-pink, suitable for kissing. But my nose? Classic Irish drunk.

You’re at least partially Irish, Mom told me after one particularly frigid day. "The proof is right ... here." She playfully poked my nose.

My adoption papers made very little mention of my heritage. I’d take the occasional look at them: SCOTCH-IRISH was the only information available. There wasn’t more to go on. Many years later, after meeting my birth mother, I received almost no additional information.

I don’t know, she snarled, which she often did. I think my side is mainly English. I don’t know what your father was. I never asked him.

She never asked him because (as it came reluctantly to light) I was the result of her one-night stand with him, and they didn’t get around to sharing family backgrounds. From her general description of him—tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes—I’d go more for the Teutonic end of the gene pool. But who knows? It’s certain I never will: my birth mother remembered nothing beyond his name—Bob Meyers—and (of course) his physical attributes.

Bob Meyers, my biological father, doesn’t even know I’m alive.[2]

Was one of dear ol’ Dad’s attributes Irish drunk nose? Did his nose get all red and silly the night he and my mother conceived me that night up Boulder Canyon in the spring of 1961? I asked.

What a silly question, she said, grimacing. Why would I remember a thing like that?

Indeed.

She never told me if she herself ever suffered from Irish drunk nose.[3]

~~*~~

It’s those recess walks I remember most about Connie. It was the closeness of her. She’d not walk far away, but would meander happily right next to me, her shoulder occasionally brushing my arm.

She smiled a lot. It was a full smile, offered without evasion or intent to manipulate, but nonetheless struck with a deep sadness, which only endeared her to me more. She was human, that sadness told me; were I unable to detect anything but pure angelic joy inside her she’d have been unapproachable and unreachable. But there was something behind her brown eyes that brought her spirit low enough that I could reach up to it in fellowship and love, which I did.

Let’s sit, she suggested, and we made our way to a low brick wall which enclosed a large square sandbox full of playing kids. Mom’s[4] etiquette lessons kicked in then: Never sit until the lady has been seated. So I’d wait until Connie was comfortably seated before taking my place next to her. I gave her plenty of room to move around: there was at least a good foot of space between us.

Connie scooched closer, until our thighs barely touched. She always did. She never looked at me as she did so, but out, innocently, at the other kids playing and running around.

What was I to make of this—I, a ten-year-old boy? Something was awakening inside me, and I felt confused and elated. I wanted to hold her hand. I wanted to kiss her.

Holding hands? Kissing? I’d never wanted to do such things with a girl before. Girls were grody. Girls were uck. Girls were good for things like taking a half-inflated basketball minding its own business in the tall, unmown grass in our back yard and launching it full force in a surprise attack upon my younger sister, who was riding far too gleefully around on her new Schwinn bike with sparkly-pink banana seat. As I recall, my aim was glorious: the basketball slammed into her shoulder, spilling her sideways off the bike into an area of the yard rife with land mines.[5] That’s what you did with girls.

Holding hands? Kissing? I had no idea how to go about doing either. Surely one didn’t just reach out and grab that enticing mittened hand as it rested serenely on her thigh, surely! There had to be some elaborate grown-up ritual to go with it. And kissing—it was so far beyond my comprehension as to how to go about getting that going that puckering up seemed no less complex than launching an Apollo rocket to the moon! Surely there were procedures to be followed, checks to be done:

Kisser 1, this is Houston.

Roger, Houston, this is Kisser 1.

Kisser 1, check your coolant systems. They a ‘go’?

Coolant systems are reading ‘strained,’ Houston.

Roger that, Kisser 1. We’re showing the same. Primary independent puckering manifolds?

Uh ...

We’re reading ‘frozen,’ Kisser 1.

"Roger that, Houston. Attempting to override vocal programming—it keeps blathering total gibberish. I’m now manually maneuvering the left quintuple grip assemblage closer to