In 1955-56 I was in my early 20s and still living with my parents in Chicago. Already at an age where I should have been striking out on my own, I was trapped in the emotional bind of a Greek household where female independence was strongly discouraged. The only way out I was indoctrinated to believe was to be married, preferably to a suitable young man of Greek heritage, and perhaps even a professional.

However, by the time I was 21, I had been such a rebel that my folks would have been grateful if anyone at all would marry me and make an honest woman of me.

Before I gathered my emotional strength and my wits and moved to New York to be on my own, I became acquainted with a young Iraqi student of electronics when he came to our flat to fix our TV set. We struck up a friendship and started going out. He was very appealing, charismatic even, spoke English with a British accent, and was a Christian. John was very active, very physically strong, and very decent. He was sorrowful when I decided to leave Chicago. I had not been “in love” so I was able to make the decision to leave. On his part, he did not make the moves that might have swayed my feelings for him. But all along, I knew I was looking for someone whose cultural background was more compatible with my literary and musical interests and, of course, the ethnic attitudes of his upbringing always lurked in the background, suggesting a one-sided emotional dominance that I knew I would not tolerate. None of this was articulated. It was just something a part of me knew.

At one point early on, after I had moved to New York and met and married Jay, John sent us a Christmas card. On the card was a photo of his family, a wife and three children. The children were old enough that he had to have been married and a father when I was seeing him. He blandly sent the card, "coming out" so to speak and offered no apology or explanation. Ifound myself wondering if another reason I had held back was sensing I did not have all of his attention. He had been living a bachelor life in Chicago and saving his money to import his wife and family. In the holiday card I sent in response, I wrote (tongue in cheek), “My goodness – where did you all come from?”

Fast forward 50 years and I have been widowed and remarried and living in Florida. I have this habit of reviewing my past. I actually never let anything go, although I do not let it stop me from moving on when I have to. I thought of John and looked him up on the internet. I found his brother, easier to pinpoint since he had an unusual first name. I wrote to the brother in California and he passed my letter on to John. John phoned me just as Hurricane Charley was hitting my island. We managed a brief conversation before the phones (and the lights and the a/c and the water) died.

John was truly delighted to hear from me, to know I remembered him and to have taken the trouble to find him. He was bowled over. For both of us, we were again 23 and 26 and hadn’t changed a bit.

John had been a widower about a year and was having a difficult time in mourning. He did say he wasn’t lacking for female company although he did not plan to ever marry again. He told me a good deal about his life over the past decades. He has done well financially as have his children. He has had tragedy in his life, losing a son to drugs. He is also devastated over the loss of his wife, his dear long-suffering wife who bore up over the years knowing he was having affairs.

I invited him to visit Ed and me, but he has a serious heart condition. Dear John, stronger than anyone, has now trouble breathing. I spoke to him again a day ago. He is in a wheelchair and has recently been released from a month in the hospital on life support. I find it hard to think of him in a state of compromise. I fear one day I will call and find his phone disconnected. I don’t think his brother will bother to fill me in. I am one of the women from John’s past and I sense some disapproval of my reappearance in John’s life. I should be grateful the brother gave him my letter.

But talking about the 50s in Chicago, the dinners. and the acquaintances we shared, the walks and the concerts, and the philosophical discussions was a rare chance to revisit another time, another me. I was, he said, fiercely independent and that always intrigued him, so unlike the women he knew in Iraq.

xx, Teal