B.F.F. (Best Friends Forever)

I talked to my oldest friend today—I don’t mean in age; I mean in years of friendship. We met in 1949 in seventh grade on the south side of Chicago. We were twelve. Being a mathematical wizard, I just figured out we have been friends for 60 years. No matter how you look at it, that’s pretty amazing.

If someone had told me then that we would be on the phone, in our seventies, living 2000 miles apart, but still sharing confidences and comparing notes, I’d have rolled my eyes in disbelief. Yeah, right. (Of course, in those days we neither rolled our eyes nor said, yeah, right.)

Seventh grade was before either of us had been out on a first date, put on lipstick, or understood the concept of being “popular.” We fought with her big brother, baby sat for my little sister, and lamented that our mothers didn’t understand us. She sang and danced; I drew and painted. We stormed through adolescence, doubled dated in high school, and lived different lives at college.

She got married and had a baby when we ourselves were still babies. She lived on a kibbutz, while I went to fraternity parties on campus. She was unconventional and free spirited; I moved through the stages of my life as if I were following an invisible plan. We both learned about divorce the hard way. She got a master’s degree and remarried. I built a life as a writer. Her life looked exciting to me; I’m not sure how mine seemed to her. Now, she is retired, and I have reinvented myself, yet again.

Years passed, always finding us in different cities but somehow keeping the ties of our friendship firmly knotted. We saw each other infrequently, always swearing we would celebrate our next milestone birthday or anniversary together but never quite pulling it off.

Now, suddenly, six decades have passed, and we realize we can’t always assume we’ll get together sometime soon. What if there is no sometime soon? What if there is only now, and we are blowing it by thinking we have forever? No one has forever. Few people have friendships that remain intact and intimate for so long. Life is unpredictable, uncertain.

That’s why we are making definite plans for Christmas 2009 to celebrate our extraordinary friendship.

Family Matters

What better way is there to spend a gloomy weekend than by cleaning out a storage closet? I do this often, and one would think mine would be nearly empty by now. But, alas, the file boxes seem to be breeding and having new, little file boxes between purgings. As I moved things around, this time, I came upon a bright, red cardboard carton labeled “Family.” I knew it had file folders in it because my entire life is in file folders, but I didn’t remember what I had filed or why. So, I hauled it out and began to revisit the past.

There was a folder for each member of my immediate family: my mother, my father, my sister, and each of my daughters. We were all great letter writers before the advent of hastily tossed-off e-mails. There were letters to and from all of us — some hand written, others, typed. The letters conveyed apologies, confidences, congratulations, condolences, explanations, and the latest news from camp. Nothing went on in our family that did not make its way into a letter.

There were cards for every occasion and no occasion that eloquently said happy birthday, happy Mothers’ Day, I’m sorry, thank you, and I love you. There were report cards, college grades, and papers written for school. There were resumes and detailed applications for jobs. There was specially designed stationery with logos. (Who but my daughters would have their first resumes printed on designer letterhead?) There were photographs, though not many, because I filed them in different folders.

There were two-line notes my father used to send with money and many renderings of the “Good Ship Lollipop,” which I think was the only thing he ever drew. There were articles I wrote that I didn’t remember writing, my sister’s very funny “saga” about her daughter’s first year away at college, and the eulogies she and I wrote when our parents died.

We think we’ll never forget these things, but we are wrong. That’s why we keep scrapbooks and photo albums — so we will remember the moments of our lives. Maybe it’s my age that caused me look through that box to see what others might find someday. My younger daughter recalls when we were cleaning out my mother’s apartment and she came across a fancy gift ribbon. “Why would grandma have kept this? she asked. No one knew. Since then, she has been busy putting everything she owns in cute little containers with labels on them so there will be no such mysteries in her life.

Maybe that’s why I’m reexamining the contents of all my file boxes. I want people to know what mattered most to me and why.