10 miles up

Saturday morning. Snuggled in flannel sheets, so cozy lying beneath the windows calling old friends. Michelle and I go back forever; all the way back to the tops of the apple trees that covered our neighborhood, all the way back to as far as I go with anyone. Eight, nine-years-old maybe.

She’s pouring hot chocolates all around, already back from sledding the snowy Vermont hills out her door, I’m still in bed noticing how warm it is even without the heater running

It’s a funny, funny ball, this Earth we’re spinning around on. The bigger the circles the tighter the weave; colors on colors through colors wrapping one around another into one around another into one. This place where every time, every place, every thing is every other. Heading west on the St. Johns Bridge to Forest Park is crossing the Ohio River into West Virginia straight on through Wheeling on to Pittsburgh.

We’re different creatures, my old friend and I. She always with a plan, a goal, as I stumble through ordered chaos, tossing years of work onto the pyre and mastering 11th hour successes. Her words say one thing – sledding was fun, the girls are doing well, work is good and on and on but her voice tells the truth. Too even, metered laughs.

“I know you can’t really talk right now, but how are things really?” I ask, after we’ve exhausted the ups and downs of my life, the family updates – her dad’s retiring, sister is pregnant.

“Not good.” All the evenness drains from her voice. “Not good.”

Funny, funny how this Earth spun us right back together just as our divergent paths became the same worn trail. Was it ‘93 last time we met? Chicago and ice-skating downtown and drinking vodka until dawn to the Blues.

Years pass. Moves. Weddings. Children. Things go as they go as they go. We talk less and less. The yearly holiday card, baby gifts, a call for this occasion or that. The circle pulls apart, then snap! right back together it comes.

Old and new – the people we need arrive in our lives just when we need them and they us. The universe is kind that way. Funny how it happens. Her husband has business in Portland. We’ve never met, but it’s natural that he hangs with Scott and me when he’s here, two times a year or three. They connect and suddenly our husbands talk more than we do, every few weeks.

So clueless, our men.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It’s August, a few days after I told Scott I’m leaving, Michelle calls, Scott asked Brian to ask her to call me because they have problems too; and what is it that they’re thinking, these men?

What exactly do they think happens when two women, lifelong friends, start talking?

“Oh, sweetie. I know you’re miserable and he’s not treating you kindly, but just stick with it, girl. Stay with him. Give him another chance” Is that how they think it will go?

I pull fat tomatoes from the garden, lining them around the edge of the table as we talk. Bare feet in the grass, in the dirt. The parallels are unreal.

“There was just a point,” I tell her. “I was waiting for a better job, waiting for more money. I thought if I got the reporting job I was up for, I’d make my move. Then I didn’t get it and suddenly everything in me shifted. I stopped seeing obstacles and found the solutions. It didn’t matter that I was making no money and working nights …”

She opens. This is the most real conversation we’ve had in two decades. Maybe the most open we’ve ever been. She talks and talks and tells the stories she’s kept to herself for years. No one knows the ugly details, her pain, the truth of her life.

“I think Scott wanted me to call you to convince you to stay, but I think you’ve talked me into leaving,” she says. “I just have to figure out the money. I don’t need to live in my 4,000 square foot mini-mansion, but I want to know I can afford the little house on the corner.”

“You’ll do it when you are ready. And when you are ready the money won’t matter anymore.”

Funny how the answers come in flashes. Every now and then we hover 10 miles above our lives looking down at the tangle and we see everything, know where we fit in the flow, and then its gone in a blink. Among the dust particles in a shaft of light I see just myself and understand how the momentum of these shaky steps reaches across the continent to my friend and pulls her forward.

“Why am I doing this?” has a whole new answer that has nothing to do with me. I look the other direction to the friend who walked before me and know my courage is born of hers.

Around the edges of this new circle, still forming circle, so much synchronicity I know it’s been there always. Suddenly all these new people arriving exactly when I most needed them, to show me what it is to be taken to your knees (in ways beyond anything I can fathom) and still look up to give thanks.

Sweet, sweet synchronicity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Michelle tells me she knows she will leave, doesn’t know when, still needs to figure out the finances.

I hear myself speaking the words I’ve heard again and again. “Baby steps, girl. Step by step. You’ll do it when you are ready, you’ll just switch over to autopilot and go.”

She’ll leave her giant house with her financial well-being and flourishing career intact. Not one step of her journey will be easier because of it. Less complicated maybe. She’ll still be the single mother of three daughters, the youngest an infant, stumbling to find footing on a new path.

Funny how in moments of grace I remember I have everything I need. Remember gratitude.

My apartment has only one bedroom, but I have three beds and two girls to sleep in them.

Sometimes I have to ride the bus, but I always have enough change for the fare and two strong legs to carry me to and from the stops. There is a book in my lap, and I can read. I can read!

By the numbers, I live in poverty; but my house is stuffed with toys and books,
and furniture and there is always good food in the fridge.
My toilet flushes.
I’m writing on a computer.
My kids have clothes enough to fill the closets and drawers in two homes.
No matter where they sleep they lay down blanketed in love.

Sometimes there is much I think I want, but in moments of grace I know.
I have everything I need.

And I am grateful.

For all of you, who show me again and again what it means to give thanks, I am grateful.

That my actions and words may give a friend strength and spread some of this light her way, I am grateful.

I lay in my flannel sheets, head sunken into feather pillow, talking to my old friend at the other edge of the continent.

I have everything I need.