I'll Explain Later

I didn’t remember until I did.
Which surprised me.

My friend.

She showed up in my life the way people often do in their twenties. We were both attending a wilderness-based liberal arts college. We connected immediately, my curly dark brown hair and her curly red hair. We shared a creative view of life and a similar sense of humor. I don’t remember specific conversations. I think this is how it really is. I enjoyed her carefree spirit as we figured life out. Funny how we thought we could.

Susan is her name, if it is indeed her. I’m going to run with it. I think she changed it when she left. That I don’t remember.

We were friends, I was living with someone, she wasn’t. She met someone, and oops, she was having a baby. She and that baby were a bonded pair immediately. I saw how she looked into her little girl’s eyes and whispered her love to her. She might tell a different story; this is what I remember.

She needed a place to stay for a while. We took them both in, her and the little one, until she found her footing and moved on. She became a single mother, and I was trying to want to be a mother.

I got to hold her baby girl. Bought her toys and clothes. Each time I held her, it tugged at my heart. I was jealous, I hate to admit it, but I was. I was in a good relationship, there were three beautiful girls in our lives, but I wanted a baby. Or did I? Was it the time clock I was listening to, or me? I don’t know that I was aware enough back then to answer that. If I did, I’d make up some pleasing words for others’ ears, leaving me out.

The other day, I got back into my summer project of sorting through photos. We have so many. I discovered an old album of mine where I kept cards, notes, and IDs from junior high and high school years. Oh lordy, the hairstyles back then. Anyway, there it was, stuck to the photo paper behind plastic. I carefully peeled it away, and miraculously, the poem stayed intact. My first thought was who wrote this. What is this. Where did it come from.

The Poem…

A little girl cries. First, the acceptance of these tears and the little girl. With an embrace she smiles and I will urge her forward, forward comes the woman.

Eyes that sparkle from spirits that dance. Life spoken here; caught in a glance. Sweep me not by, I return the same as a new friend of the same flame.

I found this one too.

She sent me a postcard in 1992. Wrote it as if it were from Mel Gibson. Both of us had a thing for him. I was his girlfriend. She was my wild redheaded friend I was taking to the Riviera. That was her. That was our humor.

She took corporate work to provide for her daughter. I took the jobs I did to provide for my needs. Artists, both, doing what life asked. I feel that is what pulled us together in the first place. We were tuned into each other. We had fun. We could sit with each other for hours and laugh at nonsense.

I can still see us on her couch, her talking about money, whether she should move to Colorado, where the baby's father's family lived. She did, not long after. I didn't hear her, feel her worries. Instead, I remember nodding, already three thoughts ahead, planning what I should say. What was wrong with me?

Susan. I don’t remember you being a writer. Yet clearly you were. What else did I miss about you?

I wish we could talk now. I’d want to know if you wrote more. What did your pen name end up being? MC, you wrote. I’ll explain later is what you said. Did you tell me, and I didn’t listen?

I like to think that your daughter, through your gentle guidance and frequent embraces, discovered a life that doesn’t bypass her soul’s passions. If she wanted to be an artist, I hope she is.

We both moved on. Each of us, perhaps, thought of in passing when a picture surfaces. We may have just been friends for that chapter of life, but it'd be fun now to share time together, if only briefly.

I'm very different since she and I were together. I tend to sit longer now. I listen and pause without an agenda to get to. If I catch myself drifting off into my thoughts, I stop. I treasure and linger for a while in the experiences I have with the people I love and the strangers I befriend. The shared conversations over a meal or a cup of coffee. Together.

This poem, the memory of her, I get to love and be blessed beyond time.