Friends For Life?

My friend once told me a story about a friend of hers. I thought you might want to hear it, too. I don’t know if it’s true or if my friend - or her friend - made it up. In any event, it’s a story worth telling, about friends worth having, real or imagined. Feel free to tell me what think, as I know you will, since you’re my friend.

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Two people met in an L.L. Bean outlet store in Freeport, Maine. Freeport isn’t a bad little town, although unfortunately it’s almost always full of visitors looking to spend money in this part of the Casco Bay coast. Most of those people don’t pay any attention to the fact that Freeport includes part of the Harraseeket Historic District named for the Harraseeket River, which is a little over three miles long. They don’t ask about the meaning of Harraseeket, which can hardly be an English word. They don’t ask about when Freeport was founded, which apparently was in 1700. They don’t even think about the name Freeport, which is English and seems to come from the fact that the little notch in the coast remains relatively ice-free throughout the harsh Maine winters.

Certainly nothing is free in Freeport for the thousands who travel there to buy up items and leave. However, ‘Spendport’ doesn’t have an appeal at all and would certainly keep people away. Nowadays the town of close to nine thousand people - hidden among the tourists - is mostly associated with the L.L. Bean stored that was opened in 1912 and somehow became a big draw for everyone who was in the market for Maine boots. Nobody asks nowadays whether the famous boots or any of the high-demand outerwear ever see the inside of a factory in the state or if they are imported from China.

If, on the other hand, you’re interested in the meaning of the obscure Harraseeket, you might be frustrated. You might find it’s ‘river of many fish’ or ‘river of many obstacles’. You might also be told it’s an Abenaki term, that it comes from a local ‘dialect’. You might be upset that the original language is considered to be a dialect, which to a lot of people is used to refer to some way of speaking that’s inferior to English and is nearly invisible. It just hangs around in a few quaint place names. 

People who live in the area, especially along the Maine coast, know many names that end in -et, including Wiscasset. Again, few ask to know the meaning of these names. Freeport is easier to spell, too, like Brunswick, Bath, or Portland. However, it’s the meeting of two worlds with different languages in a place now famous for commercial activity that is relevant to the meeting of two people whose different world came together one day in L.L. Bean’s and thereafter were never separated. The story lies in how and why that happened. Except that the how is much easier to comprehend than the why.

But this is about two people, two very different people, who met in an outlet store over a pair of hiking socks or maybe a reversible vest, and decided they’d wander over a few feet, then down a few steps to a store called Mexicali Blues. It’s also familiar to many and caters to a niche of customers not identifiable by age. When they left, they decided to move to a nearby café for water, beer, or coffee (nobody knows or remembers). By then they had found they had a lot in common: traveling in Europe, art - especially botanical illustration -, making pasta, certain poets, and several other things. This led to the suggestion by one of them that they visit the Bowdoin College art museum and the college library, which had some unique special collections. The college, for those who don’t know, is in Brunswick, about seven miles further up the coast.

The trail of this friendship, for that was what it had quickly become, gets foggy at about this point, but this doesn’t mean it faded or disappeared. Nevertheless, the friends parted because one had to return home, which was in a different country. There were family ties, a need to tend to an ill or aging parent, and other obligations. Indications are that the friendship, as strange as it might seem, never faltered. There were letters, which are rarer and rarer these days, along with emails and the occasional phone calls. In a word, the friends always remained in touch.

And so the years passed, although how many is not known, but everyone knows time doesn’t stand still. The friendship grew, perhaps because of and not despite, the distance separating the two of them. Nobody could attribute this to unrequited love - was it love? There’s no evidence of that, even if friends can be lovers and a strong friendship can resemble love. We shouldn’t read into things. Let facts and actions speak for themselves.

Naturally, both of them changed, because bodies are altered, minds are influenced, and as someone once said, ‘life intrudes’. What never wavered was the long-distance friendship that most people couldn’t understand. They wanted it to fit the behaviors they were familiar with and couldn’t. At long last, though, something had to give, and it did. 

One of the friends stopped calling and writing. A week of silence was not unexpected, as both had lives to live. Even two weeks didn’t create concern for the one who heard nothing from the other. No reason to call and maybe the Internet connection wasn’t working. However, when the silence extended to four weeks, a sense of alarm began. Maybe something was wrong, maybe something serious had happened. The friend left hanging knew it was time to find out.

The only information available was an address that gave little indication of where it was located. It could be in a small city or a village, but most likely was not in an urban area with a large population. Funny how the two friends had not gone into a great amount of detail, although they had both been to Freeport and Brunswick years before. In other words, they had both been to Maine, had met there, it was their only shared ‘geography’. Now one of them, even though Europe was not an unfamiliar place, would need to find out what had happened. Obviously, there was much trepidation, but also the perhaps unreasonable hope that all was well.

The flight overseas was pretty much like all the rest: a terrible fear of flying meant taking something for acute anxiety and trying to sleep the hours away while wanting to pace and scream in protest and claustrophobia. Yet the commitment to the friendship was stronger than personal issues and the trip was already underway. Contrary to the worried friend’s expectations, all went well. No turbulence, except the mental sort, no airsickness, nothing. Soon the small suitcase had been collected from the baggage belt and the trek to the only known address for the friend began. The details of this portion of the story are unknown; nobody recorded them, nobody knew about the search. It was pretty much a secret, because after all, nobody would understand two people who had sustained a friendship of that nature for so long. Freeport wasn’t even in the rear view mirror any more.

Finally, the worried friend reached the address, which belonged to a small house, maybe a kind of cottage, maybe not, and saw nobody in the yard or anywhere nearby. This created a sense of alarm. Had something happened? Was the friend ill, in the hospital, or had something worse happened? Maybe their friendship had finally succumbed to the expanse of time and distance. A sense of panic.

The only thing to do was to go up the short walk and knock on the door. But the knock produced no answer. Another knock. Another silence. The third time made the visitor, thoroughly upset, not knowing whether to cry or be angry, try to turn the handle. Nobody should do this when arriving at a strange house, but in this case it seemed justified.

The handle turned. The door was unlocked. The worried friend slowly pushed it open, went partway in, and looked around. Nothing. Nobody. It was necessary to go further in. Something was awry, clearly. Slow steps into the unknown space. Finally, an archway into a stunningly decorated library. Stunning in that it was large, well-illuminated by the sun, full of books, plants, prints from past centuries, and a desk of fine chestnut wood.

At first the library appeared to be empty, until a figure emerged from the furthest corner. The long lost friend stood there, smiling, arms out. And then the greeting, which was also an explanation:

I knew you’d come eventually. I’m so sorry about not telling you before, but we had created such a good friendship long distance that it seemed the only way we would ever see each other again was to make you think it was over. Make you come to find out for yourself.

The visitor knew this was true. Their unlikely relationship had been too stable to ever meet again. But now they were together, and there was so much to talk about…