It Was Never

I suppose it was a competition, but neither one of us have ever viewed it that way.

Because the day we met, she was already 6 and I was only 5. Instinctively, I knew she should go first.

So she did do that. She graduated first from 8th Grade and won the Christian Doctrine Award.

I followed her down the Aisle the following June, but the Award went to someone else, and my Father never understood why. The $25 I was awarded for an essay didn’t seem as important to him as her achievement.

In September I followed her on the bus to Cathedral High School, and listened attentively when she taught me where to go and how to meet boys. Even though I carefully followed her advice, she was the one who had the first date.

I never asked her about the first kiss, but I’m sure she had that, too.

After graduation she went on to find the first “job.” The word career had not yet been mentioned to young women living in Hells Kitchen, but it was a word we both discovered later in life and embraced.

Then for some miraculous reason I met my Prince Arthur and fell in love first. We married before her hero appeared on the scene. Her Prince Arthur arrived within the next few years, but by then we had already had been blessed with the first daughter. Their first princess entered our world three years later.

Once again as the years sped by, she not only kept pace but strode ahead. Her family grew to five; while ours remained at four.

Beyond that while caring for her clan, she returned to school and earned a college degree. My years of education had ended without that achievement.

Still we weren’t keeping count.

Until maybe the year, I, once again went first; falling into the abyss of widowhood.

She and her Prince Arthur were blessed with another five years of marriage, and I felt her pain the night I learned theirs had ended.

Now sometimes in the dark of night I wonder again, which one of us will go first. Perhaps she does too, but we both know it doesn’t matter, because the other one will be lonely.