It was a rekindling, a farewell, well, not a final farewell, but an evening of our kindred spirits out together at our Alma Mater, Kent State.
Like relation to a sacred tie, one of my soulmates was preparing for her return to England. Damn. How does Europe always reclaim the ones I Love? Cherish what you have when you have It.
There we were. The three of us. You know how the story goes. Beers in hand, sunglasses shielding the late afternoon June tan from our eyes, sacrificial beads of hazing sweat slowly blazing down our spines, asses in the familiar plastic chairs, and an abundant $18 tray of loaded Taco Tontos Nachos nurturing the intoxication. No fancy buck was needed to make the ambiance glow and radiate among the spirit that we shared. Just the fragile reservation of time.
We reminisced about our lives and how the nearly two decades of years had passed, we sported some chalked pool sticks, broke a few triangulated formations of solids and stripes, and took shots of tequila in solidarity. It’s the bonds that father time can never break, the memories that can never be erased. We surrendered to the call of the night before the bars pushed us out. And then the days of summer scattered us about, with our buds emerging once again in a change of geographical proximity.
Sustaining the friendship is through the guise of this double-sided, omniscient portal, where the projections of our emotive selves delay the success of any comedic timing. We are beginning to idealize this new formation of connection, pun intended. The materialization of this effort has estranged me from the many moons that have floated by. Always the demands, the excuses, the exhaustion. What I thought was an infinite desert of sand in my hourglass is no longer my perception. Maybe turning 40 this year altered that state of reality, or maybe it was the verdict of everlasting change that has been served to my stubborn disposition. It could also be a reluctant reality that there are no more treacherous, one-manned hills to climb in solitude. Admittedly, there is no landslide in sight, but rather a path to uncover that lies ahead on this mysterious, flat plane, with markers that welcome my uncertainty and companionship along the way.
The years that lie ahead will embody a life that can breathe from the warmth of friendship, forge ahead from the sparkle of yesterday, and sip in comradery, even as the waves between float our lives along.