(From the Memory Vault)
Somewhere my love there will be songs to sing
Although the snow covers the hope of spring.
Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold
And there are dreams, all that your heart can hold.
Someday we’ll meet again, my love
Someday whenever the Spring breaks through…
“Lara’s Theme,
“
Maurice Jarre, Francis Paul Webster
The movie came out in 1965, I believe, but I didn’t see it until about 1967, in one of those ornate and plush, now defunct, downtown New Orleans movie theaters. It was The Saenger, if I recall correctly. It could have been Lowe’s. I’m not sure. I was a junior in high school, and it was the occasion of one of several ill-fated and ultimately, when I think about it, pathos-filled “dates” one is supposed to go on to be like everyone else, or at least to seem “normal” in those inner-turmoil-filled years between 15-18. If to no one else, then, I must have had to prove something to myself, but I don’t even remember if that was the reason.
The movie was “Doctor Zhivago,” based on the novel by Boris Pasternak, which was a huge bestseller. It was one of the romantic movies of the decade, a must-see, a sprawling drama of “love and passion” that took place in Russia during the Boshevik Revolution. It had everything big blockbuster movies of the Sixties were supposed to have: grand music scores, war, drama, and a powerful love story . And it was long — 3 hours and 13 minutes — not for short attention spans or restless, bored teenagers. But there I was, watching that particular interminable film on a “date,” for some unknown reason. What did I know?
I think of the movie whenever I hear “Lara’s Theme” (“Somewhere My Love”), the theme song of the movie. And it’s cropping up more frequently, so I find myself listening to it [Today, that would be on any number of my Pandora streaming music channels].
I think about it afterwards because it always takes me back to that huge, single-screen theater in the days of my youth, and I recall sadly, the girl, G, quiet, seemingly clueless, not too popular, not unpopular, a daughter of one of my parents’ country club and Saturday night suburban party friends, W_ and R_. I probably should have gone to a James Bond movie. All I can remember is wondering why I was there. How rigid and quiet she was. The melancholy scenes of a Russian winter, and the sad, moody music. It’s exquisitely torturous length. The woe-begotten agony of wondering what to do afterward.
Relief. I delivered her home to her parents, who were waiting up, of course. I felt nothing but intense anxiety, embarassment, and a bit of shame. What an awful pretense. What was I doing?
G__ was nice. But I hardly knew her, and don’t think I cared to. It’s not like I ever did that much socially, or date-wise. I rarely even went to movies. I didn’t have a group to hang around with. I stayed home mostly, even on Saturday nights when my house was filled with Sixties suburban adult friends of my parents, eating, drinking, shouting and singing Frank Sinatra songs, and bopping rather hilariously to the swing music of Benny Goodman’s orchestra.
There was no escape from the party. Hour after hour. Oh, and did I mention my dad would be playing the drums? He was quite good at that and remembered the words to every song he ever heard.
This long-remembered, painful movie date, and nothing else, happened on more than a few occasions during my rather atypical suburban youth. I was in kind of a perpetual holding pattern. Waiting for something to happen, some perfect friend to come along, some infatuation or special person. We’re all bored to some extent at that age. We want excitement.
It was very, very hard to be truthful to yourself in those days. I think most everyone wore masks of some sort. And when a special person, A___, did come along in my senior year, it was, again, wrong, wrong, wrong. And, as I was the “knight in shining armor,” — thin, tall, bordering on gangly, but, as she used to kid me, “tall, dark and handsome” — how could I not believe it or feel flattered? After all, this was the most intelligent and cooly cerebral person in my entire senior class of 400 plus. She was part of the inner, elite circle of the intelligentsia, and I was out on the perimeter of that rarified club. Smart and in all the college prep classes, but not of her caliber, I thought. But she apparently thought so. I was in awe of the mind, and then of the personality, and that was it. Awe, not love or even infatuation or any other kind of attraction. I loved the way she talked and wrote and used the English language. Intellectual, smart things.
Hiding behind a carefully and skillfully crafted personna, had I the guts to rip off the mask then and be honest, searingly honest? No, because it never occurred to me. And, fear and conformity made risk-taking much too difficult. Then and now. And hazardous. Back then being different could get you seriously hurt or worse.
A sad end came to that relationship with A__, which I think about with regret and not a small amount of self-loathing all these many years later.
G___, I heard recently, was divorced and living alone. No children.
As for A___, I have no idea what happened to her. I feel rather certain she is an English professor somewhere, married to another professor. I have a long, beautifully worded note from her in my senior yearbook, on which we served as departmental editors. I have letters from her in a steel box with other keepsakes from decades ago. Not long ago, I thought about tearing them up and throwing them away. But for some reason I hold on to them. It’s a part of my past I want to forget in many ways, but which I can’t. No one could forget such a person. And so, tangible reminders are preserved faithfully, even if never looked at.
[Update: A__ contacted me out of the blue in 2016 when I was living at my mother’s taking care of her as she declined from dementia and severe diabetes. We ended up corresponding for several years, and it was quite enjoyable and fulfilling. This was all by actual paper letter, no texting or emails, and we never talked on the phone. Her life turned out nothing remotely like I would have guessed. Our correspondence ended abruptly when she wrote me they she had fallen in love with an ex-Marine who was 80. She was 70].
Life goes on. Life is lived. Incompletely. Regretfully sometimes, wistfully, knowingly through the good times and the bad. Wiser in some ways, but in other ways, locked in time and personal struggles that never end.
“Somewhere my love, there will be songs to sing..”
(Written in July 2, 2002; updated on December 6, 2025)
Loading comments...