We lay in our bed and we count the shapes in the knots in the wood on the underside of the ceiling. Like laying in the grass, finding shapes in the clouds, we point our fingers and draw the outlines in the air. Dozens of them.

Something reminded me tonight of a very old friend. I think it was how he grinned with sarcasm. I remember how his face could express the most vile and wicked and outrageous of moments without a word. Our conversations and experiences and how we grew up together, our mothers both divorced or in the process thereof. From toddlers to teenagers to taxes, somehow we were always a part of each others lives no matter how much space and time came in between.

I remember:

When I’m 2 and knock my front tooth loose on the linoleum, you live in the apartment upstairs. When I’m three, my mother snaps a picture of us in the baby pool together, you naked as naked gets. I use this as blackmail for years and years later.

When I’m 4 and run away from home, you live down the street and your mom drives by Niagara Falls Boulevard every night on her way home from work. This is where I sit, on the curb on top of my red suitcase, waiting for her.

When I’m 8 and my parents are divorcing, we move in with your family and make snow angels in the yard and get lost in the fog across the street. We take turns reciting bible stories into the tape recorder, rolling around laughing at all the words we pronounce wrong. When I’m 9 and we’re sneaking in to watch Saturday Night Live when our parents are asleep, making a haunted house in the basement for Halloween, and naming our newborn puppies after the Dukes of Hazard characters.

When I’m almost 10 and my mom and I move out and into our own place and on with our own lives.

At 15, on the phone with you long distance after you moved to California, 3,000 miles away, and I’m enduring question after question from you about my boyfriends, like a big, protective brother, laughing on the other line, demanding to speak to them and determine their worthiness.

After years of living on separate coasts, at 17 we find ourselves both in Northern California at the same time, for different reasons, and for a year or two we play darts in the garage and go to parties and I peel your barely-conscious self off some strange staircase and drive you home.

When I’m 23 and pregnant with Sarah, your family is there. Your mom drives me to the hospital when I suddenly go into labor after my husband has already left for work and can’t be reached for an hour. Nearly every weekend at your house, with brand new Sarah and Ryan, now 3, his personality just developing, making friends with your kids and playing in the pool under California sun and palm trees.

At 27, I’m coming back from Oregon, en route to a new life in Reno, and we stop and find you and Penny with four kids now and we spend a few hours catching up at your new place in North Highlands. Your career on the fast track, family growing by leaps and bounds.

Suddenly we’ve breached 30, and you come for a visit to Reno. We meet for drinks and talk about our families and our histories and the time that’s gone by. Coast to coast with a string of miles and years in between, and here we are again, as always.

I’m in New Mexico now and it’s been three years again since we’ve seen or spoken to each other. Maybe when I’m 37 we’ll accidentally meet on some ski slope in Tahoe, or maybe at 52 and one of our kids gets married and we sneak outside with half the self-serve bar while everyone else is dancing, and talk awhile in disbelief that we are where we are. Or at 65, at the funeral of one of our parents, not saying anything, but knowing, both of us, that the strings are slowly drawing to a close around our lives that we’ve spent so loosely in association with one another.

Nobody’s known me longer.

No matter how much we’ve grown or how much time and hardship has come and gone or how many kids or jobs or adventures or changes or new addresses and faces and victories and heartbreaks, all I can see when I say your name are the two new adult front teeth, big and white, that surprised me that night when you came home from football practice and I was there. And years later, the night we were out causing trouble and you looked over and you smiled them at me, and I remember trying to understand that we were growing. Up, and slowly apart.

Posted by tee in de la vida, freelancing
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A month ago or so ago, now, Ryan met a girl at the neighbor’s place. Her name is Nicole. They were fast friends. Not long after, Nicole’s mother, Barbara, called me. She was smitten over the idea that her daughter had developed her first crush, and she wanted to know all about Ryan. I smiled to myself, and we talked for awhile. She was a nice lady. She used to homeschool her kids, she said, before she got divorced and things got too busy to handle by herself.

Her ex-husband lives out here in Eldorado (she lives in town), so she wanted to know if Nicole and Ryan could make arrangements to spend some time together on weekends when she was visiting her Dad. We both agreed, talked a little bit about Santa Fe and said we’d keep in touch. I remember after hanging up how funny it was that she was so amused and excited that her 11-year-old daughter had connected with a boy.

Ryan and Nicole had plans three Fridays ago to get together, but things fell through. I talked to Barbara sometime over that weekend and told her Ryan would call on Monday and see what else they could decide on.

Ryan tried calling as planned. No answer. He left a message for Nicole to give him a call.

Two full weeks went by without a call back. He called once or twice more, leaving more messages. He wondered if he had said or done something wrong.

Today, Nicole called. I handed Ryan the phone, and watched his expression change from excitement to sickness and confusion. Her mother, Barbara, had committed suicide that weekend. The same weekend we spoke.

Ryan was tearing up now, trying to ask her if she was ok, but barely getting the words out. I felt like I had to leave the room, to give them some privacy but mostly it was to choke back the lump forming in my throat, too.

They didn’t talk long. He asked her if she’d like to come over soon, and she agreed that she would, maybe next weekend. I noticed the call came from an Eldorado number; I imagine she and her brothers are living here with their Dad now. Ryan says she said she’s doing ok, though I could tell it was all he could do to hold it in himself while he was telling me.

When he was done, we went into the bathroom and climbed up on the toilet seat and stood there at the window, the scent of the pine walls strong, whistling at the robins in the tree that leans against the house, confused as they were, wondering who was calling them, and why it was snowing in the New Mexican spring time.

Posted by tee in de la vida, kids + pets
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