friendship – Dog-eared Stories

shadows

will you see my shadow in the grass when i’m gone

will it move and stretch in the mid-day’s sun

will it disappear in the shrouds of the junipers’ limbs

will you see it in the changing light of all that’s been

will you hear my words in the strong, spring gusts

or catch remnants of my footsteps in the Arizona dust

will the love i tried to nurture here go unfed

will the times i felt i failed you ever leave my head

will the moments that i gave so freely of my heart

be a warm, welcome memory, or lost within the dark

of selfish wants of worthless things

which made us forget the bounty love brings

i will look for your shadow in the change that lies ahead

i will listen for your laughter and will think of you my friend

and if you see my shadow roaming through the neighborhood

i hope you smile and recollect that all that was, was good

Within Close Range: Betsy’s Dad’s Den

Each time I lit the candle gifted me, a rich, earthy fragrance brought forward hazy memories.

Vague images which came briefly into view and then vanished amid so many forgotten days.

I’d light the candle and back they’d come.

Out of focus, but strong.

One day, with the faint but familiar fragrance still in the air, still teasing my will-menopause-ever-end-addled mind, I reached for the candle and turned it over, hoping the label would reveal something – anything – that might re-animate these mislaid memories.

There was my answer.

Pipe tobacco.

And Mr. Gould’s suddenly den came into focus.

Tucked in the corner of the Gould’s old, grey-green, two chimney, Colonial, which sat a short block from the edge of Lake Michigan.

You could find it by heading straight east down Scranton Avenue, the main street of Lake Bluff’s hardly-a-downtown business district.

The old house sat in a quiet spot amid tree-filled lots and winding ravines and looked as if it had been there almost as long as the trees which towered over it.

Stepping into the Gould’s house was like stepping out from the Way Back Machine with Mr. Peabody.

Everything – from its old plaster and uneven, wood floors, to its cozy nooks and small, sunlit rooms filled with old things – incited my imagination.

And oh, the kitchen – old bricks and beams – always smelling of fresh-baked bread.

Betsy and I would cut thick slices off a golden brown loaf cooling on the tall counter and sink our teeth into the still warm, chewy insides that hinted of honey and butter and left our fingers powdered with flour.

And my stomach hungry for more.

With the final crusts stuffed into our mouths, we’d climb the steep, narrow, crooked flight of stairs to Betsy’s room, straight ahead.

Two rooms, really. One being her bedroom, the other a small, summer, sleeping porch with northwest walls of old, paned windows; where generations of restless sleepers sought lake breezes during the dependably hot and humid Midwest summer nights.

Cots and cotton nightgowns.

Late summer sun and the strident thrum of crickets.

Another time still haunted the corners of this room.

Before the piles of fabric, patterns, and sewing stuff cluttered the small, bright space at the corner of the Gould’s old, grey-green, two chimney, Colonial near the lake.

We’d spread out across Betsy’s high bed and talk dreamily about our four favorite men: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Spinning their albums until daylight left and my ride home appeared at the front door.

The rest of the upstairs was a mystery to me, being two-thirds occupied by teen brothers, whose rare appearances and even rarer visits to Betsy’s room usually lasted briefly and annoyed her thoroughly.

It simply scared the shit out of me.

On occasion, when Betsy sought out her dad during my visits, we’d wander back down the creaky, old stairs, through the dark front entry hall (which no one ever seemed to enter) to the only place I ever recall seeing Betsy’s dad.

His den.

With a timid rap on the solid, old door, we’d hear his gentle voice give permission to enter this space.

His special place.

His sanctuary.

And it was here, as the door opened and I entered behind my best friend, that the smell of sweet and spicy, earthy and smoky, became a part of me.

As did the sight of Mr. Gould at his desk.

Smoking his pipe.

Sweatered, like the perfect professor.

Ever engaging his hands and his mind.

Creating.

Drawing.

Building dreams.

And ships in bottles.

