And Then There Was Nick

As my three years in junior high school came to an end, I had for the first time a feeling of value and self-worth. That's what having a boyfriend did for me. He didn't care that I didn't wear Joyce shoes and Jantzen sweaters. He didn't care whether or not I was a good student (actually I was...almost a straight A). He didn't care that I lived in a rather modest home. He didn't care that I wasn't popular. He didn't even care that I still had trouble with skin allergies. He just liked me for who I was. And he actually thought I was pretty. That was the shocker. I always considered Claire the pretty one, and that I could never measure up to her. I had never had much self esteem up until now because my Dad was always quick to point out all my faults and never seemed to do the same with my strengths. I remember thinking that I never could do anything right or good enough. Don't get me wrong. He was a great dad, and I feel he honestly believed he was helping us to be better children by pointing out our weaknesses. That is needed, but there also needs to be positive feedback to help children with self-esteem. Children need to be "caught" doing something right and then told about it. Back then there just weren't the parenting and child psychology books and classes available, not that my dad would have read or taken them anyway. Now for the first time someone was making me feel good about myself other than my dog, Jiggers. My dad had kept his promise to get me a dog once we moved into our new house. We had to give up most of our animals when we sold our old house and Dad knew how much I loved those animals. Jiggers, a black and white,curly haired Australian Shepherd mix, loved me unconditionally and had been my best friend before Jim came along.

I graduated from Olympus in a pink organdy eyelet dress made by my mother. She even made me a pretty lace and ribbon-trimmed slip to go under it because you can see through organdy. I don't remember graduation being a big, deal. My parents attended the daytime ceremony, but that was the end of the celebration, and I was fine with that. I don't think graduation from junior high school was that important to anyone back then. We were more excited about just being out of school for the summer and not having to go back to the same old school in the fall.

That summer was very eventful for me. First of all I was earning enough money baby sitting and doing some "gathering" work (collating sets of duplicate and triplicate printed material which my dad brought home from work and for which he paid us $.50 an hour) to take cello lessons from the first cellist in the Utah Symphony. He was an older single man who lived on the northwest part of town. Since we lived on the southeast part of town, it was a long bus ride requiring several transfers to get to his home. It was difficult because I was carrying a large awkward instrument on and off those buses. But I felt it was worth it.

The biggest event of the summer for me was when Nico Snel (Nick) and his family moved in temporarily with the Mes family across the street. They had just moved to the U.S. from The Netherlands, and since the Mes's had been their sponsors to come to the states, they housed them until they could find a home and move to their final destination in Walnut Creek, Cal. Nick was fifteen and the oldest of three children. He was tall with dark, wavy hair, and played the violin very well. Because my father was Dutch, served a mission in Holland, and loved to speak the language, we immediately made friends with this family. We had them over for dinner and although the adults could speak English, most of the conversation at the table was in Dutch. Being bored, Nick and I would go into the living room and have our own conversation. He began showing an interest in me and my emerging ego got the best of me. I was flattered to think that now two young men really liked me. I must be OK. I must be likable. These were new concepts to me. As I said, I had pretty low self esteem. We spent quite a bit of time together that summer. We didn't actually go out on dates (no car...no money), but he would come over and we would go for walks and just talk. For my birthday he wrote a piece of music for me entitled "Jonita". No, I don't still have that music.

As you can well imagine, Jim was really hurt by my new interest. To this day he can't say anything nice about Nick. He was sure that my dad had influenced me to like him because he was Dutch, and that somehow that made him superior. Yes, my dad did like him, but he never pushed me in his direction. We had a common interest, music, and I enjoyed listening to him play. Although he tried hard to get me to play for him I was too intimidated by his skill. Compared to him, I was a novice, and I refused to make a fool of myself. Jim began dating other girls, many of them my close friends, and I was glad. I think it made me feel better to know that I hadn't "destroyed" his life. (What an ego I was developing). But it left me room to be humbled later on in my life.

Nick and his family moved to California in the fall when school began, but we kept in contact through letters, and if you can believe it, by parents let me go alone on a bus to California to visit him during Christmas break. Jim was furious! I guess he still liked me just a "little" bit. I would see him (Jim) quite often now because we went to the same high school and rode the same bus to get there. He was always polite and the perfect gentlemen, but the relationship had definitely changed.