First Love, True Love
What follows is a short speech I gave at my the party celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary. The picture embiggens if clicked.
As you know, Trina and I celebrate our 25th anniversary with you here today. As we prepared for today’s festivities, I had cause to reflect on life and love. Trina is certainly the love of my life, but she was not my first love. I saw my first love in a movie theater way back in 1977. We didn’t get a chance to speak, although I would later imagine what we would have talked about. I still smile when I remember her, this first love of mine.
And she still impresses me, a bit more than 40 years later. Of course, she was beautiful. But, more importantly, she was brave. She was forthright. She was committed to making the world a better in place, but not in some grandiose way. She was no utopian dreamer. Instead, she was practical. She saw a problem, and she did not hesitate to be the one to stand up say, “This is wrong. I’ll fix it.”
There are many reasons why my first love remained unrequited. First, I was 10. Also, her love belonged to another. For a long time, I couldn’t understand what she saw in him, this Bernard. He was a bumbler. He was a bit of a coward. He was kind of dull.
But, as I watched and learned, I saw that my first love’s love for that dull bumbler had an amazing effect. Her love for him made him a better person. He bumbled less. He acted with bravery and honor. His dullness transformed into a sharpness of character.
Part of me still loves my first love. Part of me will always love her. By now, you’re all wondering, who was this remarkable lady? Trina is wondering as well, because I forbade her to read this little speech.
So, I’ll tell you. My first love was none other than Miss Bianca, the Hungarian representative to the Rescue Aid Society, that remarkable organization of mice featured in Disney’s The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under.
At age 10, I was in love with a cartoon mouse. It was a relationship doomed before it could ever start. But don’t be sad. I found my Miss Bianca, and she is everything that cartoon mouse was and more.
The Church teaches us that marriage is a channel by which God’s grace works the lives of the family. How true this is. Without Trina playing Miss Bianca to my Bernard, voiced by the legendary Bob Newhart, I would not be the man I am today. I’m convinced that whatever man I might have been would be both a sad and a poor man.
