My Past, Present

I had dinner tonight with a dear old friend, a girl I met when I was 8 years old and new at Annunciation Catholic School. I was in 2nd grade and when I met Kate, I realized that I wasn’t the only little girl who loved old books, journals, ancient Egypt, museums, historical fiction, tea, and all things British. Kate and I were a match, right down to our matching haircuts: lank bobs with bangs and hair so fine that our ears often poked right through.

My memories of Kate conjure up the sweet and somehow woodsy scent of her parents’ Southwest Minneapolis home, the scratchy feel of my uniform jumper against my sensitive skin, the shared excitement over a new American Girl book, the feeling of total obsession over hieroglyphics.

Kate and I had active imaginations, which, when you think of it, means that the basis of our friendship was pretty much lies. Because honestly, we WERE NOT teenage aristocrats who happened to wash ashore on a deserted island with the wonderful luck of having our servant girl (Kate’s younger sister) survive the wreck and fall into her former social role, happily sweeping out our quaint but well-appointed grass hut and cooking up delicious acorn stews. No, no. We were awkward children wearing fine-knit turtlenecks and polar fleece huddling in the backyard and carrying around buckets of sewage. But oh, was it fun.

But here we were, meeting up for dinner. Just barely, as I had gone to the Haru on the Upper West Side while Kate sat at a table at Haru on the Upper East Side awaiting my arrival. In true Law & Order style Kate got a cab and cut across the park, leaving JUST ENOUGH TIME for her to distance herself from the murder victim…

The best part about dinner with a really old friend is that the dinner conversation is able to meander in a different way from any other friend. The hurried greeting and recap of the daily/weekly/monthly frustrations is punctuated evenly with reminiscences of a shared past, forgotten memories that color the present with a new sense of humor.

As children, we had imagined that our lives would be spent as archaeologists or, if all else fell through, as writers. I guess all else did fall through, because instead of uncovered ancient Egyptian ruins or doing press junkets for our latest novels, we were having unbelievably delicious desserts at Lalo. We were all growsed up.

Yes, all growsed up but not done dreaming. The light in Lalo casts an ethereal glow over the streets outside, and as the restaurant grew more crowded with hungry grown-ups seeking their desserts, our talk turned to the future. The city, we decided, gives you Farm Fantasy. The urge to run to the end of the Earth, or at least to Vermont. To live in a large house with a wraparound porch. To make lemonade. To grow our own vegetables. To bake cakes with your children. To craft. To fall asleep with the sounds of crickets and cicadas instead of the moans of sick pigeons and the honking of taxi-cabs.

Combined, Kate and I have already wandered over 6 continents and too many countries to count. We’ve woken up in other countries while our parents in Minnesota were just turning in for the night. Now we’ve settled here, but our minds are still wandering. Still dreaming, but in a different scope. In many ways, the world holds more possibility now than it ever did when I was 8, when my world was defined so clearly by Rand McNally maps and Louisa may Alcott.

As I walked home, I caught a familiar scent in the air, the faint beginnings of summer swirling through the nighttime streets, curling around streetlights and sneaking into bedrooms to keep young children awake. The scent of possibility.

*Title of post blatantly thieved from a short story and blog by Ryan.