Sunday Scribblings #119: My Oldest Friend

Though I always read others Sunday Scribblings, I have never written a Sunday Scribbling of my own. This week, though it is now Monday, I will give it a try.
I am my oldest friend, my mother is my oldest friend, but I choose to write about my oldest friend outside my family.
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Born in March 1981, she was just a squirmy, three month old infant when we met in June 1981, shortly after I was born. Her mom, Ida, and my mom, Mary-Lynn, met in college in the early 1970's and became fast friends. There was no question that Alison and I mostly likely would be too. They gave us the gift of knowing each other from infancy and, for a long time, growing up together. I always felt this somehow made us sisters, somehow linked us for life.

Maybe part of why we delighted so much in each other was the joy of looking at another person and seeing one's self. As little girls, many people mistook us for twins. Round faces; wide-set brown eyes like bottomless puddles thick with mud; and impossibly curly, impressively dark, brown hair that shown bits of red in summer. One day when we were about 4, we were out with my mother doing errands. As we walked hand in hand across the parking lot, a woman stopped my mother to ask if Ali and I were twins. Before my mother could speak our two lilliputian voices giggled, in unison, "No, best friends."

My memories of our childhood are vast, innumerable. Days on the playground, feeding the ducks at Jenny Gristmill, playing in the dirt when my dad was building her new house, visiting her on the Cape to bring her coloring books and a Snow White doll when she had her tonsils out, playing dress up, riding in the go-cart while she drove, tea-parties at the bottom of her paternal grandmother's swimming pool, swimming lessons at TiTi's, the first time my mom left us alone in the house and we ended up huddled together hiding in the bathtub, days on Duxbury Beach, birthday parties, staying over her house the night before my brother was born and when my parents went to Bermuda, a week in Maine with her paternal grandparents, just everything that makes up childhood, that is a part of growing up.

When I was 10 and a 1/2 my parents went bankrupt and we had to move forty-five minutes away from our old life and in with my paternal grandparents. During that time, my parents cut us off from everybody we had known. As a result, Ali and I were separated, seeing each other only sporadically. The gap widened as we got older. Still we were always there for each other when it counted, for the big life events. I lived in her bedroom for a few months when I transferred colleges and she was in California. It was she who called me when she found out I had abruptly moved out of my parents house, at the age of 19, leaving only notes behind. She who met me in Boston for lunch and sat across from me listening, understanding, interjecting her own thoughts and ideas only when I had finished speaking, sensitively and respectfully asking what information was o.k. to pass on and what I would rather keep between us. I guess we have an innate understanding of each other born from knowing each other since infancy.

Waiting for her in bustling Davis Square two weeks ago, having not seen her for over a year, I was filled with girlish excitement and an inexplicable inner calm, a sense of coming home or of home coming to me. Leaning against the brick facade of the restaurant, looking up from time to time into the sea of faces milling around me, I spotted her in the old Jeep, evidence of the four years she spent in Malibu at Pepperdine University, a self-imposed exile during her parents divorce. It is not the Jeep that I recognize first, but her profile. The plane of her face, her wild curls made wilder by the summertime heat, the spattering of freckles across her shoulder, the almost imperceptible parting of her lips as she pauses before turning into the parking lot, and the movement of her hands on the wheel. I would know her anywhere.

Hearing the beep of her car alarm activating across the street, I close the book I have been reading and look up. As she exits the parking lot, fumbling to put her keys into her quilted purse, she glances up and spots me. Instantly her eyes change and she smiles revealing a perfectly straight and perfectly white expanse of teeth. Her father was a dentist. At the whir of an engine coming toward her, Ali's stride quickens and she opens her arms to embrace me as her feet clear the curb.

Inside the restaurant our conversation is easy. Over gnocci and pizza, we talk of jobs, family, travels, Italy, friends, love, adoption and real estate. She is looking for an apartment closer to Boston, to work, and tonight, after dinner, we will go to look at one together. I love how we are still so non-judgmental of each other, how there is no hint of one-up-man-ship in what we reveal of our lives. If it is possible, we are still as open to each other now as we were when we were children.