Magnificent, masted vessels of extraordinary detail. Masterfully and meticulously constructed, painted and engineered within ridiculously constrained confines.

When finished, each ship would join the miniature armada that floated on a sea of books on wooden shelves, near paneled walls, and paned windows with mustard drapes; above a glass-topped coffee table filled with shells and sticky sand from spilled milks.

Each night (Betsy would tell me), without fail, her dad would close those long, mustard-colored curtains overlooking Scranton Avenue and sit at his desk to busy his hands and block out the world.

Yet each and every time a car drove past, she found it most mysterious that her dad would stop what he was doing, draw the drapes back – just enough to watch the car pass – and then close them again and return to his task.

And his deliciously fragrant pipe.

And his secret snacks – Pepsi and Fritos – hidden beneath his desk.

And there he’d stay, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, making beautiful things for make-believe worlds.

I could have sat in there for hours exploring the books, the shelves, the bottles, and the mind of a quiet, creative man.

All of which were out of reach.

Yet now reach out.

Calling me back to the old, grey-green, two-chimney, Colonial on Scranton Avenue.

To Betsy’s dad’s den.

To his ships and his pipe.

And the sweet aroma.

To fresh baked bread.

And lazy afternoons.

With best friends.

Done is Done

Away they go,

one by one.

Change is change.

Done is done.

Years go by.

Wrinkles arrive.

Needs and wants

don’t always jibe.

Some folk never get enough.

Give too little.

Troubled trust.

Throw that bond

right under the bus.

Time no longer shelters “us”.

Those who once

were all as one.

Away they go.

And done

is done.

Within Close Range: The Neighborhood

Just northwest of Chicago, in Deerfield, Illinois, King’s Cove is 1960s, middle-class suburbia, where Good Humor trucks and men in white hats sell Chocolate Eclair bars with the solid chocolate centers, as they jingle past weedless, well-mown lawns and small, tree-filled lots; where neighbors are friends, your best friends are neighbors, and school is the next block over.

Our house in King’s Cove is an unmistakable yellow, like hard-boiled egg yolk, as is the wood grain panelling on the side of the Grand Safari station wagon after Mark, a paint can, and a brush are left unattended. And even though it’s small for seven, it never feels crowded, except in the one, tiny bathroom we kids share. All tangles and toothpaste.

Our yolky Colonial has all that we need, all that we know: a small front yard with a tiny patch of grass and a newly planted tree, a split rail fence, and a lawn in back. Dad built a treehouse here, where my best friends, Cherie Dusare and Lynn Bubear, and I hoist the ladder, shut the trap door, and nurture our first true friendships, formed by first experiences.

And I begin to discover the courage to find my own voice among the din of four siblings. No longer contented by blanket and thumb and going quietly unnoticed in our tiny world of well-worn paths through quiet backyards, which lead to school and monkey bars, and friends the next street over; where each winter, the Jayne’s sloping lawn next door turns to a sledding hill and every summer, the Beak’s back patio and mossy garden pond come alive in the shade of the trees.

I like to sit on the small, stone, vine-covered wall and watch big-eyed frogs, bold chipmunks and bright orange koi go about their business of being beside the small, trickling waterfall, in the dark, green garden of this house on the corner.

Across the street live Amy and Abbey, the dark-haired twins – and my friends – who dress the same and make me wonder what it would be like to see another… be another me?

But my best friends live at the other end of the block where the three of us sneak into the Dusare’s paneled living room, enticed by taboo and a best friend’s promise of seeing a picture of naked men.

Tip-toeing and giggling as we cross the shag carpeting, socks and static electricity spark already heightened senses. Cherie knows exactly where the album is in the long, low, hi-fi cabinet with the accordion door. She grabs it and holds it to her chest, scanning the scene signs of adults.

My heart beats through my crocheted vest. This is my apple. I take my first bite.

Thanks to dim, red lighting and well-placed fog machines it’s little more than a nibble. But my curiosity is peaked, and it’s my very first secret to keep with my first best friends from the neighborhood.

