So I talked (immediately, the wonder of cell phones) with an old friend right after The One snubbed me or appeared to snub me. The friend said something to the effect that the erstwhile friend must be screwed up to act that way. I don't know. Sometimes we just want to avoid entanglement.
The next night I dreamed that my friend A from the Miami Herald was part of a case that was being heard by the Supreme Court. I also dreamed that the Erstwhile Friend had indeed kept in touch with me from time to time, sending me photos that I had forgotten about, and that she had a reason for not staying in touch. It had to do with not wanting to live in her past.
When I had lunch with A on Monday, she happened to mention that she'd written to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Hah! Am I gifted with second sight or what?
I had a good friend from junior high who, I am told, wants to keep the past the past. She doesn't look to connect with old friends on Facebook, which would mean connecting beyond cyberspatially. Oddly, her mother is willing to friend her daughter's old friends. Are we baggage? Are we time-stealers? It could be she feels she probably doesn't have much in common with us any more.
This is what you don't understand when you're young: that there are some people who will prove to be your Lifelong Friends; and also that you have a place in family (well, some of us do) and because that place is set by forces beyond you (your conception, for example), it is solid, you can see it, your name, even, on a family tree, and your place and relationship with others are therefore unshakeable and irrevocable. There were those before you and those branching after you, even if they're nieces and nephews and young cousins and not your own offspring. Family can of course turn its back and change its name and walk out on you forever (providing fodder for infinite contemporary memoirs), but much of the time it will be there and family will serve as the Ones Who Knew You When. They will be your Old Friends, whether you like it or not.
Lunch with A was quite natural and wonderful and I had decided, though we hadn't seen one another since 1987 or so, that we would always be Lifelong Friends because we had shared a night when we both thought I was dying (cause: street food in Guatemala City), and a morning where we thought the revolution had come to the street in front of our hotel. We tied white socks around our arms to signify neutrality and ventured outside to find out that the 6 a.m. smell of gunpowder had come from a parade at dawn. At dawn? It could not be a civilized country, because who would hold a parade that early? Or was it Honduras? I should ask.
--to be continued--
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