Outside J.P. Licks we giggle over ice cream and sorbet, our conversation turns lighter, except for the bit about her cousin leaving for Iraq this week. I make a mental note to add him and Ali to my nightly prayer list. After looking at the apartment, she drops me at the t-station and even then it is difficult to say goodbye. I hop out of the Jeep and we are still talking. We've missed each other. We promise to make this a monthly occasion and I am grateful. She blows me a kiss from the driver's seat. I catch it, blow one back, and descend into the cool dark of the subway system.

Remembering Cody

In April, our family dog died. My mother wrote a column in the local paper about him for the eight years that he was with us. When he passed, I wrote a little something in case she did not have the strength to write her final Cody column for a couple of weeks and needed a "filler" column. It was not published, but here it is:

I remember the first time I saw Cody. It was Halloween weekend, my first visit home from college. I walked through the door and Dad said, "Your brother got a puppy." I said, "What?!?!?! What?!?!?! No way!" Dad said, "Go into the living room." And there they were, the boy and his dog. I couldn't believe it! Sleeping there on my brother's belly was a floppy, warm, bundle of puppy, face obscured by ears. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, can I pet him?" The boy gave me permission and as I laid my hand on the bundle, he came to life. This puppy wiggled and his tail whapped furiously back and forth. Everything about him went into motion. He was just so excited to meet me. My brother sat up and handed the squirmy wormy puppy to me. I introduced myself to the puppy, told him I was his new sister, that I was so excited he was here, and that if I could I would wiggle my whole-self just like him. I held him close to me, made a tent around him with my long hair, inhaled his puppy smell, let him chew on my hands, and he became mine, too.

As time wore on, I came home to visit from college, I moved out, I moved back in, I moved out for good, the boy went to college, and Mom and Dad went about their daily routine, but Cody was our center. A phone call home never passed without mention of Cody, leaving a message on the answering machine always meant a "Hello, Cody", and emails from home always included anecdotes about Cody's most recent shenanigans. For me, I knew that no matter when I came home, who I came home with, whether the humans were home, Cody would be there waiting, howling a hearty hello from the window in the front room as I pulled up, and wiggling his whole-self, especially that whapping tail, as I made my way in the door.

One beautiful spring Friday a few weeks ago, with my husband off on a business trip, I spontaneously went to spend the night with Mom, Dad, Cody, Sam, and Max. I arrived eager to put down my bags and free my arms for the hugging of humans and petting of animals. When I opened the door, Dad was behind it and Cody, I assumed, was behind him. Preoccupied with everything in my arms, it didn't hit me that the house was unusually quiet, that I had not heard that familiar howl as I pulled up, that the familiar sound of the tail whapping against anything in its way as Cody lumbered towards me, was missing. Dad followed me through the house, stood next to me as I put my bags down, and told me "We buried Cody." I said, "What?!?!?! What?!?!?!" Again he said, "We buried Cody." "No way!" I looked around for Cody and my eyes landed on my Mom sitting on the couch in the living room weeping. We all sat and wept.

Some took to calling Cody our "Never Again Dog". As I slowly begin to accept that never again will Cody greet me, never again will I feel his nose nudge my elbow at dinner hoping for a morsel, never again will I rub his velvety ears between my thumb and forefinger or run my hands along the length of his torso, never again will I take him out to the backyard, never again will I wipe the drool from his flues, I realize that Cody is our "Forever Dog." From the beginning he so entwined himself in our lives that, even in death, there is no way for him to ever be disentwined.

Fittingly, the center of our lives is buried in the center of our backyard where he so loved to run, dig secret holes, lay in the sun, chase the squirrels, and bar-be-que with the Big Grownup. Even as we mourn Cody, I can't help but wonder if one day, when the right time comes, Cody will send us another bundle of fur who, though no one could fill the void he has left, will know just how to pick up where he left off.

Thank you, Cody. We miss you our "Forever Dog."