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reflections
Jun. 10th, 2010 04:11 amThere are some anniversaries you don't really mark exactly--little things that end up changing your life. This was definitely one of them,
I know it was summer, and hot and humid, and I was miserable being outdoors, alone, and out of place. To add insult to injury, I was 13. Beyond that, I couldn't give you a month or day. I can only assure you that I, a relative unbeliever and firm devotee of air-conditioning, believed that the last place on Earth I wanted to be was at a Youth Group cookout.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
I can tell you that a giant came from out of nowhere, sat down, and started talking to me, and that I firmly believe my life since then has gone differently than it would have otherwise. At the time I was hideously embarrassed and didn't know what to do with myself, which I must admit has been something of a common theme over the years. Besides that, I can't really remember much. You would have to ask him what we talked about, or why he came over in the first place. I'm sure I used to know, but time and handling have long ago worn away the details.
I can tell you that it was a good summer, despite the heat, and that I looked forward to Youth Group for entirely secular reasons. I was happy. I was learning just how much it was possible to like and love someone who was almost a total stranger, someone completely unrelated to me by family ties. I was forming the relationship that, in its way, provided the basis for all the friends I now think of as an extended, informal family--people you have to love even when you can't stand them.
Not all of those relationships have gone through quite so many strange permutations as that first one has for me, of course. If they had, I'd be lucky to have any friends left at all.
Nothing good lasts forever, of course, and some of the following years were miserable, terrible, awful, no good years between us. Oddly enough, I can't remember a lot of the details there, despite my dreadful self-involvement. With a few notable exceptions (like an abandonment complex you could house a pretty good-sized bureaucracy in), those days have passed away into the obscurity of time, and the related recriminations with them.
On the other hand, some of those years were good. I learned that I like to make my friends laugh, that I can be kind without being weak, and that what I love more than anything is really awful jokes and the men who tell them. I don't know what he remembers about the good times, but I bet we can agree on which they were.
The past couple of years (or is it three? so easy to lose track) have been, to my mind, almost unalloyed good. I don't know what to say about that except thank you, because I'm sure that I've only gotten more difficult, not less, since that first muggy summer evening.
This summer, just as miserably sticky and mosquito-infested as that one I remember, I'm 23. I don't know what happens next. I don't know it will be like when I'm 33, looking back. I don't know if we'll be close or speaking or just two people who drifted apart long ago. I do know that no matter what happens or how complicated the relationship, family is family, and I know that I am damn hard to get rid of.
I do know that I am deeply, humblingly grateful for all the years between then and now, for the friendship of a man who has so much influenced who and what I am. I would not trade a minute of it for something easier.
I know it was summer, and hot and humid, and I was miserable being outdoors, alone, and out of place. To add insult to injury, I was 13. Beyond that, I couldn't give you a month or day. I can only assure you that I, a relative unbeliever and firm devotee of air-conditioning, believed that the last place on Earth I wanted to be was at a Youth Group cookout.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
I can tell you that a giant came from out of nowhere, sat down, and started talking to me, and that I firmly believe my life since then has gone differently than it would have otherwise. At the time I was hideously embarrassed and didn't know what to do with myself, which I must admit has been something of a common theme over the years. Besides that, I can't really remember much. You would have to ask him what we talked about, or why he came over in the first place. I'm sure I used to know, but time and handling have long ago worn away the details.
I can tell you that it was a good summer, despite the heat, and that I looked forward to Youth Group for entirely secular reasons. I was happy. I was learning just how much it was possible to like and love someone who was almost a total stranger, someone completely unrelated to me by family ties. I was forming the relationship that, in its way, provided the basis for all the friends I now think of as an extended, informal family--people you have to love even when you can't stand them.
Not all of those relationships have gone through quite so many strange permutations as that first one has for me, of course. If they had, I'd be lucky to have any friends left at all.
Nothing good lasts forever, of course, and some of the following years were miserable, terrible, awful, no good years between us. Oddly enough, I can't remember a lot of the details there, despite my dreadful self-involvement. With a few notable exceptions (like an abandonment complex you could house a pretty good-sized bureaucracy in), those days have passed away into the obscurity of time, and the related recriminations with them.
On the other hand, some of those years were good. I learned that I like to make my friends laugh, that I can be kind without being weak, and that what I love more than anything is really awful jokes and the men who tell them. I don't know what he remembers about the good times, but I bet we can agree on which they were.
The past couple of years (or is it three? so easy to lose track) have been, to my mind, almost unalloyed good. I don't know what to say about that except thank you, because I'm sure that I've only gotten more difficult, not less, since that first muggy summer evening.
This summer, just as miserably sticky and mosquito-infested as that one I remember, I'm 23. I don't know what happens next. I don't know it will be like when I'm 33, looking back. I don't know if we'll be close or speaking or just two people who drifted apart long ago. I do know that no matter what happens or how complicated the relationship, family is family, and I know that I am damn hard to get rid of.
I do know that I am deeply, humblingly grateful for all the years between then and now, for the friendship of a man who has so much influenced who and what I am. I would not trade a minute of it for something easier.
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