Evelyn At Home

on a Happy Day

She was my sweetie pie, then, and I loved her madly. But she never believed in my love, even to this day, and I had my doubts of her sincerity and commitment. Oh, how frivolous is young love. She had good cause  for her doubts. I was unsteady at the stern. Oh, how brief is love  when the fires burn fiercely! The  anguish and the pain lovers  cause  each other. Four short years marriage &  then  divorce. She was  singular in her love. Decades of  memories. What could have been.

Evelyn Getting Her Lunch

on York Road

She was then Executive Secretary for Fred Punch, then the president of Local 1199, Health Care Workers Union. I was an organizer for the same union. We had the same boss. I quit and she continued her work there.

I left what I felt was union corruption. Later she became an organizer for AFSCME. She made union work a career and moved up the union ladder.

She is not quite as luscious as she was then. But what woman retains the bloom of youth after three decades? What man holds onto his wanderlust and hunger or his anger or his jealousy or his feelings of inadequacy?

I could not get enough of her. Yet I knew I could not hold on to her and sadly I abandoned her. The happiness she desired and needed was just not in me. So I removed myself from the equation. I took another road but I could never forget her.

Evelyn Ever in Love with Rudy

I was never the man she loved, though I wanted her and to be that man. But I knew I could never live up to such an ideal.

She is a grandmother now, twice over. Happily married, as marriages go. I remain alone, childless.

She is ready to retire in Florida or Trinidad. My struggles continue unto death.

I never believed in happiness. My blues continues, though she still holds onto my collection of records.