“When did you get that freckle on your eye?”
I laugh and hug her. How had she even taken a good look at me? She’d climbed out of her responsible silver four-door (the Ford Ranger of our college days long since traded in), handed me the baby and at once took stock of three years change. My hair is longer I have a freckle on my left eye.
She is still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen up close.
“I am so glad to see you.” Over the two days we spend together, I will say it at least dozen times — in between exclamations of how ridiculously gorgeous her child is. Those eyes! That laugh! Those ears! Are you sure he’s yours?
***
I hitch my skirt between my knees (the better to reach the clutch, my dear) and drive out to her home in the desert near the West Mountains. Instantly domesticated, I change diapers and mix rice cereal while she makes last-minute preparations for tonight’s show. Her husband’s band is opening for LeAnn Rimes, and the missus is a whirlwind of cowboy boots and diaper bags. In her father-in-law’s suite at the venue, we will link arms and sing along, Amber using an Evenflow baby bottle as a mic.
***
“What perfume do you wear now?”
In the quiet of the post-concert car ride, a tuckered out babe sleeps in the backseat, while we do some more catching up. What perfume? It’s so like Amber to want to know the details. There’s absolutely no tedium to her questioning, though, and in the twelve years we’ve been friends, I have never been able to help but gorge myself on her attention. Making people feel wanted is her talent.
She wants to know about subways and parties and shopping. I want to know about childbirth.
“I was so scared, Heather. I cried all the way to the hospital, that’s how scared I was.”
Then we spend the rest of the ride playing Remember When. The time we drove to Vegas for just for a burger. The time I tortured her OCD boyfriend by stepping on his shoes. The only time we ever fought in college.
When we get home, we retire to the office at the front of the house (it’s fairly safe to say that there were more rooms in her home than total square feet in my apartment). I download photos of the baby (it’s the closest I’ll come to smuggling him home with me) and chat with Wes while Amber flips through an Avon catalog. I tell Wes about my envy of the house in the desert, my shame at knowing the words to at least four LeAnn Rimes songs, and all things Amber.
“How old is Manber?”
I relay his question and Amber crinkles her nose and laughs. Manber! She can’t wait to call her husband that when he gets home. Later, he will ask if Manber is good enough for my best friend. I’ll think about the morning I left, Manber looking up from the Sunday paper when he overhears us talking about my brother’s truck. I tell him about the funny sound and the acceleration problem. We talk diagnosis and I smile, remembering what it’s like to date men who know practical things. He tells me to call if I have problems on the way home. He then prods Amber into visiting New York in the fall.
“Oh yes,” I’ll tell him. “He’s good enough. He’s wonderful.”
***
There isn’t a big production when we say goodbye that morning. I kiss the baby, blow a raspberry on his belly for good measure and hug his mother. I should have hugged her harder, because the instant my door is closed, I miss her intensely.
***
I’ve always been of the mind that absence – unlike the saying – does not make the heart grow fonder, so much as it makes people forget. People become ideals or demons – the reality of a person blurred by hours, years and miles between them. Meaning gets lost, too. But on my ride back to the southern valley on Sunday morning, I changed my mind. If I’d put Amber on a pedestal all these years, I’d found no reason to take her down from it. Our friendship had not rusted at all over time. I guess I realized that, for people who really matter to each other, absence makes no difference whatsoever.
this was beautiful. i am going to go book tickets to visit my best friend right now. partly because i miss her and partly because every time we get together it is as if no time has passed.
Yes, this is beautiful. It makes me want to hug my best friend. I think I’ll give her a call
I just happened to read this after booking a flight to see my best friend : )
It’s nice to know that the good ones are always there, even if far away.
Thanks for the lovely break from the day.
I have to say I like your blogs. I like this most recent blog the most. It made me think of all those “friends” I have long since discarded knowing full well that their friendship did not mean more than the time spent at a party in college. For the friends I have kept and since met, I treasure them. You are right. Absense makes no difference for when you see great friends again, you start off where you last ended and just fill in the space with more memories and laughter.
so well said. thanks for sharing.
once again, i’m in tears after reading your post. *sniff sniff*
that was beautiful!
that’s beautiful. the tone of the writing really reflected your emotions here too. excellent. also, you are so lucky to have a friendship like this.
Um, still waiting for you to write a book…
*hands on hips,taping foot*
You’ve got some power, Miss Fish. I just sent an email to my best friend in CA asking her what weekend she’s free this fall to host me for a quick visit, then I click over to your site and find this.
I love your post. You have a good way to communicate the way we all feel. My friends and I all have that love, that job, those friends ect..
But, this post is beautiful. Time stands still with a true friendship.
How do you always put words to so many deep emotions!? You are incredibly gifted, Fish. Incredibly.
true friends are the ones you can see everyday, or not for ten years and you are always happy to see each other and have lots to talk about. great post!
I really agree, and as we travel further apart, I think of it as more places to visit!
Beautiful, especially the last bit.
Seriously, the fact that you are not writing bestselling novels is unfathomable to me. The only positive is that if you were a famous writer, you might stop writing this blog everday. Which would, really, in all seriousness, probably make me cry. Like a baby. For weeks.
Thank you for sharing. Like every comment above mine, I understand those feelings. The anticipation of planning to reconnect with an old friend, the joy of spending the time together, and then the unexpected/to be expected sting of saying goodbye again.
Thanks for saying it the way we all wish we could.
“Absence is to love what wind is to fire, it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.”
I think it is a maxim of de Rochefoucauld and how true it is.
You’re right, people who really matter to each other can definitly beat distance. But nevertheless, I wish I wasn’t 2000 km away from my boyfriend. Cause absence does make things different.
Your header blurb (woman needing man) is so wrong. How are you surviving
Okay now I am officially scared of childbirth. I stopped at that part. heheh
Wow. This is a wonderful post. And even though I don’t know you, I can say I now know 4 people who have eye freckles. I have one in my eye as well.
ha. I have an eye freckle too – my own mother often tells me that I have an ‘eye sleepy’ there.
“I think that it’s a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned.”
How wonderful to realize the value of a great friendship. And how lucky we are that you have the gifts to make us understand that!
Beautiful.