Leaving David
a little note to add to my story “remembering”
You should first read “Remembering” and “If I had Only…”
In the fourth paragraph of my story remembering I refer to a bus ride I took leaving New Jersey, traveling to New York City to begin my studies at New York University. It was the first time I had been seperated from David in almost a decade. I was bereft at our parting.
I’ll never forget my sixteenth birthday. It was before we were going off to University. I started college very young, and he started older because of the lost time he suffered under Nazi occupation. He gave me my birthday gift, and asked me to open it when I would be traveling to New York University to start classes. On the bus I opened the small box. He had spent all the money he probably earned to buy me my gift, a solid gold French Le Coultre watch. On its back he had engraved, “Time. That’s All I Have.” With his initials. It was his message to me. He loved me as I loved him… but it was not the right time. We were so young. I put the watch on my wrist and, for many years, never took it off. No one ever told me you were not supposed to fall in love at sixteen.
On my very anxious ride to New York City to start a new life at sixteen, without David who had always been my anchor, I could think of doing nothing…
