For David

I was pretty messed up in high school  There were several reasons for this.  I was one to two years younger than almost everyone else, having skipped 2 grades (this was before AP, IB, or even enriched classes were readily available).  I had also lost my mother when I was 11 and in grade 7, and my father was definitely not equipped to raise kids on his own, let alone a couple of girls.  My sister tried to be there for me, but she was a teenager and the year I started high school, she started university and she ended up living away from home.  I didn't have a lot of friends--mainly one from whom I was inseparable (and I am proud to say she remains a friend all these years later), but we were too dependent upon each other so even that relationship wasn't always the best for either of us.  I was definitely emotionally immature, feeling lost and loss on an incredibly deep level.

I don't remember how I met David.  It might have been through the one school activity most kids got involved with.  Maybe he was in one of my classes.  I have no memory of meeting him or starting our friendship, or even what year of high school it was.  But when I think of high school, there is Niki and there is David.

We were never romantically involved.  Instead, we called each other brother and sister.  We would write each other letters--epistles really as they could go on for 8, 9, 10 or more pages.  And in those letters we would sort out things that had no other place to be expressed.  He taught me a lot--showed me things from the viewpoint of a teenage boy who cared about me and wanted to protect me from other teenage boys.  And he always called bullshit when I needed to hear it most.  He gave me a safe place to try to figure things out, and even though that didn't happen in high school, he brought me a step closer to it.

Rarely would we do things in person--an annual winter walk on the beach, a very occasional excursion to something special one of us knew the other would enjoy, a semi-annual visit to each other's home.  And I don't remember talking on the phone either.  We wrote.  And wrote.  And wrote.

The last time I saw him was spring of our freshman year in university.  He was home on break from somewhere upstate and he stopped by.  We had both changed--we both had significant others in our lives and first love blocks out almost everything else.  We lost touch...

But I think it is because of David that I am most comfortable sorting things out by writing.  I fell in love with words and that actually determined much of my future.  And despite the prevalence and ease and immediacy of email, there is definitely something very sad to me about the decline of sending and receiving letters.  I miss the anticipation of expecting one to arrive--the hope that maybe  there will be a letter TODAY.  I miss the quiet of ordering my thoughts and feelings and having unlimited empty space to fill.  Just as with books, there is something wonderful about holding written words on paper in my hands.

The internet has been a blessing in terms of being able to find people who have gone astray along the way.  I have been lucky enough to find several important people from my past and keep them in my life, however casually.  But there have been 2 people that remain elusive.  One is the university professor who mentored me.  The other is David.  And this time of year I find myself thinking of him, as it will be his birthday on 27 December. 

So happy birthday David Howard Levine.  I hope you are well and happy somewhere.  I hope one day I find where that somewhere is, so that I can tell you how well it all turned out and  to say thank you.