My friend from college came to visit. We lived in an old house in Bellingham when we were 19. There were five girls, and lots of drama, and 80's dance parties, and lots of stir fry and potlucks where everybody brought chips, and always some random hippie guy sleeping on the couch. The funniest part is that half the time, no one actually knew who the guy on the couch was. He was a friend of a friend on a trail crew, or a traveling bluegrass busker, or some guy a roommate had met at the grocery store on Vashon island. I remember how one of my roommates was vegan at the time, and I use to sneak downstairs at night and eat hot dogs with the other redhead who lived the house. Red head hot dog.
My friend taught me how to salsa dance, and when she made peanut butter toast there was always, inexplicably, jam on the cabinets. Once for Halloween she dressed up like a piece of poop, put hershey chocolate on her lips, and made out with a drunken pirate around a campfire.
Our lives in past nine years have diverged wildly- living in different cities, traveling different countries, and spending many years apart.
Three summers ago she took me and another one of our old college roommates on a fantastic road trip through the mountains of New Mexico, and we drank tequila and met an older Native American couple who sold us a beautiful small pot and gave us pieces of homemade cherry pie, and we ate them in the car and got weepy thinking about our grandmothers.
So, a few weeks ago my friend landed in Austin, here for a break from midwifery school, and after she met Guthrie and gave him lots of treats and pets we sat on the porch and drank whiskey together. We went to the bar down the road, and ate free popcorn, and marveled at how the time had passed.
We had a fabulous visit, full of adventure. That first night we hopped on our bikes around midnight in order to catch the last half of a late night Sean Hayes concert in downtown Austin, in the upstairs of a fancy BBQ restaurant. It was perfect.
On the day before she left, we loaded two canoes onto the top of Steven's truck and drove with his twin brother down to San Marcos, where we spent the day paddling 9 miles down the river. She loved it- we drank beers, though we lost the good IPA when one of the boats flipped. We saw the turtles, and the pretty trees, and at the end of the day Steven found a t-shirt that said, "If you're gonna smoke, smoke salmon."
We had dinner that night at a BBQ restaurant in Austin called Green Mesquite. The walls were covered in funny posters and quippy bumper stickers. We had plates loaded with potato salad, brisket, and sausage, and there was pecan pie with blue bell ice cream for desert. Above the doorway was a old "hippies use side door," sign, but they had replaced the last half of the first word, exchanging "pies" for "sters". A sign of the times.
When my friend left I felt sad- that little hollow lonely space that rings when you leave the company of a good friend. The truth is that not all of us ladies who lived together in that old blue house on the hill are still close, but we shared such a particular moment together, and saw one another through so much.
Being in a new city, it was such a blessing to have someone stay with me who knows me in such a tender, funny, increasingly profound way. When my friend met me, my idea of cooking was making pasta and eating it with bread, and the one time I tried to saute garlic I burned the ever loving shit out of it. Now I can make things like pot roast and apple cake and potato leek soup, and now she is learning to catch babies and I am far away from my childhood home. This little piece of writing goes out to her- to our old friends, our lasting memories, to those folks in our lives who never will be asked to use the side door.
