Home Town Memorial

   Yesterday I went to a memorial service in my home town. The town on Long Island where I grew up and made my first friends. A place I miss and a place that feels like a dream when I return, parts of it so familiar and parts of it transformed and new, thinner in places and lusher in others. 

   Yesterday, I returned to be with one of my first friends. To stand watch like a knight on a chess board, to protect the air around her and see, hear and feel the day at her side. We were there for her mother's memorial.

   It felt important to be solid. I felt like I was willing my cells to hold tighter to each other, not to let any space move between them. Hold still and hold fast, do not melt, do not flit, or dissipate. Do not weep.

   Her family was so beautiful, wild and funny, and linked like golden chain. Each of them a gold loop bound to the other that wound around the room. Her mother's childhood friends were like a witches coven that sat in a tight circle of twelve after the service, their knees touching, taking notes, backs straight, listening to each other talk. They looked like they were planning a revolution, probably having more to do with literature and gardening.

   My mother died in the same town. In her own home. From cancer too. It was a long time ago. When she died, I drifted out into my life, my line cut, grasping at branches, searching for a path in a wood that seemed too overgrown and not the one I was prepared for. And I find myself now in what feels like a place very far from home. Like I have fallen through a portal into another time and space. But sometimes, the portal opens back up and I can step gently through for a little while and see where I came from and sometimes I am even met by friends who knew me then. Friends who knew me and somehow, magically, still do. Time travelers,  dream walkers, all of them.

   I have gone back to my childhood home, where I lived with my mother. It belongs to someone else now and everything in it has changed. The walls have moved. The colors, the light, the smells, the trees, all different. It seems smaller. And ruined. I cannot go home, after all. That home is gone.

   I stayed with my friend at the memorial and I waited. Wanting to be there as long as she needed me, as long as she'd let me be there to hold the space around her. Just to wait. To be and to wait. To be ready for anything or nothing. Whatever she needed.

   When most everyone had gone home, some of us went back with her to her childhood home, still her Father's place. The same one I had spent so much time in as a little girl and a young woman. It was as I remembered it. It was as I remembered it.... It is still there. Like a capsule, also like a dream, the same and different at the same time. It's an incredible thing to me.

   Her father walked past me with purpose, through the house, asking loudly, "What does everyone want?" We could have all been children at a sleepover. We had been a minute ago. And there stood my friend's younger sister with a menu from Gino's. The same place they ordered from when we were kids. 

  Her younger brother and sister are adults now but I could still see the little kids they were. Like looking at small children in adult costumes. Age progression holograms.

   We stood around the table, I beside my good and dear friend, listening to her talk. Pulling daisies out of a vase, splitting the stems, turning my fingernails green and lacing flower after flower together. I placed a daisy crown on her head. My beautiful friend, with her joy in place, her heart full and tender, sipping white wine, debating with her sister at her side, who was the favored child. The wine buoying her like a float in a pool. Glad she did not have to tread water, let her float. And I rest my arms on the side of her float and look up at her, my legs moving through the water. She tells me about me, like she's gazing into a crystal ball, finding me there.  She is love and she has always been there and vows to always be. I am lifted.

    She is so smart. She is strong and confident. She is whole and capable. And she loves me anyway. Before I go, she tells me, with tears in her eyes, how proud my mother would be of me. And it is all I can do to hold my cells together at all. Not to fall through the floor into the basement and disperse, soaked up by concrete, fizzling into it's pores. We sit on her mother's white couch, in her mother's beautiful living room, surrounded by books and her mother's beautiful things. Our Mother's daughters. Both of us now mothers of our own sons. Looking into each other's eyes, holding hands. I came to take care of her and she took care of me right back.

   There are few things as magical and valuable as old friends. People who can look at you and see you as you are and at the same time, see you as you were. All of the you in between.

   Mothers are this way. They see you wholly. And when that sight is gone, you can find it in an old friend's eyes and return it with a full heart. It is a treasure to hold onto. For as long as you can.

   When I left, she walked me to the door and leaned out into the night. I walked down her parent's front walk in the dark. "You're a good one," she called out to me. "So are you," I answered. And we are. We are good and our mother's would be proud.