Within Close Range: Stanley

Having had enough of Florida’s winter fun and sun for the. day, I’m sitting in front of the television in Nonnie and Papa’s 18th story living room, when the doorbell rings. Papa’s back at his store in Chicago and Nonnie’s in the kitchen making lunch, so I shuffle across the plush wall to wall, to the large double-doors.

And there, on the other side, stands a tall, slender figure with short, blonde hair and frosted highlights; impeccably dressed in a pastel pink shirt, a flowered, silk kerchief, and crisp, white linen pants.

The stranger asks if Lenore is in.

I turn toward the kitchen and holler, “Nonnie, there’s some lady here to see you!”, before scrambling back to the television.

It’s the first time I’ve met Stanley, Nonnie’s friend (and hairdresser), who also happens to live in the same building with his boyfriend, Roger. I would have felt embarrassed after learning of my gender mistake, but according to Nonnie, he was never more complimented.

Not only is Stanley Nonnie’s most colorful and lively Florida companion – by far – but he can make her giggle more than anyone (besides my great aunts) I’ve ever seen. Even more intriguing is that Nonnie astonishingly and unreservedly gives Stanley center stage. (It’s hard not to.)

In return for stepping back from the preferred spotlight, Stanley showers Nonnie with adulation for her fashion sense, culinary skills, and interior design flare.

It’s a match made in heaven. (Even though Nonnie has to whisper a lot when it comes to talking about her new friend.)

At Stanley’s invitation, we visit their little slice of beach-side paradise two floors up.

It has the same exact layout as Nonnie and Papa’s, in reverse. But that isn’t what disorients me.

It’s the feeling that I’ve just entered another dimension where Nonnie’s alter ego is given free rein. Where, with unimpaired power, her better dressed Doppelgänger has adorned every nook and cranny, every floor and piece of furniture, with textile and tactile expanses of purple.

With chintz and animal prints.

Golden cupids and satin pillows.

Velvet love-seats and silk bed sheets.

And endless yards of draped chiffon.

Where opulent silk flower arrangements sits on every gilded credenza and a colorful porcelain dog, cat, or bird resides around every corner.

As Stanley sweeps from room to room with measured grace and exaggerated ease, Roger – a dark, quiet man (who left a wife and kids, and a lie behind) – stands in the background, smiling contentedly. Proud of his plush and private paradise, where he and Stanley are completely free.

Even though, to me, Stanley seems as free as he can be; floating ahead of us into the newly wall-papered kitchen.

Stepping in behind Nonnie, I first think the effect of the sun streaking through the large bay window overlooking the Atlantic is playing tricks on my eyes, until I realize the walls are choked with make-believe flowers of reds and yellows, oranges, pinks and whites, splattered against a dark purple backdrop – as if the Spring, or perhaps the Easter Bunny, had exploded.

It’s absolutely glorious.

And so is Stanley.

Within Close Range: Rocky

You came to Dad as a hired thug,
but found a mentor and friend instead.
And a family who adopted you like so many strays –
the scarred, the scared, the castaways.
Giving you shelter and a place at our table,
away from the streets, the violence and struggle.
Into our home and into our hearts,
like each lovable loser, you’re family now.
Showing duty and reverence to Mom and Dad,
you become a different creature with just us kids;
when you shadow box and dance in an imaginary ring,
reciting poems of your strength, your knock-outs, your wins.
Filling our minds with fact and fiction,
which is which hardly matters when told with conviction.
We hang on every word from your kind, but battered face
and marvel when you flex your “guns” and chew on broken glass.
Your prized possession is a gold championship belt –
that you sometimes like to wear when doing work.
Yet something tells me you’d give the belt away
if you could simply sit and draw all day.
Freeing your imagination and your wonderful art;
which colors the brutal truth of your life
and what you did for the sake of the dollar,
for food for your dog and bread for the table.
With a smile ear to ear and a clue in your eyes,
I sense your words are mostly lies
to camouflage the things you’ve seen,
the things you’ve done.
Thrust into this world misaligned and alone.
Third grade over and you were gone.
Fighting to survive, then fighting on demand.
Forced to do that with your gentle heart and creative hands.
While the real you, the sweet, curious and tender you,
would prefer to make art of comfort and meaning.
A good reason for being.
In your white t-shirt and rolled-up jeans
above ankle-high army boots and a head shaved clean.
you lean on a rake, on a break from your chores,
spinning glorious tales to the curious, young horde.

