At the age of fourteen, in a sea of lost, anxious teens trying to
establish a place for themselves in the pack, I found Chantal.
Friendships come in all shapes and sizes. Some are borne from a violent
collision of circumstance. Some through grudging admission. Some through
persistent effort. Ours was simply borne when two girls, who were
more
comfortable in a pair than in a mob found each other at the right time
and the right place.
As is usually the case in the present, and with a little teen
narcissism thrown into the mix, we took each other completely for
granted at the time. But, a dose of
decade-old hindsight has lead me to
conclude that Chantal, in many ways, saved me from myself back then.
I
was a wildly passionate girl, prone to following the paths of my emotion
to the most complicated ends, until I was good and snared. But this
girl kept me grounded. Her honesty and unapologetic integrity of self
was invaluable to me, because
I didn't feel at all comfortable with who
I was. So, in the face of my repeated misadventures, followed by deep self-pity, she
did not say what she thought I wanted to hear. She
did not say that I was a victim, ill treated by some heartless jerk. No. What she said was; "
Well, that was stupid, what did you expect?"
And what was so brilliant about her was that she didn't
necessarily say this in words.
She had a way of saying nothing at all,
but her eyes would twinkle with suppressed rebuke. And the message would
be received.
When I wasn't busy making stupid choices, and
she wasn't busy watching me do it, we had
So. Much. Fun.
And I mean good, old-fashioned drug-free, alcohol-free fun. We used to
sit up on the highest step of the huge cathedral by my house and watch
people walk by. We'd walk for hours, from one end of center town to the
next. We would ride
on the handlebars of the neighborhood boys bikes and laugh with heads
thrown back. We would make our way up to the old train tracks and watch
the sun set over the river. Sometimes we'd jump in. . . Scratch that.
Sometimes
I'd jump in. She'd stay dry. And safe. Like I said, my stupidity was a spectator sport she observed.
We soon became extensions of each others' families-- as though an
unspoken joint-custody arrangement had been imposed. Every weekend was a
sleepover. We just alternated houses. I stopped trying to win over Duke,
the temperamental dashound, and resigned myself to his less-than-friendly greetings-- barks, snarls and growls. (Usually mellowing into grudging acceptance as
the night wore on.) I ate many, many spaghetti meals at the dinner table.
And we could have picked our way across the rocks of the Britannia piers
with our eyes shut.
As for my noisy, always bustling household, she learned that it was
customary to be bear-hugged at the door, and jumped on by hyped-up
little boys, and mandatory to speak about one's feelings, no
matter how uncomfortable.
We knew every crack in the pavement of my
neighborhood. We
loved to make studies of people. As we'd walk, we'd observe every
detail around us and muse aloud about them. I think the practice of
really taking a good look at the world around us is gift we've taken
with us into adulthood.
And so, you see, those four years, that can be so painful for so many kids,
were, for us, years of security, adventure and wonder.
We looked at the
unembellished world and saw possibility. Every day Chantal and I would
choose to shed the high school veil of introspection and self-indulgence,
and head out into the world looking outside of ourselves to the people
beyond. Looking and hoping for people to interact with, whose
lives we could enter into, even if for just one night. And I think it
made us the richest teenagers around. We were a pair of story
collectors.
Thank you for that, Chanty. Thank you for helping me get through the late
90's without self-destructing. Thank you for
helping me love outwards.
And for helping me learn to be thrilled by the mere possibility of each
new day.
