Some stories begin long after the moment itself. This one started in a college classroom in 1985, but it didn’t find its full voice until years later—first in memoir, then through the echoed silences of fiction. What follows isn’t just about Maria, or Marty, or Kelly. It’s about the quiet resonance of memory, and how certain goodbyes keep speaking long after they’re said.
The Kiss That Lingered: A Memoir’s Echo Through Fiction
Some memories don’t fade—they echo. They begin as real moments and ripple outward, refracted through time, experience, and the stories we dare to write.
In the spring of 1985, I met a girl named Maria in a nearly empty psychology classroom. She smiled at me. I fumbled a hello. We exchanged glances that said more than either of us could put into words. We had quiet talks, shared silences, and a brief, beautiful friendship. One day she offered to take notes for me. Another day, she gave me a photograph and disappeared.
I didn’t write about her immediately. But two years later, in a reflective column for my college newspaper titled Heartbreak Time: He Once Met a Girl Named Maria, I tried to translate that moment into words. That was the first time I invited readers into that quiet ache—and I’ve never quite stopped. Because Maria, in all her soft glances and unspoken goodbyes, never fully left.
She became a motif. A memory. And eventually, she became Marty.
Years after that spring, I wrote Reunion: A Story, and a dream sequence echoed Maria’s entrance almost note for note. The smile. The seat next to mine. The paralysis of teenage longing. I didn’t set out to fictionalize her, but Marty walked onto the page anyway—elegant, unreachable, warm in ways that hurt to remember. The story returned again in Reunion: Coda (2025), where goodbye takes on deeper emotional shading. And then, in Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, she surfaced one final time—quieter now, under the name Kelly.
Here’s how that memory evolved:
🌼 The First Glance
“She was exquisitely beautiful—dark curly hair, fawn-like brown eyes and a smile that caught my attention at first glance.”
—Heartbreak Time (1987, recalling spring 1985)
“She’s tall, graceful, and absolutely breathtaking… Her long chestnut hair cascades down over her shoulders.”
—Reunion: A Story (1998/2023)
Both girls enter the story like music—unexpected, undeniable. In fiction, Marty wears a black dress. In memory, Maria wears a knowing smile. Each exists at the intersection of awe and impossibility.
🫶 The Mango Stammer
“Hi,” she said. “Uh, hi,” I replied, feeling about as articulate as a mango.”
—Heartbreak Time
“Hi,” I reply, feeling about as articulate as your average mango.”
—Reunion: A Story
Some lines survive revision on the strength of pure truth. The mango metaphor still feels like the most accurate description of how love can reduce language to pulp.
💌 The Goodbye
“I’ll write you first chance I get,” she said. She handed me a photo: ‘With all my love, your friend, Maria.’
—Heartbreak Time
“Take care of yourself, Jimmy,” she said softly. “Knock ’em dead at Harvard, okay?”
—Reunion: A Story
No drama. No declarations. Just parting with care and quiet. In both scenes, the girl offers a smile and a trace of herself. And then—she’s gone.
💔 The Coda
“She kissed me softly on the lips… ‘For old times’ sake,’ she said.”
—Reunion: Coda (2025)
“Kelly kissed me one more time before we left. Soft. Warm. Like punctuation—something between a semicolon and an ellipsis.”
—Comings and Goings (2025)
Marty’s kiss is memory’s gift—belated but tender. Kelly’s is something quieter: the punctuation at the end of a sentence that almost, almost finished itself aloud. These are not romantic fantasies fulfilled. They are emotional truths lived gently.
📚 Why These Echoes Matter
Reunion is a reimagining. Coda is a continuation. Comings and Goings is a spiritual companion that doesn’t revisit the past so much as allow us to live with it.
Where Reunion lets a younger self whisper what he didn’t say, Comings and Goings gives that voice a little more room. It’s not louder, just steadier. More accepting of silence. Less afraid of the ellipsis.
If Heartbreak Time: He Once Met a Girl Named Maria was an elegy for what never was, and Reunion a dream of what might’ve been, then Comings and Goings is what happens when we finally stop rehearsing. When we say what we feel—even if it’s “maybe,” even if it’s “we’ll see.”
Because some of us spend our whole lives trying to finish a sentence we were too afraid to speak. Sometimes we do it with memoir. Sometimes with fiction. And sometimes—if we’re lucky—with love.
If you’ve ever carried the weight of an almost, or held onto words that never found their moment, Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen might speak to you. It’s not a sequel to the Reunion Duology, but it listens in the same key—a story about quiet courage, imperfect timing, and the grace we offer each other when we finally allow ourselves to be fully known.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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