Friends Become our Woven Family

There was a sign in the large recycling center in Upstate New York that read “Do not remove items from this area.” But I couldn’t resist a small Budda fountain that sat forlornly on the cement floor. I looked to my friend and said, “We’re taking Buddha.” She opened the liftgate and served as the lookout. I lovingly placed the abandoned  god in her car, and we made our getaway. 

This is how it is when lifelong friends are together. We can keep each other warm and protected with the lifelong tapestry that six decades of friendship has woven. We have each other’s backs and best interests at heart, along with a wealth of history and secrets. Just like when we were toddlers, we two baby boomers are confidants and co-conspirators. We have two wusband’s and five children between us. We grew up across the street, diagonally, and grew apart sometime in middle school. But our moms held the invisible threads of our friendship together while interlacing their own suburban alliance. 

Our moms were close, sharing afternoon coffee and Entenmanns cake. They also confided their concerns about us and our siblings and probably our dads, but who knows? All these parents are long gone and somewhere along the line Pamela and I picked up the twine. She has lived in Japan, England, and California. I have only lived in Colorado and the suburbs of New York City, where Pam and I both grew up. Today, with the magic of modern technology, we don’t let geography hinder our relationship.

Pam moved back to New York and bought a place in the woods. A sanctuary really. She was always talking about the beauty of her land and the peacefulness of the forest. Last May I flew to Syracuse, where she picked me up and told me in no uncertain terms she only makes airport runs for family. I was grateful, but not surprised. After all, we met when I was three and she was two. A fact she never let’s go of. Yes, I know. I am older by just under one year. Still, she tells restaurant servers and gas station attendants this immutable fact. We are both February babies, but don’t share a Zodiac sign. She is air and I am water. Two elements needed for life and apparently, lifelong friendships, as well.

Part of this trip was a long drive down memory lane. We meandered the windy country roads of upstate New York, making a bucket list stop at the ‘World’s Largest Kaleidoscope.” Pamela was the driver and she indulged me on this side trip. She was hoping to meet up with some friends from her Ojai days, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we laid on our backs in an old silo and had an LSD trip without having to take any drugs. I won’t elaborate on the reference except to say we did grow up in the 70’s!

We continued our trek, sliding south on Route 9W which hugs the Hudson River. In Highland Falls, New York we drove up a hill to see the little house where my ex and I had lived in the early 1980’s, just north of the county of my youth. Then we had a long gander at the gate of West Point (USMA) where Pam’s son had graduated eight years before. Is it coincidence that we both had memories of this sleepy Hudson Valley hamlet, or was it just another thread in our life tapestries that connected us…

After a long day of driving, reminiscing and laughter, we hit Rockland County where we spent two nights at an Airbnb. We visited the stomping grounds of our youth. Tappan Zee High School had a facelift but looked the same overall. Pam was and is a highly intelligent person; she had skipped a grade in high school and graduated a year ahead along with my class. I never walked at graduation, taking the GED route instead. So much for all that ribbing about being older. She attended an Ivy League College, and I took a cross-country trip landing in Denver. As I said, we grew apart, but were kept apprised of each other’s antics through our moms. We didn’t need Facebook – we had Jewish mothers! I knew she had graduated Cornell and went to California. She acted in movies and danced in music videos. Did I mention she was drop dead gorgeous back in the day? Some say she resembled Brooke Shields. To me she looked like Pammy.  I planted roots along the Front Range of Colorado. I tried community college and vocational school. I worked in jewelry stores and coffee shops. I had a go of living in the mountains, my life also magical, in a quiet way.

Driving around our hometown gave us a chance to reflect. The Junior High still looked like a prison. We stopped by the museum, which didn’t exist in our time, and learned more about our hometown in an hour than in all the years we had lived there. We drove through Rockland State Hospital, though that is not what we called this place as kids. This was an insane asylum, a mental institution, the looney bin. We marveled at how most of the creepy concrete buildings of our youth were gone. The six hundred acres that terrified us as children now had a bucolic air. Of course, as adults we know the language of the sixties and seventies was inappropriate; now it is referred to as a psychiatric center, evidenced by the benign signage as we exited the gate. The same gate that had guards when we were kids.

We went to the ‘block.’ That is our 72-home development that abutted the hospital fence. It seemed big when we rode our bikes up the block to a friend’s house. Standing on Edgewood Lane we both agreed that the neighborhood was small, maybe a bit claustrophobic. We took pictures of our old houses, noticing upgrades and lamenting long gone trees of our youth. The man who had bought the house across the lane from my childhood home pulled up and we quasi-accosted him when he exited his car. Are you Ralph? He said he wondered what had happened to me and my siblings after our parents died and the house was sold to another original kid of The Edgewoods. It was hard to hold back my tears, and I was grateful I was there with my frister. A portmanteau of friend and sister. 

Pam talked about her first encounter with antisemitism, having been tied to a telephone pole at the other end of the lane, and being taunted by older kids. Our Italian neighbor came out, admonished the kids, and freed Pam. I never knew this story. How terrifying. Like so many incidents in the newly burgeoning, post WWII suburbs, was this incident swept under the fear filled rug of non-acceptance?

I recalled how many miles I had ridden my bike. To Idlewild, the swim club I adored. To buy Brazier burgers at Dairy Queen or Egg Creams at Kuhn’s. Pam and I had a tree fort in the woods. We played Barbie in each other’s basements. Kids would gather in the street to play kickball or baseball, loudly yelling CAR when one of the commuting dad’s returned from New York City.   If our parents had chosen this newly built development to raise this gaggle of kids away from the dangers of the city, it would be illusory.

A kid got hit by a car once. Did we see him fly in the air? He was OK, but we were all shaken. Years later I would learn the neighbor behind the wheel was drunk. Police would show up at the neon green house, two doors down from Pam and across the street from mine, when another man would drink and beat his wife and kids. A kid was viscously bit by a dog while delivering the Journal News. An older boy was suspected of starting the fire in our grammar school. At just 19 years old, my sister’s friend was killed in a car accident. 

These shared, perhaps repressed memories are the darker threads of the tapestry. Without speaking of them we knew the story of every house. In years past I had brought my wusband, then my kids to see my childhood haunts. These were finger pointing experiences with me as the narrator. This time with my lifelong friend, and sister from another mother, little needed to be said. We knew the history & the mystery, the fact & the fiction, the love & the loss. All we needed to do was stand shoulder to shoulder and let the memory bank of the blanket keep us close on this steamy summer day.

Our moms knitted this quilt of love and memory, and our dads may have added a few rows along the way. Now Pam and I, through our rekindled relationship, are putting the border on. We are tying off the loose threads left by all four of our parent’s early demises. We’ve dropped some rows. The hurtful memories of mental illness and narcissism. The rows of past lovers and painful memories. It is doubtful our own children will pick up the threads and work new stitches. They have met less than a handful of times. Pam and I talk enough about them that scant rows are added in an abstract pattern. It doesn’t detract from the rich foundation our moms laid. This quilt only lives in our minds, but either of us can recall it on a chilly day to keep warm or a sad day to feel protected. And it is big. Big enough for me to hold one end in Colorado and for my frister to hold the other end in New York. We have a few more adventures to share and many more rows to knit. And more Buddhas to rescue.