I know I am like the rain.

True friendship recognizes no age gap. Its love does not readily admit distance, wane in the absence of a phone call, or recruit negativity. It fills dark, lonely, yawning nights with flashes of light and laughter. Its unconditional severity of relentless joy makes its recipients breathe easier. It reminds two people that they are more than a human shell. It necessitates us to recognize our spirituality because if we are lucky enough, we share with another that thing they call "kindred spirits".

How else is it possible to understand the message and depth behind a text said with only two words so that it might bring you to tears or create a hearty laughter that echoes in your throat?

How else can one simply look and know because your eyes told them so? To respond to a sentiment before you reach out to tell of it, to harness support, compassion, or encouragement in that very moment you falter; to find your footing on the other's cupped hands as they patiently wait to hoist you into your next great chapter.

How else can you find the freedom that comes with a vulnerability so raw? To lay your human experience plainly in the sight of another without the compelling fear that you should be judged for it.

And instead, you are welcomed with open arms.

Plain and Simple

Your fingertips hit each key expertly with the support of practice behind you and the confidence of skill within you. You effortlessly trill the keys and bring me to a sense of peace because I too have confidence in your ability to carry the song through to a graceful completion. The melody I am familiar with becomes exciting and serene all at once. The treble lends harmonic notes that curve across the staff without a care and the bass gives a sturdy ground from which they launch.

The key changes awaken emotions that bring me to tears. Even the dissonances yield into easy recoveries that bend into grand plies I want to pick up and hold tightly so that I may remember this feeling your songs give me. The power is found at once in that which you hold back. Instead of a relentless appeal to the senses you present a quiet gift that dances and twirls until the heartbreakingly beautiful keys at last rest, until it is again time to find oneself among them. 

I breathe easier, think more clearly, and truly find my heart's beat amidst these notes, your notes. 

It was seven years

The last time your family gathered in this house to celebrate Thanksgiving was 2006, so I felt it was a wonderful obligation to open the house to others on this day in honor of the spirit it carried for many years.

So we decided to deep fry a turkey, roast vegetables, and roll out a pumpkin pie. Nanny brought too much food to count and others brought a myriad of more dishes. Within hours the countertops were filled with glass pans that held stuffing, cheese, and carbohydrates made with love and anticipation of being together. We turned on jazz music and a muted football game, threw the curtains open and asked the sunshine to warm our house.

People arrived in groups with smiles and jokes. We greeted with hugs, poured drinks with laughter and wandered from indoors to out without a care. The children took to running in circles through the garage and yard, into the side door and alongside the kitchen, where I stationed myself and timed the last of the dishes cooking and reheating. We could not stop talking about the hummus appetizer, the Paleo gravy made with cashews. We said thanks, we ate, and we raved.

We drank coffee, threw the football, and sat talking.

The cutting, cooking, cleaning, and preparation for days like these are the art that is creating life. It cannot be in vain, for now that day is captured in each of our memories in different ways. We may not recall finite details but we will remember how we felt, we will remember the love and the joy. And the gift to possess these moments is the greatest for which we could ask.

We parted, full of food and even more, full of spirit.

Dearest Nina

It was that sadness I detected in your voice that made me realize you did not want a goodbye dinner with us because it was too emotional.  Somehow, it made it easier for me to embrace your move once I understood you could not say goodbye in that way, either.

I remember the first time you visited our apartment. Sitting on the couch and fawning over the new puppy as Matthew sat next to you. I walked in carrying groceries and was appalled that I had not cleaned that morning, but the only thing you cared about was our 8-week old puppy romping around the floor at your feet. It was that night we were invited to a Christmas party at the neighbor's and you wore a large sparkling necklace that I admired. You laughed and told me it was an old Christmas decoration and invited me to see the art on the walls of your apartment. We walked together and I admired your artwork and it was then you began to tell me your life stories.

Our friendship neither grew quickly nor slowly. It just was. We visited one another's apartments, you with your dog and I with mine. You watched my pup grow, gave advice, and took him for countless walks when we worked during the day.

Weeks and months passed. We became fond of one another. You left us magazines at our doorstep and cards for our birthdays. I made sure to save you extra portions of our dinners and would scramble quickly to knock on your door in hopes you'd not yet eaten. You were kind to try the food either way.

We have sat at the huge window in your living room and looked out over the treetops and talked about life. We talked of the most intimate things, we talked of the silliest. You told me so many escapades of your youth that I decided I should want to write a story.

You took a fall and hurt yourself badly. You had to re-learn how to walk. And my dog and I visited you in rehab and you were so proud of how he'd grown.

I gave you a journal to record your memories.


We drove to restaurants, talked about sex, gave advice, were upset with one another, joked with each other, always helped the other with anything.

We went to the movies once, remember? You didn't like it because you cannot hear very well anymore. But we sat there together through the whole production and afterwards it was very late, but you wanted to go out with me. We went downtown and visited the cigar shop and spoke with friends. I held your hand to steady you as we walked along the uneven sidewalk.

Next week you will move. I have ignored this fact for as long as I am able. Yet tonight you told me that this weekend you will come and drop off a desk you want us to have and you will say hello and goodbye and that will be it. You will leave.

You will drive to Florida and move into your retirement home.

