*The One That Got Away*

Once upon a time I had friends, best friends. But after we graduated high school God cast us far and wide. He flicked his wrist hard and we scattered like so many Pick Up Sticks. None of us touched after that, not geographically anyway. Hefty phone bills and first jobs out of college widened the distance between us, and eventually, marriages and babies. So then what? We had to find new gal pals. But it had gotten harder. Since we weren't spring chickens anymore.  Since everyone we met was so daggone busy. Even so, we didn’t have a choice, did we?

~~~

“Do you wanna be best friends? Just you and me? Do ya, do ya? Huh, huh?” 

 I didn’t answer right away. Didn’t look at her either. Instead I fiddled with the snaps on my daughter’s onesie. Pretended to give my friend privacy while she nursed her baby. Her question surprised me. Made me feel claustrophobic. Like if I said yes, it would be me and her in a Jif jar with a lid on and a cotton ball soaked in nail polish remover. 

I turned away slightly and cupped my hand to push air in my mouth.  And then she moved. Far away.

~~~

“Guess what?” my best-friend-first-through-twelfth-grade said when I answered the phone. “I have unlimited long distance calling now. We can talk like, every day.” 

And we did for awhile. Till I blew it. We got in this tiff, of all things, about her religion and my faith. When she said that one thing just so, I was pretty sure it was over. I heard the word never come out of my mouth even though my personal philosophy is never say never. 

She fell silent and Iwatched our friendship, like an egg, roll across a surface that wasn’t level, but tilted ever so slightly downhill. 

~~~

Soon after, I met another woman, at my son's pre-school. She had the best cheekbones ever but something shadowed her. All the time. One day I figured out what it was—fear. Eventually I got used to it—her scaredy-cat aura. And actually, it seemed to lessen the more we hung out.

 As our kids got taller, we grew closer. At one point though, in my mind, I pretended to be a traffic cop. I extended my arm, flexed at the wrist. Stop. Don’t come any closer. ‘Cause I don’t think we have enough in common. 

See, she didn’t paint her nails, wear lipgloss, or love shoes. I could tell her anything but somehow that didn't seem like enough. We telephoned and emailed a whole lot, but I knew even if she didn’t, that I’d put SaranWrap around my heart.

She moved away, just for a year, but still . . . 


               A     L   O   N   E   (L   Y)    N E   S   S


The just-you-and-me gal visited the other day. We sat side by side on the sofa. 

You’re more like me than anyone I know, I said inside my head.

 I grinned as my kids laughed with hers. Only thing is,  you don’t wear mascara.

 She hugged me as we stood beside her car. “It’s like I never left.”

I stepped back and nodded. Waved as they drove away.  Ask me that question again. I’ll say yes this time.

~~~

When we found out my pa-in-law had super bad cancer, I phoned my best friend from childhood.

“Tell me all that stuff you do again,” I said. “The natural, organic, herbal, and homeopathic stuff.” 
                “Really?”  

I nodded. “Really.”

