Old Friend, New Friend

One of the many side effects of this last year is that my communication patterns and partners have changed. Changing my location, my relationship status, my circumstance and a number of things about my life (and few things about myself that got refined) have lead to some interesting dynamics.

When I had to send out emails every few weeks about my changing location, employment and social status, I was quick to shift people into little mental groupings. Those who passively kept in touch, those who actively kept in touch, those who actively tried to help (on multiple levels) and those who surprised me, both positively and negatively.

Perhaps the biggest surprise came from an old friend I’ve never mentioned here before. For the sake of keeping up with protecting identities, I’m going to call her The Amazon. She’s tall, strong willed, passionate, driven, capable of holding her own in most any situation and generally damned impressive. The Amazon and I went to middle school together. Only two other people who I’m not related to go back with me that far. Back then, as kids, I knew that I thought she was awesome. I was certain of this because I never knew what to say around her and on the last day of middle school, knowing that we were going to different high schools, I did what any self assured 13 year old boy would do.

I waited until she was talking with her friend and I snapped her bra strap.

Yet, thanks to her mother – who was my high school guidance counselor – we kept in touch off and on through high school. I have vivid memories of her on the phone, reading me passages from a book she was enamored with at the time and another time when we went to the movies and she raved about both the movie and the cute actors. Like any very secure and mature 17-year-old boy, I envied several of those actors.

Graduation came and went, sending us our separate ways.

I don’t know how I got back in touch with The Amazon, but somehow in college (or shortly thereafter) I got her email. I sent her what I’m sure was a very random out of the blue hello. And to my delight, she replied.

That established a pattern between us. One of us would email the other every year or so (or every move to a new physical or email address) and say hi. Quick hit updates about jobs and life would accompany the typical “We should really catch up” fare you’d find in most emails like that. And since college, I’ve traded many emails like that. People you kind of remember or people you wished that you knew better and damn it, I’d like to make the effort, but I’m just too busy. Most people that I traded those messages with fell by the wayside. Sometimes it was my fault. Sometimes it was theirs.

The Amazon never fell off my radar. And I can say with a great deal of happiness, I’m glad I stayed on hers as well.

When I sent out the “Um… my life fell apart” email, she responded back with a quick note, but one that actually gave a damn. When I casually mentioned the possibility of asking her some questions about her neck of the woods, she immediately offered not only advice, but also a place to stay if I needed it.

Someone who I hadn’t seen in over decade, someone who I’ve barely talked to in that same amount of time was offering me shelter in the storm that was the latter half of last year. Here’s a woman who I knew as a girl, and she didn’t even blink when she offered me her help. Bold as brass, confident as hell, I could hear the smile and laugh in her emails.

Damn, I’ve got kick ass friends. And I never get tired of thinking that.

So the emails grew more frequent until we broke the seal on phone calls. The first time we talked it was like the first time you hear music by an artist you really enjoy. You don’t know all the beats or the words, but you immediately know that you like it.

The girl I knew ages ago is now a woman I’m getting to know, enjoy and respect. I have all these memories of how smart and charming and just so… self-aware she was even then. Seeing the woman that has grown out of that girl makes me realize that while I may screw up in other areas, I tend to have good taste in friends. Our conversations are a snapshot of our connection from then until now: discussions of the present, mingling in between stories of the past decade absent from each other.

Recently, I watched her get broadsided by job troubles that would send most people running for cover. She had half a dozen business meeting the day after her former employers fired her. She’s in Cancun at this very moment, bathing in sun, sand and endless possibilities of doing whatever she wants to do next.

And I’ll tell you something. This woman, who I can honestly call my friend now… a friend that I value and trust and who inspires me… I have no doubts that she’s going to be fantastic in the next arena she enters.

I mean, come on. Who do you think is going to rival The Amazon?

5 Years…

There are some periods of your life that you gloss over. Even during good times, periods of you life that you remember fondly and glorify later on, you skim over the minute details unless you have reason to dig deeper into the cracks and crags of your memory to pull them up to them up to the surface.  College is a great example of this. Overall, a great period in my life and given time and some prompting, I can dig up most memories. There are a few I’ve buried and would happily leave that way and few others that I’m pretty sure aren’t coming back thanks to some of my cohorts, but overall, the well is full.

Often the well is just as full during awkward periods of your life. Like High School, for pretty much everyone. I don’t care who you were then – jock, geek, art student, slacker, pick your cliche… high school was awkward for all of us. It was just about the degrees there of. And I can go back to that well and dip down, pulling up people I thought I’d hate forever, situations that would never be resolved and a place it felt like I could never escape. I’m capable of that type of recall, but just as with the good times, some memories take effort.

Then there are those times, usually condensed periods of no more than a few months, that are like low burning coals in your mind. The smallest stir, the tiniest bit of water falling on them or even a vague gust of air and they react, flaring, hissing and searing in your mind. Returning the pain and exacting detail of those moments.

Five years ago this month, one of those periods began for me. I can tell you about everyday I spent on commuting back and forth across New York City, checking my voice-mail for the next scrap of news. Each moment on the train to Boston, thinking the worst had past, is there waiting for me. The letter I got via email, in the midst of phone calls and debates over what to do and impassioned arguments between my siblings. The letter that revealed the true character of a woman I once loved. A woman who knew what was going on had only weeks before promised to be there for me, day or night, as one of the pillars of my world crumbled.

