 My friends are the beings through whom God loves me. - St. Martin I schedule a long phone call with an old friend. We talk for two hours. Though there are years between our in-person visits, we speak regularly on the telephone now that we are both retired. Once, a long time ago, we were young professionals who worked together and lived in the same neighborhood. I rose every morning at 4:30 AM to meet her at the corner for a long walk before the start of our work day. Under the magical spell of friendship, we never ran out of things to say. Each step became a spot of glue that cemented our bond. That was 36 years ago. Time marched on, and both of us moved away, married, raised children, and worked a full career. Each time I dial my old friend’s number, I am young again and back on the corner eagerly awaiting the sight of her. In this early summer season as I set out alone on my daily walks, I think of those days and the summer game of baseball, all those home teams on fire and cheering one another on from the dugout. Life is so much like baseball. The point of the game is to hit the ball, leave home, take the risk of running the bases, and then to return safely to home plate. Some players hit the ball so far they make it home all on their own. Others strike out; they are thrown out at home plate. Some of them pout on the bench of life while others get back into the game. Some are eventually traded. There are some who come sliding back in on the seat of their pants chased by another who seeks to eliminate them. Others just aren’t fast enough; they are thrown out despite their best efforts. Some get injured and hobble home on the shoulders of their teammates. But there is glory for those who hit the ball and even for the ones who get hit by it--the ones who leave home and make it safely back. Leaving home requires individual skill and effort, but winning is about who takes the field with you, who comes up to bat before you and after you, who subs from the bench when you are down. A lot can happen along the way, but returning to home a winner is a team event. And it takes pals to remember the glory days. Home can be a place, but even more so, it is a feeling and an experience. It is where the important things never change. It is the place where the furniture holds our people and our memories, a place where the walls speak to us, but it also can be the people who share those memories. They themselves are an attic filled with all of the tender yesterdays. Home is an enchanted place in my heart where all the people I love live in the same neighborhood. As I enter the homestretch of my life, I realize the fallacy of leaving home to find our fortunes. We think that we are the ones who find happiness—always in hot pursuit, but truth be told, happiness finds us. We leave home to find our fortunes unaware that our fortunes are being built in this enchanted place in our hearts. Now, I wish I could gather all the people I love and plant us all in the same neighborhood, a neighborhood with the best combination of privacy and proximity. I am not sure I would care if I saw all of my neighbors each day, but just knowing they were near would be so satisfying. It is growing more difficult to travel. Sometimes the years or the distance are too much, but memory is a soft path, a familiar, well-worn road. I round the bases often and find that it always brings me back to the street where you live.
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 I need some Viagra for my mind. I can’t seem to keep up. Desire is not enough. The pace of change seems to be accelerating just as my mind is cruising to a stop—blocked mental arteries. I never seem to know what’s going on or who’s who. Worse, I can’t seem to unpack the cluttered trunk that is my mind. Where is all that stuff I used to know? It doesn’t bode well for any hopes of thrilling intellectual intercourse. Often, things go downhill during the foreplay. For example, I sit down to watch a movie that I’ve selected. The intro plays and I say, “That character looks familiar.” “Uh, we’ve seen this movie before,” says my film partner who is already losing interest. This leads me to more efforts at less-than-stimulating conversation. I say, “Remember that other movie, the one with…oh…what’s her name? The one with the blonde hair? She was popular at the same time as that other actress with the blonde hair?” My partner feigns a headache and goes home. That doesn’t stop me from trying on my own. While I can’t think of the name of either formerly popular movie actress, I can picture both of them in my mind’s eye, and I can’t let it go. I keep trying, but my thoughts circle around the debris field that is my aging mind like water swirling around in a backed up toilet bowl. It just won’t come. My mind continues to work on it even in my sleep. Their names, even some of their movie titles settle thick on the on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t spit it out, and I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else. A day later, when I am least expecting it, Reese Witherspoon and Cameron Diaz come to mind. Triumphant and ecstatic from the pleasure of recall, I shout out their names while