It seems to me that a dangerous deed, as opposed to a situation, is one that you walk into voluntarily, that you have the option of skipping. It is self-imposed. I’ve done that a few times, mostly when I was diving onto shipwrecks, but being young and cocky, I didn’t think of these as dangerous. I can only think of one time that I deliberately did something avoidable that really scared me, although the danger was primarily emotional.

Early in the relationship, back when we were both freshman college students, back in New Jersey, my First Love’s parents decided, for various reasons, to hate me. Virulently.

Early in the relationship, back when we were both freshman college students, back in New Jersey, my First Love’s parents decided, for various reasons, to hate me. Virulently. They threatened to pull their financial support for her education if she continued to see me.

So we broke up, but the pull was strong and that didn’t last long. I was a resident but she lived at home. So, for nearly two years, we saw each other behind their backs. Stole minutes and kisses when we could. Walked the campus between classes, telling each other that it would be different soon, someday. In retrospect it was not the best way we could have handled it, but for whatever reasons, it was what we did.

Finally in the fall of 1976, we decided that we could not stand to spend another Holidays apart. We would confront her parents, come out of our personal closet.

One night in mid-November of 1976, I drove up to her home in Bergen County, NJ. I was terrified to the point of nausea. So much bad could happen. There could be violence; her family had threatened it before, and I’d likely be outnumbered…there was no telling who they might have invited to this little affair. There would certainly be anger and shouting. For conflict-averse me, it was a nightmare of anticipation that grew worse with every mile I covered on my way north.

It was, indeed, unpleasant. There was anger. There were accusations. There was shouting and tears. I even told one huge lie to attempt to placate her parents to some extent. But in the end, we prevailed. They would, grudgingly, with no grace whatsoever, accept my presence in their daughter’s life.

We spent that Thanksgiving with my family. On Christmas night in 1976, I drove up to see her. The atmosphere in the house was tense and unfriendly, so eventually we went for a long walk.

I remember little of that long ago night. It was cold. It wasn’t snowing but there was a bit of snow on the sidewalks and front yards, clinging to the bare trees and frosting the parked cars. We walked the empty suburban streets of her neighborhood, holding hands, stopping to kiss, delighting in the sensation of merely being together, of feeling young and free and in love. I do remember the way that the dim, widely-spaced streetlights cast our long shadows on ahead of us, elongated and distorted against the whiteness of the snow. I remember that the headlamps of passing vehicles made diamond glints in the piles of white left by plows and shovels. I remember how the Christmas lights blinked in windows and on porches as we passed, and I remember that, for just a little while, we were so very happy.

Before Spring arrived we were done forever.