history

Is friendship cobbled together from laughs, watercooler chats, secrets over coffee, and e-mails exchanged with those in our daily orbits? Some would say so and I can't deny that, but today I was reminded of another kind of friendship...a kinship of sorts.

I'm lucky to have had a few women remain steadfastly in my life since childhood despite the decades that have passed and the time zones between us. What makes us special, in part, is that we hold precious fragments of one another's histories.

This week I'll be making the trek to my home state to help one of them prepare to move, if only a mile or so from her current house. Nonetheless she's closing the door on one part of her life and opening another. For myself, it will be the first time back since my mother's death last year and it's taken that long for me to realize that I've been dragging my feet.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience -- when your childhood home is no more. I described it last year as there being "no there there." Unlike Gertrude Stein -- unable find the home of her youth during a return visit as an adult, the spaces I called home as a child still exist, but the people who made them so don't except in memory. It's some else's town now: the youngest in a large family I knew growing up now lives with her own family on my grandparents' land -- the home of my heart; a couple I've never met moved into my mother's "pad" -- her treasured first and only place of her own in her many decades of life; and the hallway floors still squeak in the apartment building I played in when I was little, but now unfamiliar cooking smells drift over the transoms. I've been in no hurry to return. Until now.

Still it's taken willingness and a degree of resolve to finally accept S's invitation to stay at her home this weekend. It feels a bit strange despite our closeness. I suppose I feel like a bird returning to find its nesting spot gone or taken over by a new avian brood. I've always had a familiar place to drop my bags and the burdens of being a grown-up, if for only a few days. My mother and I had become closer over the last several years, and she liked having me around. It's nice when someone genuinely feels that way, isn't it? Unconditional love is hard to come by, as is a place held just for you -- no strings attached.

If we're lucky, however, there are people who remember who we were and care enough to welcome back whoever we've become. We carry bits of each other's stories and nothing is more heartwarming than poring over them like scrapbooks...savoring a long-promised cup of tea, glass of homemade wine, or potluck meal. Last year was my turn to receive friends' love and support and now some of them are coping with their own various challenges. My heart is filled with hope for them and their loved ones. I was reminded of our kinship today by E's e-mail update that ended, "...I love you all and our history."

History is indeed calling me home this time -- that word flowing from me as if it were the most natural, true thing.