With Love From Me, To You

I just returned home (greeted by a huge, black bug waiting for me on the kitchen counter) from a first ever three-day, two-night sleepover at one of my oldest friends, SC’s (no, not South Carolina’s) house. Because her husband is in Haiti, photo-documenting a pop-up medical clinic, and because one of her writer friends just published her first novel and was giving a reading, I drove almost two hours for some rare one-on-one time together (and to keep her from committing hari-kari from writerly jealousy).

Not once did we worry about monitoring our comments or behavior, stifling our laughter, or repressing our gastrointestinal comings and goings. Instead of worrying, we gossiped, ate too much and too often, laughed hysterically, confessed real and imagined sins, read aloud to each other from the New York Times, obsessed about our children, talked about books and the last episode of Mad Men, and sat quietly, side-by-side on the couch, our laptops on our laps, noodling around Computerland.

On my second day, we jumped into the car and drove to the neighborhood farm store for fresh mozzarella, which we combined with fresh-picked tomatoes and basil growing like crazy in the garden. We side-tripped to a favorite bakery, Lakota, to snap up a dozen outrageously sweet homemade cookies for late night noshing (a nice change from the fresh ice cream we scarfed down the night before). They were so sweet I was worried I’d lapse into a diabetic coma after one bite. 

We schlepped into Boston for the book reading at the Boston Public Library, easily found an ideal parking spot in a nearby parking garage, sat with our feet in a reflecting pool of water near an old church in Copley Square, then slowly dragged ourselves in the heat to the right room for the book reading. After the book signing and congratulating, we accidentally stumbled upon my husband’s favorite sushi joint on Newberry Street, where we sat on high-backed stools at the counter and stuffed ourselves once again.

We stayed up past midnight, our eyes closing and snapping back open as we talked and talked. We found out that we’re so in synch that we both recently bought expensive leather pocketbooks we’d coveted, but ended up with odd, non-traditional colors (coral and yellow) instead of more traditional brown and black. We both stored them in our respective closets in their individual cloth drawstring bags, and hid their ridiculously high costs from our husbands.

Are three-day visits, late-night talks, and wrong-colored pocketbooks the stuff of future novels? Nah. But we are: a friendship lasting 37 years, mixed and matched with loving kindness, easy camaraderie and shared memories, loud burps and inappropriate comments, wishes made on stray coins found heads-up on the street, and endless teachable moments. We might not be back in the USSR, but we sure do know how lucky we are.

Water, Water Everywhere!

I’ve grown up to be a scaredy cat who’s (currently) afraid of heights, lightning, guns, an encyclopedic array of bugs, getting my head dunked under water, violent movies, flying on small airplanes (or big ones), late night (or very early morning), phone calls, all of my doctors, sitting in the passenger seat of my husband’s midlife-crisis (convertible) sports car, sunburn, our central air conditioning system (it tends to spring leaks and ruin our ceilings), calling my swollen big toes “bunions,” and many other things that if I listed them I’m sure you’d believe I should be institutionalized.

A few weeks ago (or was it only a week ago? Oh, how time flies when I’m so hot I can barely move, let alone remember anything) I was in Banff (or as my son-in-law likes to call it, “Banffffffffffffffff”) with my son-in-law’s entire family (on his father’s side), celebrating his grandparents’ sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. One of the planned activities for the trip was a 2-hour white water rafting expedition down the Kicking Horse (or as I called it – Kick Ass) River in British Columbia. Since one of my biggest fears is head dunking, I told my daughter there was no way I was going to participate in this idiotic day of water torture.

But then, my son-in-law’s brother kind of, sort of cyber-bullied me and typecast me as a wussygirl - which I am, but privately, not publicly (until today). This left me no alternative but to prove him wrong by emailing back that I was, too, going, so there, you macho man, arm twisting, semi-relative. So, busted!

Oh, I went all right - but at first with such a negative attitude (and teary-eyed stoicism) you’d have thought I was marching off to be water boarded. I reluctantly squeezed myself into my one-piece black wetsuit, flimsy fleece sweatshirt, yellow rubber raincoat, orange life vest, and orange helmet. I avidly listened to each and every word preached to the group by the rafting guides. I memorized all of the rules, especially the one for falling out of the boat (“feet up, let ‘em greet your face”). My anxiety level was sky high, but I didn’t raise my hand when we were asked if anyone wanted to sit on the bus for the next two hours (which I oh-so-badly wanted to do). When our guide asked if everybody was ready, I was the only one who didn’t scream, “YES!”

The before picture taken of me in the rubber river raft (I sat in the back for the first hour of the ride, then in the front for the last hour) vividly exposes scared-shitless me: my mouth is pulled down to my chin, my body is slumped forward, and my entire demeanor emanates fear. The next picture, taken right after we’d slammed through our first huge wall of ice-cold water, soaking me inside and out, shows me grinning from ear to ear, water dripping down my glasses, arms spread out in utter abandon. Surprise! I loved it!

I loved being scared to death, getting soaked, not falling in (two kids from another boat fell in – our boat rescued one, mute with fear), grabbing on to the ropes (inside and out), following every, single direction, paddling (yes, I even paddled!), shivering from the cold (it was icy cold that day and the water was even colder), going head first into Class 4 waves, and (be still my heart) howling with delight. I can’t lie: I experienced extreme happiness, because the ride was fun (but also because I didn’t fall out).

Would I do it again? Maybe. Is scaredy-cat me glad she went? YES! YES! YES! (Too bad the rafting guides can’t hear me, eh?)

Blame Canada!