A day to remember

It had been a few years since I had last seen Caroline. I had met someone at a house party, and while I wouldn’t go as far as calling it love at first sight, I did feel attracted to him as soon as I walked into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine and saw him leaning against one of the counters, talking to a friend. Our eyes met, and shortly after, he walked over and introduced himself. “I don’t think we’ve met”, he said, nice, easy smile. He told me he worked in sales, I could picture it, with his laidback, outgoing manner. Our conversation flowed naturally. He made me laugh. He intrigued me. A little while later, we found ourselves on the patio, alone, finally a more private moment. I was thrilled. He looked at me, and I was suddenly very glad about having a wine glass to hold in my right hand, otherwise I would probably have been fidgeting. I remember thinking that I was being silly. Then he walked over to me and cupped my face and kissed me, and it was like being a teenager all over again, like I had never kissed anyone before who was exciting and unfamiliar. We started dating and the giddiness persisted. A couple of years passed, and he got a job offer in another city. He decided to take it, and I decided to move with him. It was an easy decision to make; I thought we might get married a few years down the line. So, we packed our lives into boxes and moved. To cut a long story short, we did not live happily ever after. Our relationship crumbled, slowly at first, and then all at once. When the dust had settled, I knew I did not want to continue living in this city that we had come to together, that now stood as a reminder of lost hopes and dreams and was filled with memories of his face following me wherever I went. I packed my bags and boarded a plane back home. It was then that I messaged Caroline.

We were old friends who had bonded over the joys (high school, first kisses, first nights out, first own paycheck earned by working Saturday retail shifts) and horrors (high school, first kisses, first nights out, first own paycheck earned by working Saturday retail shifts) of adolescence. As it tends to happen, our lives took us in different directions and our friendship had ebbed and flowed over the years. We hadn’t always kept in touch, especially after I moved. Nevertheless, she seemed very happy to hear from me. She had a two year old and asked if I wanted to come with them to the playground. That her son was already two came as a shock to me. Despite being in my late twenties, now that I was recently single, the idea of having children had become a very abstract one again. In fact, none of my friends apart from Caroline had children. Some did not want to, some were still waiting for the right person. Perhaps some were also not able to, I’m not sure, that’s something people don’t normally discuss openly. Personally, I would be lying if I said I didn’t lie awake some nights staring at the ceiling, anxiety and longing fighting for the upper hand. As my biological clock was ticking without mercy, I lay in bed, thinking long and hard about freezing my eggs, adoption, climate change, and whether I even really wanted to have a child. Children had been one of the reasons why we had split up. I had not quite been able to see him as the father of my children, and neither had he. 

When the day came, I packed a gift for Caroline - a lovely rose scented set of shampoo and shower gel - into my bag and headed to my car. I had offered to pick Caroline up, but she said her boy and her would already head out a little earlier. That was fine, especially because it meant I could smoke on my drive. I wasn’t much of a smoker, but I did enjoy smoking a cigarette in the comfort of my car. I had hardly smoked when I was still in a relationship as my ex could not stand it, but ever since we had broken up, I did indulge occasionally. It was a sleepy Sunday morning, not much traffic at all. I tried to remember when I had last seen Caroline in person, but I wasn’t sure.

The playground wasn’t far from our old high school in a park where we had spent many afternoons lounging around and soaking up the sun. “So good to see you”, Caroline said. Words like these often sound like hollow phrases to me but coming from her it sounded genuine. “You too”, I said, and I meant it. I had missed her more than I had realised. She wore her hair shorter now. She was also not wearing any makeup.  Perhaps it was more practical like this.

Her boy was already busy playing in the sandbox by himself. “Hey, little man”, I said. He looked up and gave me that curious, unwavering look that children have before someone teaches them that it’s impolite to stare. He had his mother’s green eyes. “Wanna sit on the swings?”, Caroline said. “Sure”, I said, and we sat on the swings, opposite the sandbox so that we could keep an eye on him. 

“Hey, Carr”, I laughed, suddenly. 

“Remember the last time we came here together?”

She thought for a moment, frowning.

“No, tell me.”

“I think we were in grade 9. We smoked our first cigarette here.” I remembered it vividly. We had gone to a corner shop for the big mission. I had gone in - heart beating fast, chest out, shoulders back - while Caroline had waited outside. It went more smoothly than expected. The shop assistant had not even bothered checking my ID and so I had come back a few minutes later, triumphantly holding up a pack of Marlboro. We had walked over to the playground, and had lit up two cigarettes, one for each, and then we had discovered that neither of us was able to inhale properly. So we had both coughed a little and I don’t know how Caroline had felt, but I had only felt slightly deflated, mostly I had  felt very excited and grown up. And then when I was heading home, I had worried that my parents would be able to smell the cigarette that I could still taste on my tongue. 

“Oh, I remember now”, Caroline said in an odd tone. She looked amused, yet almost pained. I wondered if I had said something that I shouldn’t have brought up. 

“Seems like forever ago.”

“Full circle moment, eh?”, I said.

“Now we’re back here, with your kid.”

“Yeah”, she agreed, “I can’t believe he’s already two.”

“Neither can I”, I said, relieved that it wasn’t just me who felt like time was flying. We both looked at him. He was very concentrated in the sandbox.  

“Oh, I got you something”, I said, reaching for my bag. “This time, it’s not a pack of Marlboro.”

I gave her the shampoo and shower gel gift set. “Thank you”, she said. “That looks wonderful.” Suddenly, her eyes were shining with tears. 

“What’s wrong?”, I said. 

“It’s just that… I haven’t received a gift in so long that was… for me… and not him”, she said. A tear rolled down her cheek. 

“Does saying that make me an awful mother?” 

“No, why would you think that?”, I said, appalled. 

The words broke out of her now, words that seemed to have been suppressed and pushed down for a long time. 

“Of course, I love him. More than anything. I love him so much that it hurts, and I worry about him all the time. But it’s so hard. I carried him in my womb for nine months but we never separated, not really. It’s almost like I’m an extension of someone else now. I’m mom now. I don’t even hear my own name anymore… I don’t even know who I am anymore."

What could I say?

What could I possibly say that wasn’t clichéd and useless?

"I'm not sure I would say this to you if I had seen you more often. I might be too ashamed to admit I feel this way...", she said.

A breeze ruffled through the trees, through the yellow and orange autumn leaves lying on the ground. 

“You’re still Caroline to me”, I said.

I still thought of Caroline as I went to bed that night. I tried to imagine the love that Caroline felt for her son, that all encompassing, unconditional, consuming love that enveloped her like a magnetic field, a love so great she was afraid it would swallow her whole. I thought of two pairs of green eyes, staring at me from the face of a small boy and a woman, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. A soft pain pulled at my heart. Still, it had been a beautiful day. I want to remember it, I said to myself. All of it. The crisp October air, the autumn leaves, his little hands ploughing away in the sand box, the rawness and beauty of my friend's face. 

Maybe our children will smoke their first cigarette together on that playground, too.