open book open heart

I just read Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos.  I had some issues with the lots ‘o swearing, the ending, and a character I thought Marissa gave up on but mostly, I loved the darn book.

The characters are best of friends in college who split apart for six years but came back together after much drama and life-happenings.  I’ve already turned my book back into the library but one of the concepts of the book is sticking with me so I’ll misquote it here.  The main character is talking with someone about what those friendships meant to her.  And her listening friend says something like, “it’s not like you three were a religion or something.”  Wow.  I really massacred that but you get the idea.

In the last few years, I reconnected with some friends I hadn’t spoken to or bumped into in well over fifteen years.  We were once fast and inseparable.  A religion?  No. But we shared one and it sometimes felt like we were one.  We needed each other, couldn’t get through the day without passing notes, spending hours on the phone, walking each other “half-way” home.

My parents had many children and spent all their money on us instead of investing in new-fangled technology like microwaves and touchtone or cordless(!) phones.  So, I distinctly remember hours spent with the long white telephone cord stretched across the kitchen, out the back door, me sitting on the back porch pondering verbally with my best friends on the other end.

But then there was time.  We grew up.  Changed.  Maybe we wanted to need each other still but didn’t anymore.  There was moving.  There were marriages, kids born at all opposite and mixed up, non-matching times and we found ourselves texting new friends on the new-fangled technology – probably still sitting on our respective back porches.

One of those old friends and I fell back together.  And it’s been so fun and amazing-great.  During the 15 or so years of separation, we didn’t really have anything in common.  We don’t really now.  But it doesn’t seem to matter.  We do still laugh at the same things.  We know each other – in a you don’t have to explain – sort of way.

I need friends that know me more than I might need air.  Having one who knew me then, who explains me to me with phrases that begin, “remember when …” is purple-sunset-sigh good.