"So, how's your dad?"
One of the hallmarks of our friendship was the thrill we got out of talking. Not always serious things, not always fun topics, just mostly in the middle of all that, a comfortable spot that allowed for introspection and honesty and a regular baring of the soul. Sometimes we would fail in our ability to handle the truth, sometimes we shyed away from the words that could have easily crushed our fragile craft, but on the most part we chatted the day away in some sort of fabled magic space, some mythical neutral zone that kept real life at bay.
This comfortable realm was littered with laughter, with family stories, with invention and merriment and a sort of fondness that engendered risk taking and fence walking and smiles that continually broke down barriers between us and strangers. People who fell upon us either joined in with our smiles or left us alone once they saw that we were set of magical twins that seemed to live apart in a bubble of absolute freedom, free from the constraints of societal norms. On occasion we were brought back to earth, but never willingly. Times like those left us wounded and feeling hunted, as if we had been stripped naked and forced to make our way out of a comfortable dream.
But on the most part when we moved around in the world we pretended as children pretend. We donned the garments of whoever we wanted to be that day and wore them as if the whole world were invited to our costume party. It was like a summer day's garden party in many ways. Almost always we were light and breezy, there was always finger food at hand and parlor games at arm's length. Our games of acey ducey and slices of cheesecake and pots of coffee were only interupted by time, which was the only true rival to our friendship. We reluctantly broke down our tents of play and went back into the world with whisker burned chins and weary hearts. We knew we had no choice but to do so if we wanted to get back to that story, those conversations, those questions that we relished.
Was it because we found each other so interesting or was it because, when we were together, that the world suddenly became new and interesting again? I wonder all the time about what it was that we conjured up, what genie's lamp we disturbed that granted us those three time constrained wishes. I wonder when I wake and say good morning to you via the ether whether or not, in the mindsets that we now court, that it would even be possible for us to talk to each other like that again?
You must understand one thing, that that sense of wonderment we shared continues on like a blissful hangover and still leaves me asking you questions everyday. You once wrote me in a letter how you wished you could just pick up the phone to call me and ask me things. I struggled today with the very same thing, found myself weak kneed at a payphone, where I looked up the number of the place where you work, just to hear your voice, just to know that your breath still sounds the same.
But more it was to ask you things, for you see that it's you and your words that you once shared so willingly with me that I miss, all those rambling conversations that would take us from Colorado to California to Japan and then back to the Northwest all in the course of an hour or two. We were gypsies in our talks, we would take our wagons full of life and spreaded our stories all around the countryside. In turn we generated even more tales to tell, but instead of stories filled with ancestors or far away relatives or rambunctious family members we became the key players in the story. We became legendary and it wasn't just in our minds.
The questions I would ask. I think of things mundane like where you ate Mexican food last or if you've gotten a dog yet or what you made for supper last night and think, what a maroon, wasting time like that but then think, that those were the kinds of questions we peppered each other with as we talked to each other on the phone or while we walked or drove or wrote deep into the night. These days I wonder where you are going, whether or not you finally made it to France, or if you've read anything good lately. I see interesting book titles all the time in the library and want to ask you if you to share them with me. I watch movies almost every night and want to ask you if you've seen them. I look up into the sky and see sunsets and full moons and falling stars and want to find out your reactions to all of them.
I can't seem to move let alone breathe and not have a question for you attached to it. I suppose that's why I pester people in my life with so many questions because in some small way it's all a carryover of the daily questions of life that I shared with you. It wasn't odd to ask about my favorite little family member or to see if you had popcorn with your movie on Sunday night or if your real Mexican Friend had you over for the holidays. I want to ask you about that mayonaise on the salmon thing that you do or find out what you made in that cast iron casserole I gave you or whether or not you've made a clafouti lately. I want to know if the soldier and the lady still reside in the clock, whether the Pinto Pony still rides and if Les Chiens is still around.
All mundane, my love, but then again, we were the King and Queen in the land of Exquisite Mundaneness. But not everything I want to ask you is light and airy. Sometimes we find ourselves with heavy duty things to address. I'd die to know how your heart is, if you're happy, if those vegetables are still getting chopped and if your bed is still getting made. I want to ask you how your smile is holding up, if you steps are light, if you are still on track with whatever it was that drove you down the path you took.
I don't think that anything I want to know really matters much in my life as it stands, but then again, see, that's the art of conversation and getting to know someone. Those little thing, at the moment, anyway, are just that, little things, but they add up. Show that you care, that you are interested. Living with someone is like building a matchstick building. Those house are composed of many individual matches like a good conversation, a solid relationship is composed of many questions. Our life together was like that, composed of many individual questions, all added one to another, that ended up making one grand edifice.
Never mind that ours went up in flames. Things happen.
I wonder, then, about the embers, the Phoenix, the ashes at my feet. I dwell sometimes on that and then shake it off, just in time to find my way back to life and living and new conversations. But those question for you still remain. You see, when it comes to friends and love, you can't choose those things. They just happen. Where they go, how they are handled, how they rest, whether they choose to wait or not, all depends on what you want out of them in the long run. What I want to be able to do again someday is to be able to sit down with you and share coffee and play Yahtzee and talk and talk and talk until the embers in the fireplace die down to cold ash, till the candles melt down into unreconizable blobs of wax on my mantlepiece.
Someday I want to be able to call you on the phone and ask "So, how is your dad?" and know that you'd be fine with me doing that. You would be glad for me to ask you all those questions that you missed being asked all your life all over again.
I miss that, True Love.
Your WHMB
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