The story I told Jake, my eighteen-year-old son, that sultry summer day wasn't actually the story of how I lost my virginity. It was the story of the meandering events that led up his mother and I having sex for the first time. The following is the story of how I gave my virginity away, and it is the story I told Pam as we sat in my car watching the sun set brilliantly on the day we had first made love. It was important to me that Pam understood the reality of what had happened to allay any jealousy or pain.
Pam meant everything in the world to me at that moment and even though we were both just eighteen-years-old, I was certain she was the one. So, it was vital to me that she understood how and why I wasn't a virgin for our first time together.
So, I explained it to her.
My mother and father loved each other very much. I have memories of us as a family, blurry memories given my age, but all those memories are happy ones of us together. When I search my brain for a picture of my parents, in my mind it is always sunny, they are always smiling and I always feel loved and safe. As I've stated before, my mother denied and delayed her grief for my dad when he died until it became too much for her. I've also pointed out that I carried misplaced guilt that I was to blame as Mom spent all her energy trying to protect and love me after his death.
My mother had a breakdown on my thirteenth birthday. It started when I blew out the candles on my cake.
It was Mom, my mom's sister Aunt Debbie, her husband, Uncle Dave, and I at home. Mom started crying, slowly at first. Then she went into a barely understandable rant about how unfair it was that I had to start my teenage years without a father. She wouldn't stop crying and eventually became unresponsive to our soothing. Thankfully, Aunt Debbie is a registered nurse and frankly, she is Aunt Debbie. She took charge. Right then and there, she helped Mom upstairs and into a hot shower. She undressed and dressed my mom putting her to bed with a glass of water and a couple pills that calmed the hysterical anxiety. Before it was even dark on my thirteenth birthday, Aunt Debbie sorted out the medical attention Mom needed starting the very next day.
While medical treatment was necessary, what was really needed was for Mom to take the time to deal with her loss properly. She entered a care facility for a few weeks. Mom worked as an office manager at a doctor's office so they totally understood. I stayed with Aunt Debbie and Uncle Dave. I was fortunate to have a family that loved me.
When Mom came home I could still see the pain and loss, but she looked more like my mom than she had in the past four years. The healing started but was nowhere near complete. She had still lost the love of her life which led her to be somewhat disconnected from the outside world simply focusing on a small sphere of work and family.
She lost interest in her appearance. She wasn't a bag-lady or anything, but she kept her gorgeous chestnut hair, usually so full, long and wavy, cut short for it to be less of a bother. Her clothes tended toward the plain and, quite frankly, frumpy. My mother has a very ample bosom and she used to wear clothes that accentuated her breasts, whereas since Dad died I could hardly tell she had a figure at all. It all looked mushed together; she looked boxy. It was probably more a function of the medication and her loss of appetite that she didn't put on a lot of weight because she was no longer exercising as far as I knew.
The next five years Mom spent fighting her depression to a stalemate. I tried to help her, but I was struggling through the last stages of puberty and then high school so I was my own mess.
A couple months before my eighteenth birthday, however, there was a change in Mom's behavior and mood. She was becoming unfocused and distant. While it didn't seem like the same uncontrollable anxiety she had suffered before, I didn't want another episode like my thirteenth birthday so I promptly called Aunt Debbie. When I explained my fears to her, my aunt's reaction was not what I expected. She said, everything was fine and not to worry. It was a natural side effect of some new medication my mother was taking.
I hung up unconvinced, but Aunt Debbie was the expert and she would never lie to me.
For the next month, nothing much changed. I was both a little relieved that Mom didn't get worse and a little anxious that her situation could deteriorate at any time. What actually happened was neither.
A month out from my birthday, I noticed Mom going to bed later, after me, when we had usually gone to bed around the same time, and I could hear her taking showers really late at night. Then, out of nowhere, Mom started exercising again. She joined a gym, and had me bring up her stationary bike to put in her room across from the television. Within just a few weeks, working out started to show results and Mom was once more becoming very shapely.
Mom's personality became more and more natural, not the stilted, forced pleasantries of the past. She wore nicer, brighter clothes. She became more open. She started conversations, and not just the rote, "How was your day, honey?" I also noticed Mom started sitting with her feet tucked under her like a school girl, especially after she began to slim down from the exercising and became more limber. It was cute, she looked years younger sitting like that while gently rocking back and forth.
I was starting to think that Aunt Debbie had been right and the side effects of the new meds were just temporary and wearing off.
Abruptly, though, just a week before my birthday, all the forward progress stopped. Mom reverted and checked out from life again. I immediately called Aunt Debbie.
"Don't worry, Pete. I know what's going on, and I'm pretty sure everything will be fine. We can talk about it when Uncle Dave and I come out to visit next weekend, birthday boy!" she said excitedly.
I hung up scratching my head. Aunt Debbie didn't seem concerned at all and here I was worried sick. What was I missing.
I didn't have much time to agonize about the situation as my Mom came home from work that day and announced my birthday gift was for us to take a vacation. She had saved up some money, and as it was my eighteenth birthday, I could choose where we went. I was floored. We hadn't taken any kind of vacation outside of visiting family since Dad had passed away.
Mom gave me some basic parameters around cost and such, but let me pick where to go. I thought about New York, California beaches and other such popular destinations, but I had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon so that was to be our destination. Mom crunched the numbers and made it work but we would have to drive. My birthday is in June, so there was no problem with me missing school or sports and Mom had vacation time so we scheduled to leave the Monday after my actual birthday which was the coming Friday.
Even with my unease about Mom, when my birthday finally came around I was psyched. Aunt Debbie and Uncle Dave made the trip over, which was nice and thoughtful of them. They showed up a little after noon on that Friday, and I opened the door to see my lovely, little aunt visibly bouncing up and down with excitement while her husband towered behind her.
Uncle Dave is the greatest man. He is a big, burly giant standing at about six-four with a deep booming voice. I would imagine he is very intimidating to others, but to me he was a great big softy. He had the corniest sense of humor, and he would laugh at anything even his own lame jokes. He was cool and had taught me so many things as a surrogate dad. He's the one that turned me into an amateur handyman and mechanic curious about how things worked.
Aunt Debbie is a five-foot-four ball of unbridled energy. The same dark chestnut hair of my mother, but Aunt Debbie had pale, hazel eyes whereas Mom's eyes where an ethereal deep blue. Aunt Deb stood about two inches shorter than her sister, but with roughly the same dimensions causing her ample bosom and backside to seem bigger and fuller.
The juxtaposition in the doorway of the diminutive dervish and the laid-back giant was always amusing.
"Peter! Happy Birthday!" Aunt Debbie gushed clasping my head pulling me down to her and covering my face in aunt kisses. She pulled back surveying me. "Look at you! My little Petey is all grown up and such a handsome young man! Today is going to be a very special day! Doesn't Pete look handsome and all grown up, Dave," she clapped her hands together seemingly more excited about my birthday than I was.
"You look great, kid," Uncle Dave rumbled ruffling my hair.
"Great to see you guys," I replied and ushered them into the house. "Thank you so much for coming. It's great to see you!" And, I meant every word. These two, wonderful people had helped me so much in my life, I would do anything for them.
