It hurts no matter what the era

Should I tell them about the boys who broke my heart?

My children, I mean. My grandchildren. My great grandchildren not yet born.

When they’re young teens experiencing the first flush of love and heartbreak, will they want to know how breaking up or unrequited love felt in their grandmother’s (or great grandmother’s or great-great grandmother’s) day?

Will it help them to know that heartbreak is heartbreak, that it’s universal, that it’s a natural part of loving someone else so much you could burst?

I was in Grade 10, attending a Catholic girls’ school in Toronto. He went to one of the Catholic boys’ schools. His father knew my father. They were both writers, but his father was famous.

I was crazy about him.

We were both participants in a series of high school musicals put on by his school. I could sing in those days. And act, too, but he was brilliant at it and often got the lead role. I was awestruck.

He asked me to The Formal. In those days a formal was not called a prom (or just “Prom”) as it is now. It was either a Formal or a Semi Formal. Formal meant a long dress with long white gloves above your elbows; Semi Formal meant a dress that touched just below your knees. You wore short gloves with that dress, like the kind you’d wear to church (yes, we really did).

There were Formals and Semi Formals every year, sometimes several, depending on the number of schools hosting them. A girl would wait by the phone for the boy she liked to ask her to go with him. It was excruciating. We (girls) could think of, talk about, nothing else.

My cousins and I would exchange dresses. One Formal or Semi Formal dress would make the rounds among us at different times for different dances. Our mothers might change a detail or two about the dress or have it altered as needed. No one knew it was the same dress.

One of my cousins, Rosie, and I would talk about the Formals and Semi Formals at great length. We’d whisper together at our extended-family cottage in Muskoka when we were supposed to be asleep.

Rosie, who was 18 months older and therefore a wise guru of boys and dances, would tell me all about it: how the boy would ask you to the dance, how you’d act as though you might or might not be interested; and finally how, with a sigh, you’d accept ‒ not ever revealing your delight and delicious anxiety.

He’d bring a corsage when he came to pick you up. Your parents would take pictures. You’d dance the night away and then afterwards go to a series of “breakfast parties” hosted by parents. You’d get home at dawn.

And then one night he’d be saying goodbye to you on your front porch, and he’d tell you he liked someone else. And that would be the end of it.

You’d crawl into your parents’ bed like a little child, sobbing your heart out. Your mother would hug you. Your dad would say the boy was no good anyway (an obvious lie because he really liked him).

The emotions were just as high, just as fraught, just as overwhelming, as they are today and will be forever more, I expect.

I want to share this with my descendants, the children of the future I don’t know and probably never will. It could be my connection with them long after I’m gone. I want to tell them it will be okay.

Even though I don’t know them, I love them with all my heart. I hope someday they will know that.

Perhaps they will through my stories.