When we were little kids, we bounced around with lots of other little kids in the neighborhood and at school, and friendships seemed to just fall into place. We were forming ourselves, and we were at our most pliable. This year my sister Renie got married, and of the nine guests at her wedding (pandemic, you know), the friend she met when we moved into town in 1965 was one of them. Anne’s house was four houses down, on the other side of the block. You could get to Anne’s by cutting through the hedges that lined the backyards. I've known my sister only three years longer than Anne has.
My history of friendship has been a lot more staccato. On the first day of first grade, when everyone was out on the playground before the very first bell of the year, a huge third-grader walked up to me, a giant hulk of a girl I’d never seen before. Grabbing my little girly blouse with both hands, she lifted me up, slammed me against the brick wall of the school building, and said, you are going to be friends with my sister, Sarah.
I was a puny thing and scared of my own shadow, a similarly puny thing. I was also shy as heck, and Sarah’s sister must have seen me as a likely target. I nodded vigorously, choked out 'okay,' and Sarah’s big sister released me. Thus a friendship was born.
Sarah and her sister moved a lot. Her sister sensed they wouldn’t be in town long, and she was looking out for Sarah, in her own bullying way. Her little sister Sarah should have a friend, and a puny, shy friend would do.
Turns out Sarah was a smart and interesting girl, and we were great friends until they moved a year later. I cried when Sarah left. I don’t think she did. She probably knew it was coming.
Of late, at the age that’s the first prime number in the seventh decade (you have to do a little math if you want to know exactly how old I am), making friends is different. We're more formed and less pliable. We're fighting the hardening and brittleness that happen in our arteries and bones. Even the lenses in our eyes stiffen up, affecting our sight. I devote resources to corrective measures for my eyes, my bones, my brain.
These days I’ve been building two new friendships and deliberately deepening three friendships that are decades old. I’ve also reconnected with my best friend from sixth grade, who is just as crazy-wonderful now as she was in middle school, before we went our separate ways. On our first phone call several months ago, we had 46 years to catch up on. Where to start.
But I want to tell you about one of my newest friends, Lee. She of a previous story, The Smiting Fence. Lee and I have been very tentatively and slowly growing a deep, deep friendship for the past five years, in fits and starts. It’s hard for me, and I want it so desperately. The residual Baby Becky within me is wary and fearful, and at times I have to pry my heart open with both hands. Then hold it open with all my (prodigious-ish) upper body strength. That’s the main reason Lee’s fury at the smiting fence moved me so greatly.
Recently at a pickleball clinic we both attend, one of the other players said, you two seem so close. Did you grow up together? I replied, yes, we’re growing up together. So seldom do you have just the right response in the moment, but that time I did.
And then the night before last, I had an upsetting dream about a party at Lee’s house. It was a noisy upscale affair, with people I didn’t know, wearing carefully curated clothes. Lee ignored me as she flitted through her party, beautiful, polished, smiling falsely and chattering loudly about nothing. Every one of the tables throughout the downstairs sported partially demolished platters of baked goods of all descriptions. As long as the description included chocolate. All were chocolate. I can’t eat chocolate. I love chocolate, but I can’t eat even a smidgen.
I’m aware that not that many people have nightmares centered around chocolate. She was a few standard deviations out is what it’s going to say on my tombstone.
I was angry. I ground my molars as I slept, as the dream-party raged on, raucous and chocolatey, full of beautiful, horrible, shallow strangers and a version of Lee I didn’t recognize. I was furious that she had invited me, then ignored me and served only dishes I couldn’t eat. My veins were throbbing with hurt and enough adrenaline that I woke up. My jaw was aching. My eyes were full of tears.
There’s no subtlety to the message of this dream, and once you calm down and really think about it, it’s delivering a positive message. My heart is open. Baby Becky is afraid of being wounded by someone she is coming to care about deeply. But look! She/we are coming to care about someone deeply.
Baby Becky and I fell right back to sleep once we'd understood the message.
[The image came from an internet search for images of 'chocolate nightmare.' Surprisingly, none matched the tone of the dream. This one will have to do, even though it looks more inviting than horrific.]
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