Within Close Range: Spring Break

My siblings and I burst onto the season like the first, rowdy chorus of Spring Peepers rising from the woodlands and wetlands, from the new growth and leafy debris. Noisily ascending. Anxious and energized after many dormant days, we find instant succor in the newness, in the re-gathering community; bolstered by the constant influx of free-wheeling teens.

Arriving at the house with a brand new,1978 Chevy pick-up truck filled with boys bent on seeing “what this baby can do” Jim quickly talks his best friend, Phil, into letting him behind the wheel. Caught up in the excitement, Chris and I follow, piling into the truck bed with the others and heading to the one place where its off-road ability can be properly tested, the golf course.

Of course.

Entering on the service road, Jim’s exaggerated twists and turns along the winding, gravel road quickly bore him, so veering from the narrow lane, we’re soon bouncing along the edge of the fairways, heading toward the woods and the short, very steep, ravine hills.

Failing to do the science of what might happen when rear tires meet level ground from a near forty-five degree incline is Jim’s biggest mistake that day. As soon as he starts down one of the small, steep hills, we helpless, hapless, truck bed accomplices sense things aren’t going to end well.

They don’t.

As the rear tires hit the ground from practically perpendicular, the truck bounces – hard – sending all bodies in back aloft.

Arms and legs flail.

Looks of surprise, morph into alarm.

Trying to break the fall, my right hand contacts the metal truck bed first, followed painfully by all other parts. When the pick-up finally comes to a standstill, everyone begins righting themselves, rubbing their bruises, and screaming at Jim.

Everyone except me.

I’m looking down at my arm… and my hand… which is no longer at the end of my wrist where I normally find it.

While the others continue to berate the driver, I cradle my arm and speak.

“You guys. I think my wrist is broken.”

No response. So, I say it a little louder and with a lot more conviction.

“You guys, my wrist is broken.”

Still unnoticed amid the verbal thrashing Jim’s receiving, I finally scream as loud as I can, ”YOU GUYS, MY WRIST IS BROKEN!”

All goes quiet and everyone turns my way.

“Anne’s wrist is broken,” Chris suddenly screams, “and she’s bleeding all over the place!”

I’m not.

Jim and Phil leap from the front cab to find those in the back surrounding me, shuddering and exhaling, “Whoa!” and “Holy crap!”

It seems that on impact, the bones attaching my arm to my hand snapped cleanly in two, and my hand – now detached beneath unbroken skin – has been forced from its usual place and lay awkwardly on top of my wrist, like a slab of raw meat in a rubber, flesh-toned glove.

Finding any movement enough to inspire hysteria, no one’s able to convince me to relocate to the cushioned front seat of the pick-up, so a couple of the boys closely flank me as I sit cross-legged, still cradling my unrecognizable arm.

As Jim very slowly and very gently steers a course for home, I try to concentrate on something else – the leaves still unfolding overhead, the gentle, spring sun. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. Then another. Immersing, ever briefly, in the wonderful smell of new grass.

And teen boys.

Pulling up to the garage just as Mom happens to be walking by, Chris jumps from the truck and with the subtlety of a crow in a cornfield blurts out, “Anne broke her wrist!”

(So much for Jim easing her into the bad news, as agreed upon moments prior.)

“Oo-oo-oo!” Mom says, jumping in place, and then into action, as only a mother of five can.