And she did. Things got better after that. In fact, we're almost back to the place we were before. There’s still a creek that divides the lands of my belief and hers, but after six years, the bridge is coming along nicely. 

~~~

I threw a welcome-home-unload-the-U-Haul party when my one friend moved back. Despite phone calls, emails, and texts (and not having enough in common), I missed her. A whole lot. As I walked up her driveway I wondered if she’d be able to tell the difference in me.  How the SaranWrap around my heart had disappeared.

Peace Sign

I remember the day but not the year (Was it ninety-five maybe?) when my husband brought home a newspaper article for me to read, an interview with a pedophile.

            “I drove through neighborhoods in search of Little Tikes cars, bicycles with training wheels, tiny swimsuits hung on porch railings to dry.”

            I was pretty sure he was trying to help but instead his words gorged the panic monster that lived close to me, maybe even inside me, back then. Always it gnawed at my hamstrings, held one or both my Achilles’ tendons in a pincer grip.

            A month or two after, I heard our daughter’s footsteps at the bottom of the stairs. I glanced at the glow-in-the-dark clock dial—one forty three. Moments later I felt her tentative hand on the quilt beside my shoulder. Her quick, moist breaths warmed my cheek.

            “Mommy? A man was in my room just now, next to my bed, and he knew my name.”

            As one my husband and I shot up. I headed for the steps, he for the Louisville Slugger he kept in the closet.

            We found no one, no open window. Still, her dream nourished the beast inside me, made my eyes perpetually round, my ears constantly alert. It fostered in me a fatigue that never seemed to abate.

            I recall thinking, as I tucked her back into her Lion King toddler bed that night, that's  the worst kind of bad guy, the one who knows your name.

+++++++

It was a late August morning in 1997 when we watched our eldest child climb onto the school bus that would take her over the hill to kindergarten. I juggled waving, nose dabbing, and picture-taking. My husband blew kisses at her grin pressed against the fogged window. Our two-year-old daughter clutched her Tickle Me Elmo and wept.

            “Our life will never be the same,” I said as we watched the bus disappear around the bend.

            My husband nodded as he u-turned the stroller and started back toward the house. 
            “You said that both times we drove to the hospital with you in labor. Remember?”

            I stopped there on the street, revelation in my open mouth. “They’re going to leave some day. Forever, well, for months at a time.”

            My husband smiled. “I know. That’s how it works.”

            I bunched my t-shirt in front of my throat divot and gulped. “I’m not gonna like it. I’m telling you right now.”

            He sighed. “Me either, but it’ll mean we did our job right.”

+++++++

Our 2010 vacation was quite possibly our best ever—Colorado in early summer. A horseback ride through the Rockies, a white water rafting trip, daily visits to the prairie dog colony near our condo.

            In the airports coming and going, my husband made our eldest do everything.

            “Where’s the check-in desk? Which train will take us to our terminal? Find our baggage claim.”

            She protested, but he was right. In two months she’d need to know these things because she’d fly alone for the first time ever, not just across country, but to the Southern Hemisphere.

            The dreaded (by me) day finally arrived. After she disappeared from our sight in the Pittsburgh airport, I felt as if someone had tunneled me through. Surely a tractor trailer could fit inside the hole in my gut.

            Back home, for nearly 24 hours I endured torment—shortness of breath, a galloping heart, visions from the “Taken” trailer, a film I’d refused to see.

            Near the end of our first day without her, I managed to drive to the grocery store despite my blurred vision. As I parked, the KLOVE deejay asked listeners for prayer requests. I whispered mine as I unbuckled my seat belt, gathered my list and coupons.

            “Please let her be safe, not kidnapped or heaving up a food-poisoned box lunch on the eight hour bus drive from Lima to the mountain school.”

            “How He loves us. Oh, how He loves us . . .” I whimpered as I reached for the volume nob on the radio, twisted it until my eardrums throbbed. It was a sign, surely it was, the playing of one of my favorite songs ever. I searched the sky through the windshield, blew a kiss—a sign language thank you—toward heaven. I placed my hand over my heart and noticed how its jittery rhythm evened out.
             After shopping, I arranged the grocery bags in the backseat then checked my phone. There it was, a text from my husband. "She made it, safe and sound." Behind the steering wheel, I crumpled. Relieved. Thankful.

+++++++

Two years later, it’s almost no big deal. Her flying here, her travelling there, to this country or that. I am amazed that the impossible has become doable, the unknown bearable. The what ifs are quieter now, paler.

            Why, this summer I didn’t even weep when she took her little sister to her home-away- from-home—the mountain school in Peru.

            In the airport, my brunette middle child vibrated beside me with excitement and fear.  
            “You’re in good hands,” I told her, “hers and God’s. You’re gonna be fine.”

            I gathered the girls close and said a prayer. Then I kissed their cheeks, turned, and walked away without a shadow of a limp or stagger. As I crossed the threshold of the automatic doors, I marveled at my dryness. No moisture coursing from my eyes or nose? No dampness (or panic beast) whatsoever in the basement of me? Surely this is the peace which surpasses all understanding.

And then there were none . . .

"Hold still!" I said to my son as I took a picture of him, coming down the front steps this morning. I do it every year on the first day of school. I capture his size, his hairstyle, his outfit, forever. I have pictures of all three kids on the first and last days of school. If only I scrapbooked.

This morning as I put my son on the bus yet again, I remembered the day I sent him off to kindergarten. The bus pulled away and I cried but I smiled too. I felt alone but I also felt free.

I stayed on the corner, squinting at the horizon. Something was out there, way out there. I put my hand over my eyebrows to shield my sight from the glare. A breeze nudged my hair. Its coolness made me shiver. In my gut, in my spirit, I knew everything was changing.

I walked back to the house, considering my life. The last year and the one before that had been like a black and white photograph. No, that’s not right. There was always color, but the color was washed out--pastel and weak with undertones of grey. Personally, I don’t care for pastels. I think they’re wimpy.

When I got to the house I sat on the porch and thought about how for the past four years or so, I wanted more. And then recently, I wanted much more. For the longest time I'd felt like a sleepy caterpillar in a dry and raspy, mocha latte-colored cocoon. I longed to be a butterfly, an aqua and magenta butterfly, starting to nudge and poke and kickbox my way out of the dustiness. I wanted freshness, greenness, sunshine and new life to fill me and my veins to overflowing.

I put my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees. I remembered how it felt like my life was a bellcurve. I was climbing the left side, inch-worming towards the top. It seemed to take the longest time until my son got on the bus that first day. Once he started school, the plummet began.

I started sliding down the other side, slow at first but then I gathered speed. I gathered other stuff too--power, joy and assurance. Assurance that this is the life I was created to live.

God whispered things to my spirit. “You’re getting warmer. . . stay on this path . . . don’t go through that door . . . .” He sent me people and even songs that echoed his will for me. “Go for it! Fulfill your destiny, the one I wrote for you centuries, millennia ago.”

Finally, I had ears to hear. Finally, I believed what God had told me all along. “Your life will count, beloved. Your life will count for the kingdom.”

There would be no more, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation” for me. Henry David Thoreau can keep his quiet desperation! What a snore! I want more than a grey rag of a life!

I put my hands over my heart. It felt like God was in there--breathing into a bubble or a balloon inside of me. What would happen if he let go? I imagined it would go, “WHOOOOSHHHH!” It would twist and shout, somersault and dance all over the world in glorious, ecstatic, technicolor bliss.