Ultimate Elf

She was not yet fifteen….less than half my years then. Quite more than a moppet, but clearly not near her coming of age, she was accompanied by her mother, a chaperone who seemed to know that no short leash was possible though she radiated something indomitable in her glance at her vivacious child.  The woman's face was a somehow familiar one: dark, lines and wrinkles with a slim regality to her tall figure, Sephardic features, yet perhaps Gallic and with intense, intelligent eyes, the bags under them more than hinting of pain and loneliness.  As our first day of drama classes were about to commence, I was focused only on my goals: to acquire rudimentary skills and hopefully more in the "art that conceals itself" as our acting coach would repeat often and with avuncular earnestness. I also wanted to have fun.  Determination to do all this was arguably of a kind similar to the "Dutch courage" many of us employ when timidity immobilizes pursuit of a dream.  But friendship and the mutually supportive system that naturally grows from such a bond was the liberating "alcohol" in this case that freed up one's inhibition.  My friend Peter had aspired to perform before an audience for many years, and like me he had never made "the move." Now we both had and it was exciting to even have gotten to just this point of trying something new.

The little one's chattering and fidgeting allowed my shyness to recede and my very fledgling self-confidence to survey the landscape with the default position of an imagined dignified silence and supposed maturity that was re-enforced by as it easily contrasted with this teen's molten energy and impish impulses.  But I could see, perhaps not yet consciously, that her time was fast approaching. Her passing childishness would be but a stepping stone to so many more kaleidoscopic changes that her precocious and bold ways presaged. She would leave us behind in the dust of the road that we, well most of us, had already chosen or that fate had assigned to us: safe, minimally creative and never quite mastering our fears. She, instead, would "make it."

I preferred the comfort of a quite transitory dominance that dismissively and superficially mused "she's just a kid." My manners, though perhaps mannered, suited me fine until one day she revealed who was the mistress and who was the servant.  Whether she was attracted to me or whether she was chiefly irritated about being ignored, this particular evening's class' conclusion featured a swift kick to my leg as I passed her enroute to the exit door.  Though I didn't know it immediately, I was now hopelessly smitten by this Lolita-like charmer with the short dark bob and twinkling almond shaped peepers who had all the hopefulness within her being of a tiny bird of paradise chirping to quit its nest, the azure sky beckoning to her throbbing little heart.

The course was of eighteen months duration and before one year had elapsed she was on to other things and the only and occasional pupil of her family was now the mother. We heard reports that she was pursuing other projects including her singing in a band somewhere in the punk rock scene of that era. I had been invited to a fifteenth birthday party for her at her apartment before her departure and my crush on this pixie took the form of moodily staring at the child's headshot while more age appropriate friends wondered who this strange fellow was. Poems and a love letter were soon after written and happily (or not) never delivered.  A vacation to Canada during the occasion of her sixteenth birthday found me still lovesick. In Toronto, at the typical tourist stop at the top level of the Canadian National Exhibition's famed tower, I lingered to have a merchant at the concession for "permanent" metallic messages (many enshrined on the tower's inner walls) inscribe one thusly: "Rus Without Ultimate Elf." A bouquet of flowers to her on another occasion from a "Secret Admirer" was the culmination of this hopeless and pointless state of affairs.

The years rolled on. My predicted success for her came to pass and a latter day encounter in cyberspace confirmed two hopes: that the "sugar 'n spice and everything nice" child-woman would grow up to be as sweet and sassy a good hearted woman and that "someday some boy would write in her (daughter's) autograph album/book too: 'Roses Are Red My Love, Violets Are Blue, Sugar Is Sweet my Love, Good Luck, May God Bless You.'"