Gingerly lifted from the back of the pick-up and placed into the car, I turn to see my off-roading co-horts all sheepishly waving and smiling, except Jim, who’s having a hard time looking at me and looks miserable.

Which makes me feel slightly better.

At the emergency entrance, Mom tries to get me out of the car and to my feet, but I won’t – I can’t – for fear the slightest movement will make the pain unbearable, or even worse, that I’ll lose hold of my arm and have to witness my detached hand dangle.

Approaching the car, a handsome stranger, with a sweet voice and a smile to match, asks Mom if he can help, and before I have a chance to refuse, he lifts me from the car with an effortless swoop and carries me inside, where he gently sets me in a wheelchair, smiles, and disappears.

“That’s Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears,” the nurse smiles, but I know exactly who it is.

Welcomed back again to the emergency room (puberty has not been kind), I’m x-rayed by a sadist, drugged, yanked, drugged again, and eventually yanked back into place by the two attending doctors – the process of which finally becomes too much for Mom, who’s led from the room in a faint.

“I feel jush-fiiiiiiine,” I giggle, all tucked in my bed back at home, as I casually wave the heavy, plaster, arm-length cast (the first of two I’ll be toting for the entire, interminably itchy, sidelined summer), not bothering to notice Mom and Jim’s faces alluding to the pain and discomfort that’s sure to follow once the double dose of painkiller wears off.

“Itsh-okay, Jim,” I slobber with a smile, oblivious to the drool trickling from the side of my mouth, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

How could I be? Wracked with guilt about badly disfiguring me, he straightened my room, folded down my bed, and picked flowers for my bedside.

Unfortunately, like the pain meds, Jim’s sympathies and “too-injured-to-tease” policy won’t last through the night.

Within Close Range: Megan’s 1959 Split-level Ranch

In Megan’s bedroom, half a flight up the 1959 Split-level Ranch with pink brick and putty colored paint, I fidget with a funky, multi-colored fiber optic lamp, while she plays records and introduces me to jazz, and we wait for her parents to leave and best friends to descend upon the many leveled house.

We use the un-parented hours to nurture this hand-picked clan, filled with constantly morphing personalities birthed from overactive glands and imaginations, and recently recognized skills as poets, actors and musicians; as Pig Out Queens and Homecoming Queens, Make Out Queens and Dancing Queens.

Never enough crowns for all those Queens. Never enough time to be all the things, but always enough room on the dance floor. Though all signs point to clumsy and shy, my pelvic-thrusting friends are determined to try to make me Hustle and shake my groove thing in the ground-level living room of metallic gold and green.

Sweating and spinning and dipping. Air Band greats ever in the making. Drinking and joking and choking with laughter. Using voices and faces to find inner traces of people and places. Writing truly foul lyrics to sweet Christmas carols – using every nasty word we can muster to repulse and to fluster.

Years of piano lessons color the scene, mixing Joplin, Pachelbel and Winston into the frenetic hours of being girls, and being teens. Ceasing only long enough to ransack the family’s world of snacks in the very lowest level of Megan’s Split-level Ranch. Like chubby, pubescent picnic-bound ants.

A fairytale kingdom of infinite munchies. Tupperware and tins and tightly sealed snacks of caramels and pretzels and cookies – wafers and Fudge Stripes, shortbreads and sugar. Enough to make teens, with all their snacking needs, merry and me, ecstatic, for all the food my Mom’s cupboards have never seen.

Megan’s kitchen is where I first try it, but Mom refuses to buy it, so I look for this Chef Boyardee diet on other kitchen shelves. I like my SpaghettiOs straight from the can, finding the same comfort in it as in my friendships and the many hours spent at the 1959 Split-level Ranch, being terribly saucy, truly effortless, full of crap, and distinctly gratifying.

Within Close Range: Sledding

The toboggan’s scarred and battered prow, with its narrow strips of varnished wood, scratched, warped and dinged, attests to its long history of snowy campaigns.

