Friendship

In 1990, during my junior year of high school, I was fortunate to be chosen to attend a six week summer governor’s school. It was a huge honor to be selected and I was excited to attend. I don’t recall having any nerves leading up to the drop off day, but I suppose there must have been, surely.

The program, called Governor’s Honors, was held on a college campus about five hours away from my hometown, way down in south Georgia. I was chosen for English, or Communicative Arts, or Comm Arts, or in the way of “subversive” teens everywhere, Commies. There was a guy from my school, a friend of mine even, who was there the same summer, but I literally do not recall seeing him a single time. He was in Social Studies though, also known as a Soc Stud¹ so maybe that had something to do with it.

My mother and I arrived on campus and someone must have directed me to my dorm and inside the hallway was a list of names and room numbers. As I approached the list another girl was approaching from the opposite direction. We consulted the list simultaneously and what were the odds, we were in the same room! Her name was (is) Natalie.

I don’t remember the early days, the getting-to-know-you phase. All I can remember is that we got along really well. ² She was tall and seemingly refined — like, I have a memory that may be wholly manufactured of her wearing a delicate pearl necklace most of the summer? Perhaps it was her height, but she could make a t-shirt and shorts look elegant and the summer humidity, horrible in south Georgia, did nothing to her hair while mine became a frizzy mess. She seemed polished in a way that I couldn’t verbalize at the time, but she had an earthy, almost profane sense of humor that belied her appearance and that kept me laughing all summer. Whenever we had to dress up for an event, she’d always say, “Does this make me look like a greenhorn?” Before leaving for said events, she’d check the mirror and check for the need to do a “boogerotomy.” Relatedly, of Polish heritage, she taught me the polish word for “booger.”³ And she could cuss like a sailor, a habit I definitely picked up. I had never really known anyone before who could deploy an F-bomb so appropriately. It can be a very satisfying word to say. We were both Comm Arts majors, but in different subgroups, and I don’t remember what her minor was — mine was art — but maybe that was enough separateness in our togetherness to keep us on friendly terms for the entire summer. We had a blast and I cried my eyes out when it was time to go home.

You might think this is where I tell you we lost touch, but we didn’t. This was pre-cell phone (obvs), but we talked on the real phone and Natalie wrote me wonderful, newsy letters in her beautiful scrawling handwriting that I still have and cherish. In March of the following year, my senior year of high school, I drove four hours to visit her⁴ and we braved, briefly, River Street in Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day. That June she went with me and my best friend from high school to the beach for our senior trip, and then that fall we both went to the same college. We hung out, but she didn’t like the school, wasn’t sure it was a good fit for her, and so she moved back home. But still, we stayed in touch. I went to visit her again over that Christmas as I recall, and she wrote me letters again. Did I write her? I have no idea, I hope so, but as I mentioned above, her letters are one of my most cherished possessions.

We did finally lose touch, though. I had moved to Hilton Head and she had gone to nursing school. I have a memory of our “last” phone call. I called to tell her I was getting married, and she told me she was moving to Pennsylvania to go to med school. I buried myself in newlywed life and she buried herself in med school. Communication wasn’t as easy then, and we lost one another.

I thought about her a lot, though. My husband and I moved a few times early in our marriage and I’d inevitably come across her letters during a move and I’d read them and laugh and miss her terribly. She was so present on the page. Computers and the internet were still relatively new at the time but you may recall that information about people wasn’t as readily or easily available as it is now. I’d search her name periodically, but was never able to find anything.

I was a little late to the party, but in 2009 I finally joined Facebook and every now and then I would search for her, only to come up empty-handed. And then, finally, one day she was there! I sent her a message and within a couple of hours there was a return message. We made plans to meet in a town that was about halfway between the two of us, and we spent the weekend there catching up on the intervening decade. People say it was like no time had passed, but it was true.

Since that time, we get together at least once a year, though both of us would like for it to be more, and we talk on the phone. When we get together we talk non-stop. I wish I had some photos of us to share, but when we’re together time flies and it’s only when we’re texting afterward that we say, “dammit, we didn’t take any pictures.” One year when we were together she played a joke on me using a fake plastic cockroach that still makes me laugh out loud when I think about it.

You might wonder why I’m writing this paean to my friend. We talked on the phone over the weekend, and we are both in the “sandwich” time of our lives, so she is on my heart and my mind. My mother used to get what she called “love glows” and she would feel compelled to give me a kiss or a hug. As a teenager, I didn’t really understand that feeling, but I do now. It’s when you’re so overcome with a positive feeling about someone or something that you just have to show it and that’s what this is.

When you’re separated from someone for so many years, you never know who they might become in the interval, and plenty of us have “lost” people that we loved in the last several years due to discovering that they have different political (moral) beliefs, and I can’t imagine the grief I’d feel if I lost her. But Natalie has stayed the same. I mean, obviously she has grown and changed — she has lived — but at her core she is still the same good, funny, person. And she is such a gift to me, her friendship is a gift, and I love her so I just wanted to tell her.

1. Soc was pronounced “sock,” though, not “sosh” like the Socs in The Outsiders.

2. I can really only recall one brief argument and I can’t even remember what started it, but I think it only lasted maybe an afternoon?

3. Sadly, I no longer remember it.

4. Using an atlas and no cell phone! And there was a crazy adventure involving me locking my keys in my car and having to mediate between dueling locksmiths!