A Blank Page Everyday

Seeing how I cannot seem to bring myself to spend the time creating a new blog home, I guess I will continue writing here. That is, at least, for awhile.

Returning now, to where we once were:

The construct (which is a word I like a lot, by the way, after years of it being drilled into my head by literature professors) of the day I revisited my friend wasn’t much different than visits in the past. As in many friendships, I found myself calmly surrendering, moment by moment, so that the reunion could actually happen. Simple as it were, the conditions on how we were to meet up changed at the last minute. Unlike the rigid tendency of lasting relationships and others saturated with disappointment, I politely obliged. The point was, and as it should likely be in any friendship, to spend time  together. It’s hard to catch up on six years in just a couple hours. 

She couldn’t believe it had been six years, she said, as we hopped in the car to visit her eldest child’s school. A treat, I thought to see this girl who, herself, was six years old when I first met her. College is now just around the corner and I grappled with the very thought of that. Then, I had to pause and remember that I was 19 then, and I am certainly not 19 anymore.

“Let me just tell you,” she said as we pulled out of the driveway. That’s how the conversations begin. I listened for a few minutes, and also talked, about my own circumstance and how things had evolved over the past few years. Although, we both only really focused on recent months. The situations were different but the themes were the same: heartache, growth, discovery, and hope. When is it really ever different?

“I am so tired,” she was saying. It sounded so familiar.

Ten, maybe eleven, years earlier I remember driving East on a freeway in very similar, but not so similar, circumstances. We intended to spend time together, but the course of the day changed, and I went along for errands and chores and what not. I went, just so what would normally be a forty-five minute to an hour visit could actually happen. It just took about three hours. 

Yes, I talked too. Just not as much as I used to.

         A blank page looks a lot like what a real friendship is, friendships of all kinds and varying degrees of time spent. 

Years earlier, as I previously discussed, my college roommate and I celebrated in denial of the discovery that we were friends. Yet, just because we had this very honest realization didn’t mean we suddenly understood it. Nor did it mean that it, this friendship (or any, for that matter), would be easy.

These two friendships are entirely different but incredibly parallel. I was discovering one as I was discovering the other, and it hurt the growth of both.

I think I was in denial of that, too.

“You’re never home,” or something to that effect, said my college roommate to me on the cell phone as I was driving home from my other friend’s house. I was never home because I was either at school, like she was, or at work part time, or babysitting. It was true I was hardly ever home. Then, when that phone call was made, I didn’t understand or feel the emotional significance of that statement. Looking back, it has a deep meaning when I recall being the one who used to fetch ice cream for bad days and stay up all night laughing and giggling when things were funny. It is true, I did not have time, nor did I make time, for that anymore. 

There’s no use on wasting time on guilt, nor do I have any regrets. I just thank God I have both these friends today. 

You get a blank page with real friendships. You get a blank page everyday.