Trees and rocks eternal foes.

Its red, vinyl pad, cracked and beaten. Its plastic rope ties ever-untying.

It takes little prodding to initiate sledding on the golf course near our home. After a few phone calls, friends from town gather at our back door with a variety of apparatus, ranging from plastic school lunch trays to super-duper downhill racers.

Like a procession of well laden ants, we head down Shoreacres Road and into the heart of winter with spirits high. During the mile or so journey to the ravines, the boys can’t wait for the final destination before throwing themselves and their sleds at slopes of snow – even the dingy, frozen piles left by the plows.

Cheeks crimson, noses dripping, devilish smiles rising, and big boots trudging heavily, they jettison themselves, scraping briefly atop the icy, roadside heap.

Undeterred, the flatter, frozen road ahead spawns another attempt, and the unsuspecting walking there find themselves not indirectly in the path of another misguided trajectory.

Leaving victims strewn in the wake, shouting obscenities, in between fits of laughter.

Crossing thigh-high snowdrifts, pushing against the penetrating Lake Michigan winds, we know there’s reward in the shelter of the woods. In the rise and fall of the ravines just ahead.

By the time the last of the stragglers arrive, bodies are already hurtling down the small, steep hills – feet first and head first – as untouched, uncharted snow is quickly trampled smooth and slick.

So the boys and their sleds can go fast and faster toward the woods below, laughing like hyena, until the next sound is cracking plastic. Followed by moans, grunts, more laughter… and a few more well chosen profanities.

More than slightly apprehensive to sled in tandem with these boy rocketeers, I also know I’ll never gain the speed I crave when sledding solo. So I climb aboard, wrap my arms around their thick, damp, denim layers and look below, to a hand-packed jump designed to make you fly.

Pleading for caution, I know full well that caution is about to be damned.

Down we go, straight toward the jump and into the air. But the moment is fleeting before losing my hold, my pilot, a boot, and a glove. Yet gaining a face full of snow and a smile from ear to ear.

From a resting spot at the top of the hill, I watch the boys with their boundless bravado, attempt daredevil moves of surfing and spinning and bumper sleds. Determined to create one more spectacular crash before the snowy adventure can be considered a success.

By the time the sun begins its early descent, the dampness has sunk deep into our layers and it’s time to stumble home, iced-over and exhausted. The older boys taking turns pulling along the little ones with nothing left to give.

Each step energized by the thought of the warmth that will embrace us when we open the back door. Fueled by the knowledge that a crackling fire and hot chocolates wait at the other end.

Within Close Range – Best Friends

We try to light it squatting beneath an old, planked bridge.

Like naughty, little trolls.

Laughing and cursing the unrelenting wind and an almost empty box of matches.

Coughing.

Giggling.

Coughing.

Startled by the snap of a twig.

Whispering and waiting for something in particular.

Not caring about anything in particular.

Until the tiny roach sticks to my mouth and I wince.

Pulling the burning paper from my lower lip.

Betsy laughs.

Which makes me laugh.

Even though it hurts like hell and my lip is already blistering.

Making me to worry about how I’m going to explain the burn to Mom and Dad –

who notice every pimple.

But then I stop caring.

Content to be beside my friend.

Standing firm against the bitter lake winds.

Feeling happy just to be,

we walk beside the tiny creek.

Sudden cravings hasten our final footsteps

down the deserted road of my secluded neighborhood.

Stepping over acorns and twigs fallen from late October trees.

Side by side.

Stoned.

Smiling in the comfortable silence of a very, best friend.

My Friend

My beautiful friend, with the beautiful smile.

Weighted by fear.

Flattened with worry.

Wanting happiness, but not minding your own.

Keep it simple.

Keep it clear.

Take a long, deep breath.

And another.

Take hold of the thing that gives you power.

That powers your passion.

That fills you with fire.

Be fearless.

You’ll soon find the you that smiles more than once in a while.

And makes you my beautiful friend, with the beautiful smile.