The call that told me the end was near and how I steeled my own voice, knowing that I needed to offer strength, fearing I would break later. Getting his favorite cookie as part of the snack box on the flight home and almost weeping. Every moment from the time I got off the plane in Florida, every moment watching him die, watching my family struggle and cry and fight, each word the tumbled out of my mouth as I spoke at his funeral, each impulse I had to surpress in order not to kill my siblings, all the words my Brothers in Blood and Spirit handed to me that I wear still as a badge of pride, the empty pit that even now I can recall inside myself… It all comes crashing back the moment I touch those memories.

The pit is small and the heat less intense when I just graze the thoughts. I can stand near to them and not be burned immediately. I can look on them with more than just pain and loss now. I can apply some wisdom and some understanding. That’s how I know the wound has healed.

Mostly.

If I linger too long, the heat overtakes me. It singes my heart and mind again, taking me back in ways I fear and hate.

So I kept a respectful distance. Knowing I must visit and pay my respects. Hating the memories of the pain.

It will get harder, the closer I get to the anniversary of The Death.

But I will get through it.

I have no choice. I still live. I still have memories to make.

And I still have a name to honor.

Every Good Hero Needs Theme Music

Ever since I was a kid, music has been a character trait to me. Not in terms of me being able to play, I’ve never been even close to the musician of my own daydreams. My parents, for all their love and support when it came to education, never saw anything beyond the regular slate of classes as something worthwhile. Granted, lack of money had something to do with all that (different story), but sufficed to say that there wasn’t a big push to expand my mind by picking up an instrument. But music has always been something that I would drape over people, like a child dressing a doll. [MALE EGO WARNING: Use a different metaphor.] Er… I would attach the music to people, like putting different accessories with your action figures. [MALE EGO: That's better.]

Music’s role in how I view people started at home, with my Dad. Dad, even when we lived in New York, was always about country music. In the late 70’s and early 80’s Dad never forgot to drift back to the country music he grew up with. Some rock and roll would mix in, but country dominated. Hank Williams certainly got a lot of play in the shed while Dad was fixing… well everything and anything that broke in the house, but the music that drifts across the landscape of memory with him will always be the Man in Black.Whenever I think of him, a Johnny Cash song is never far from my thoughts. When Cash released an album with a cover of ‘Hurt’ in 2002, in my mind, it was no longer a Nine Inch Nails song, it belonged to Johnny. When The Death occurred in early 2003, it become an anthem for me. Not only one to mourn my father, but a symbol of loss and lost opportunity. A heavy example, I know, but the best one I have at hand to show you how vital music is in my mind.

This habit of assigning musical cues and theme to people was never something I set out to do, but it has happened for virtually everyone important in my life. For some its just a particular song, like I Shall Believe by Sheryl Crow for GreyRose (my first college girlfriend). For others its a particular Artist – Sir Wolfgang gets Melissa Etheridge and LL, the Newshound, gets Tori Amos. Those are ones that I can give you that make sense when I say them out loud. There are moments that tie those people to that music.

Others… they might make sense, but because of what’s happened, its tainted certain music for me forever. IrishLass, the first (what I thought was) love and the first big bloody, emotional train wreck of my lifetime, still comes to my mind when I listen to Counting Crows. And I used to adore that band. I can still listen to them and enjoy the music, but I have a cut off point now. Where I could go through the band’s entire discography before, now… I can handle few songs now and again, though Anna Begins can still kick my ass.

The musical cues aren’t always set in stone. As I grow to know someone better, the music will change. Fortunate Son used to be Billy Joel, given his affinity for the man’s music. But as he’s grown older and (in theory) wiser, the easy to digest and forget music from Long Island has been replaced with Heroic Scores and inspirational music. Any music that reflects the triumph of the human spirit, it makes me think of him.

And as is often the case with my mind and my heart, the decision can sneak up on me when I’m not paying attention. The music just starts playing in my head at some point when I think about that person. Like Miles Davis for The Heroine’s father. Not that he’s s huge fan, but because to me Miles is cool, talented and in control with a just enough quirkiness, it suits the man perfectly. Besides, anyone who can make me turn white as a sheet deserves a cool theme song in my head.

Some of it is cheesy… we won’t talk about the music that plays for my Ma, my Savior, because it will make me seem like an even bigger Mama’s Boy, if that’s possible. And there are others that I’ll keep to myself for now because I don’t want to show all my cards right now.

So, what’s the point here?

It seems like this Hero has found a new set of theme music.

When I was little, it used to be anything that made me imagine that I was a super hero. In high school, when I was a Stupid, Simple Creature, it was a mix of Metallica and Pearl Jam. In college, U2 provided music for every mood, every facet of my life. Through my middle 20’s, given all the changes and uncertainly I had in myself and my life, there was no clear sound. In recent years, it has been a mix of Guster, Pat Green and U2 (again). That and anything that made me think about my relationship and how happy it made me.

Now, it has changed again. A house band has taken over, as it were. One song in particular in playing lately, but since I’ve apparently assigned the Foo Fighters to myself, they do mix things up with different songs lately. Learn to Fly and Razor get some heavy play time. But the main track right now… I think it picked itself for many reasons. I need to remember this, for myself and others. It makes the most sense in my life right now. And, fittingly enough, I’ve kept hearing it everywhere. I even had a friend send me the lyrics as a pick me up, unaware of what they already meant to me.

Best of You, by the Foo Fighters. Until further notice, our Hero’s Theme music.

Now its just a matter of making it true.