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Old Friends
Oct. 31st, 2022 03:06 pmI have a friend who I've known since before she was born.
That's not entirely fair, I guess, because I was a baby when she was born, but I'm very slightly older. I've known her all her life.
Her mom is my godmother, although her dad isn't... my mom picked her best friend and my dad picked his best friend and they're both lovely people but my younger brothers have her and her husband as godparents in part because it's easier that way.
My family is Catholic and part of selecting godparents is selecting who will raise your children if you and your spouse die... or at least who will raise them spiritually, who will raise them in the Church, who will teach them morals and ethics. It's not just about honor or establishing ties or making family members happy. It's a pretty big thing.
We were super close growing up and my brothers and I spent a huge amount of time with her and her family, her sister and two brothers and her parents and her grandma and their massive great dane whose head reached the table and who would casually eat food left within about a foot of the edge.
They lived in the middle of nowhere, by which I mean we had to travel down roads flanked by rows of corn and then turn onto roads that wound a bit instead of being straight and which eventually turned into gravel. By which I mean surrounded by prairie, tall fields of grass, a stream running through flanked by weeping willows. By which I mean spending hours outside, drenched in sunlight walking through waist high grasses and flowers. By which I mean The Great Outdoors and muddy shoes and climbing trees and leaping from bank to bank across the (fairly narrow, fairly shallow) stream. It was in many ways idyllic and also nowhere I'd want to live now although I'd enjoy visiting.
It would be easy to digress, now, into a bit about my kid and the differences in our childhoods. How I was out of doors so often, in prairie meadows and in forests and in wetlands, how we spent so much time camping and hiking and just being outside in nature. How I'd climb a tree and read for hours. How my kid has concrete and playgrounds and how we can walk to a river with night herons and watch people kayaking but rarely do. How my child isn't soaked in nature the way I was. But that's a post for another time, maybe, or maybe I've said enough here.
My parents and my friend's parents had a falling out and ties between us were abruptly severed. One of the hardest things about being a kid is the way your friendships are entirely dependent on your parents. They have to give you permission. They have to approve. If you live in the middle of nowhere (we lived in a different middle of nowhere) they have to drive you. So I just, suddenly, didn't have that friend any more.
We eventually connected in the absolutely weirdest way. She somehow recognized me by a comment I left on a now-defunct feminist blog and asked if I was who I was. It was a tentative online reunion and because of real life interruptions we didn't get to reconnect in person for years and years. She's had two kids since then.
I finally got to see her again today, the first time in 30 or so years.
Sometimes you just fall into conversation and the years are gone, tesseracted.
I had some things she needed, and which I needed to get rid of, and we met outside my place for the handover. I had pumpkin buckets that I put stickers and candy in for her kids. They were most excited about the stickers, little kids are always most excited about the stickers. We talked for as long as her kids were willing to put up with, which wasn't long enough, and then she went home to finish getting ready for Halloween and I went inside to get back to work - I'm working from home and that was my lunch hour.
I have so many emotions about those lost years, the fragility of friendship, how delicate yet familiar reconnecting with her feels. We're planning on getting more air purifiers, or making some out of furnace filters and box fans, for every room of our house and having people over in a very cautious way. I'd like to have her over. I'd like to know her kids. I'd like to have friends over in general but I'd especially like to have her over and serve her coffee and her favorite pie and bridge those years, that lost time, build something on the mossy ruins we shared.
That's ineptly put but also how I feel, building on the ruins of something that used to be beautiful; using the cobbles and columns to make something different that's beautiful in its own way. All we can do is keep building.
That's not entirely fair, I guess, because I was a baby when she was born, but I'm very slightly older. I've known her all her life.
Her mom is my godmother, although her dad isn't... my mom picked her best friend and my dad picked his best friend and they're both lovely people but my younger brothers have her and her husband as godparents in part because it's easier that way.
My family is Catholic and part of selecting godparents is selecting who will raise your children if you and your spouse die... or at least who will raise them spiritually, who will raise them in the Church, who will teach them morals and ethics. It's not just about honor or establishing ties or making family members happy. It's a pretty big thing.
We were super close growing up and my brothers and I spent a huge amount of time with her and her family, her sister and two brothers and her parents and her grandma and their massive great dane whose head reached the table and who would casually eat food left within about a foot of the edge.
They lived in the middle of nowhere, by which I mean we had to travel down roads flanked by rows of corn and then turn onto roads that wound a bit instead of being straight and which eventually turned into gravel. By which I mean surrounded by prairie, tall fields of grass, a stream running through flanked by weeping willows. By which I mean spending hours outside, drenched in sunlight walking through waist high grasses and flowers. By which I mean The Great Outdoors and muddy shoes and climbing trees and leaping from bank to bank across the (fairly narrow, fairly shallow) stream. It was in many ways idyllic and also nowhere I'd want to live now although I'd enjoy visiting.
It would be easy to digress, now, into a bit about my kid and the differences in our childhoods. How I was out of doors so often, in prairie meadows and in forests and in wetlands, how we spent so much time camping and hiking and just being outside in nature. How I'd climb a tree and read for hours. How my kid has concrete and playgrounds and how we can walk to a river with night herons and watch people kayaking but rarely do. How my child isn't soaked in nature the way I was. But that's a post for another time, maybe, or maybe I've said enough here.
My parents and my friend's parents had a falling out and ties between us were abruptly severed. One of the hardest things about being a kid is the way your friendships are entirely dependent on your parents. They have to give you permission. They have to approve. If you live in the middle of nowhere (we lived in a different middle of nowhere) they have to drive you. So I just, suddenly, didn't have that friend any more.
We eventually connected in the absolutely weirdest way. She somehow recognized me by a comment I left on a now-defunct feminist blog and asked if I was who I was. It was a tentative online reunion and because of real life interruptions we didn't get to reconnect in person for years and years. She's had two kids since then.
I finally got to see her again today, the first time in 30 or so years.
Sometimes you just fall into conversation and the years are gone, tesseracted.
I had some things she needed, and which I needed to get rid of, and we met outside my place for the handover. I had pumpkin buckets that I put stickers and candy in for her kids. They were most excited about the stickers, little kids are always most excited about the stickers. We talked for as long as her kids were willing to put up with, which wasn't long enough, and then she went home to finish getting ready for Halloween and I went inside to get back to work - I'm working from home and that was my lunch hour.
I have so many emotions about those lost years, the fragility of friendship, how delicate yet familiar reconnecting with her feels. We're planning on getting more air purifiers, or making some out of furnace filters and box fans, for every room of our house and having people over in a very cautious way. I'd like to have her over. I'd like to know her kids. I'd like to have friends over in general but I'd especially like to have her over and serve her coffee and her favorite pie and bridge those years, that lost time, build something on the mossy ruins we shared.
That's ineptly put but also how I feel, building on the ruins of something that used to be beautiful; using the cobbles and columns to make something different that's beautiful in its own way. All we can do is keep building.