I am pumping gas. I am not alone in this. Sometimes it happens during group intercourse. For example, we might be sitting around the table at our monthly book club meeting discussing books or current events when someone else tries to recall a name or event. We all dive in deep shouting out the possibilities. We each acknowledge, “I know what you mean.” It becomes a game of mental charades. The conversation could just go on since we all really do know what she means, but, darn, we are on the edge of climax. We will keep going until we find that word and then gasp and giggle in delighted relief. These minor memory lapses seem to happen more often with each passing month--things, names, events, some so personal I really should be able to retrieve them quickly What was that old co-worker’s name? I worked with her for 10 years when I was in my thirties… And then there are the ordinary everyday words. I seem to remember butter, but I can’t seem to grab a hold of cream cheese until, for some unknown reason while I am laying on the butter, my mind unexpectedly cries out the name of that other delicious spread, “Philadelphia!” More and more, my most in-depth conversations seem to be with myself. Am I losing it? I don’t know, but somehow I remember to ask myself that question many times a day. It fills up the moments it takes me to remember why I just walked into the kitchen.  “…the great gift of memory is that we can choose to live in the resplendent moments.” – Mary Pipher I have taken up bask fishing. I got hooked on the sport at the Heart Walk a little more than a week ago. I signed up to support a friend and former co-worker who had suffered sudden cardiac arrest. Miraculously, skilled health care professionals were in the restaurant where it happened. Seeing her collapse, they came to her aid. While my friend never got to eat her favorite peanut butter pie, dessert was served: her life was saved. A year later, we, the grateful, gathered at a large city park for a photo and then to walk to celebrate the life of our friend and the work of those who save lives. As the crowd thickened, other former co-workers arrived, and we embraced and caught up. Many of them I had not seen in ten years or more. Though some of us now sported gray hair and white stubble, wrinkles and rounded bellies, we remained immediately recognizable to one another. Moving through the throngs on our way to the starting line, I spotted other former colleagues and reached out for quick hugs while on the move. “Work is love made visible.” – Kahlil Gibran After the walk many of us gathered at a pizza joint to eat and celebrate. The gathering was hosted by our survivor-friend and her husband. Others who did not make it to the walk arrived as well. There were more embraces and more joy as we remembered a time when, together, we did work that was hard but holy, work that was made easy because we loved each other. I watched my friend’s husband move between the three large tables that seated our crowd. He greeted each of us with kind words and embraces. He paused now and then to clink a glass with his wife or to lean in for a kiss, and I thought back to the time when they had just met, and our circle grew because of him. I was moved by the memory and by the way this thoughtful, kind man loves this spunky, bright woman. I trust his sincerity whenever he says, “We’ll get together soon,” because I know he means it. A young lady I did not know sat down in the seat across from mine. Unable to walk earlier, she joined us for lunch. She sported a walking boot and a treasure chest of funny stories. This young lady brought me up to speed on the difficulties of young adulthood in the current state of world affairs--the impossibility of finding affordable rent, and the dearth of good jobs and meaningful work. I wished I could take her back with me to that other time in my own work life. Instead, I basked in her youth and her charm, and this widening circle. On Monday morning, still high from the Saturday Heart Walk, I arrived at the radiology clinic for a follow-up appointment. In came the doctor. In came the nurse. In came the nurse practitioner. I was encircled by their youth and extraordinary kindness and care. Their brilliance twinkled all around me like lights on a Christmas tree. For a moment, I felt sad realizing that my time had passed, that I will never again work in a place like this surrounded by all of this youthful energy and confidence, this type of devotion to the work. Then the doctor told me that he is training for Pelatonia, the bicycle race with “a mission to change the world by accelerating innovative cancer research.” Sadness gave way to gratitude as I basked in the knowledge that this busy and beautiful man who harnesses the power of the sun to cure cancer will also use his bicycle to save lives, mine included. There are things left to wish for, races to run. I arrived home to find a few long-time neighbors out on the stoop. I reeled them in. Memories are everywhere. They hold the past and shape the future. Care to join me as I fish? Just basking. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
April 2025
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