No longer will I bring you food next door. Never again will I see you out for mail or rap on your door in my ski socks and pajama bottoms in hopes to talk about life. These are treasured memories, my friend. They tell the story of how you helped me learn was it is to be a woman, a business owner. You encouraged me to be myself. You are a part of the first years of our marriage, you are the third owner of our dog. You are one of my dearest friends.

You are only moving, I know.

But oh, how you will be missed.

Tuesday

I showed the last one of you out the door and locked it behind you, reentered the kitchen to sweep and mop, to clean the machine, to wash and sanitize the dishes.

Standing alone against the harsh kitchen florescence, the mood was melancholy in the quietest way, but I fought the desire to easily yield myself to it. Crossing the store to turn on the music was a good decision and soon Bob Dylan's voice seized the airwaves. And so I scrubbed dishes. And so, of course, I thought.

It began with the steam wands, determining whether I'd yet cleaned them out. I thought about the other necessities in closing the store: disinfecting the toilet bowl, restocking the napkin dispenser and the like. I thought about how good our soap display in the corner smells.

The tasks were quickly completed. It was a last-minute decision to make a hot chocolate for the drive downtown and when I walked outside the wind ripped across my cheeks and I greedily gurgled hot chocolate into my mouth to warm me.

I took the Spruill Avenue route. And whether it was the cold dark night or that forsaken Snow Patrol song on the radio, or the intervals of hot chocolate sips, I do not know. But whatever it was brought a surrealism to the short 10-minute drive. The darkness was penetrating and the people on Spruill avenue continued. They continued to ride the Carta bus and exit it in groups, yelling and laughing and walking home. They continued to walk with a saunter across the road wearing dark clothes and foolishly putting themselves in danger. They continued to sit and watch, smoke their cigarettes, hold a daughter's hand as she in a bulky pink jacket waddled along.

The darkness was briefly pierced by stoplights and an occasional floodlight, everything washed in tones of sepia and sometimes black and white. I saw to my left a flashy building with the bright, white word "Polished" laden across its painted gray bricks. To the right was a homeless man and his shopping cart. I drove on.

Eventually I entered downtown and found a spot to park and planned to get out of the car. But the wind ripped and its harsh howls convinced me to curl into the driver's seat and hold my knees to my chest. I was now down on King Street, parked and waiting and watching people as they walked by with loved ones, with drinking buddies, by themselves.

I called an old friend.

And for the next 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 47 seconds I sat in the car and was reminded of what good people I am granted to know. A 69-year old woman who, best friends with my mother, had a part in raising me, who I have not spoken to in a very long time, and who answered her phone at 9:00 on a Tuesday night.

And we spoke and we laughed. We laughed so hard as we reminisced together, she at her kitchen table or perhaps on a couch and I in my car, huddled and holding my knees closely. We spoke of travels, and her children, of my business, and our families. We asked one another if we'd painted recently and realized that neither one has. And then we remembered years ago, a vacation when we awoke early and took our canvases and paints to the beach and sat in the sand and watched the sun rise. We painted what we saw. We spilled paint across the grains and onto our skin and we laughed so hard.

"I still have those paintings hanging on my wall," she said.

Bark and Leaves

Our memories are moldable plastic. Perhaps I find solace in my earliest ones because I was young enough to trust myself. I trusted the good in the world, that my dolls would never leave my side. I knew I would find the proper dishes for my fort in the forrest. My dress-up apron would never fray. My parents would not grow old.

We are the potters of our moldable, plastic memories. I choose to cling to the memory of playing tennis on the gravel with my father, laughing as we bounced rubber balls off large rocks. I remember putting sticky pink blush on Grandma Helen's cheeks, rouging them with my index finger and concentration.

My brother and the way his mouth curves when he concentrates. That upper lip curls itself downward to a point.

That tree in the middle of the yard, an evergreen that now towers over most things.

There is so, so much I remember about the first 13 years of my life. So many heartfelt memories and I begin to cry from its beauty. I could become lost in that yester-world.

And after the move I remember pieces, moments of life. But never again as I once remembered. Never again those lilacs in the spring, the taste of a carrot right from the garden. Those plastic memories. I try but all I can remember is the VO5 shampoo I used once: coconut and lime. I remember the smell of the wood floors Dad once laid, the texture of the pull-out sofa.

What happened to that sensuality of life? Childhood versus adolescence offers a vast divide. I am more at home with my childlike self, amidst my bark and leaves. Amidst its ease, perhaps.

Unless

Work shuts down when the lights are turned and the door is locked. We sometimes shuffle together, once in awhile alone, toward the parked cars. We gather ourselves into the seats and dissipate the lot, intending to gather tomorrow for another round of everything this is.

And the night stretches before me when the walks with the dog are finished. The leaves outside are raked. Dinner and dishes and dessert and vacuuming; it is all done. The night stretches before me and it leads me to that moment that comes each night in the silence that makes me catch my breath.

I am afraid of failing at that thing I love most. 

And another birthday nears and I am still quite young. But life is marching itself onward and I have but this one chance at it. And that self I was in college shakes the ribcage of who I am now, trying to reawaken the energy I possessed for writing. And my self now says, "hush, you do not know the definition of tired" and takes another exaggerated breath and scans the imaginary list for tomorrow.

"Be like a child," my soul begs me. 

But how can I now? For I am strewn, and worn, and gasping for air.