The Book of Love

In a picture of your hometown, she will always be there. The one you built forts with, did arts&crafts with, romped around in the woods with, skied with, built sledding hills with, gossiped in the library with. But the hometown you lived in doesn’t exist anymore, too many having left and everyone having grown up.

You turn around one day and she’s not there. But she’s always been there, twenty years now. And she won’t tell you why or where she’s gone. She doesn’t even know you know. So maybe you can just pretend you never heard through friends of friends and try again when you get home. And if she really wants to be rid of you, she’ll have to tell you to your face. We would call it a proper goodbye to your oldest friend, or something like that. Or you can call her and tell her you’re sad she didn’t tell you she was upset–sad she doesn’t want you anymore, sad she let you go without a fight.

Maybe that’s your fault, maybe that’s meant to be, maybe it’s good riddance. Maybe you’ve just outgrown each other, like a plant in a pot too small. You can’t help but think that it didn’t have to end this way, that your oldest friend wouldn’t be so disgusted or ashamed or whatever it may be. If only she’d give you a chance to show her that you are still kind, still thoughtful, still funny, still loyal, and a better version of the little girl she was friends with for all those years. You can’t help but believe that if only you had known she was upset, you could’ve done something. And why wouldn’t she let you do anything?

So maybe she’s just a picture of your hometown, tucked away in an album your kids will someday rummage through. And when they ask you who are the happy girls in the photo, you tell them it’s you and this girl you thought you’d grow old with. A stranger you now admire from afar, wondering if she longs for sun-filled days with you like you for days with her.

Those albums will be the place you keep all your strangers. People will think your album is full of loves lost, those having entered your life as stranger, but the most gut wrenching of strangers are the ones you promised to be best friends forever, the ones you don’t ever remember being stranger to. Your album full of faces you haven’t seen in years and the phone calls having become too infrequent. He will be there, the picture of your first love, no less devastating than an old friend who won’t speak to you. He was your first love and she your first friend.

The picture of first love brings you back to the time the tide was low, seaweed still shiny, and rocks slippery. The bay was beautifully blown glass reflecting the painted sky and bending ever so slightly with the breeze. It’s the kind of water they tell you Jesus could walk on. It would have been romantic if it were with anyone else. Because it had taken almost four years to paint the picture of first love, encapsulated into one evening on a work assignment. He was teaching you about crepuscular rays and the way the light filters through the clouds to come crashing into our world in beautiful sunbeams.

You watched as he stepped forward and hurled a flat rock against the glass. But it didn’t break, it bounced one, two, three, four, five times before it plunged into the water with a satisfying plop.  It reminded you of the Rock Olympics we grew up playing. Biggest splash with smallest rock, smallest splash with biggest rock, duck fart, skips, longest throw, shortest throw, and anything else we could come up with.  “Do you know how to play cribbage?” he asked. You responded saying you do and you’ve never met anyone else who knows how to play.

“Me neither,” he responded pulling the small cribbage board and a beat up deck of cards from a plastic bag nearly eaten through by the salt water.  You could tell he was smiling a little as he pulled a just-big-enough-for-cribbage flat rock between two rocks perfect for sitting.

We were quick to become strangers all those years ago but there’s still a flash of knowing and loving, like a mirror and we’re sixteen again. But not actually. We’ve grown a lot since the last time we sat across from each other playing cards.  He now talks about shower beers and philosophy and loving work with kids and wanting to be a teacher.  We’re only some type of grown up, and even after all this time apart and all that hate, there’s still something to adore about him, even if just for a moment when you beat him at cribbage.

Pictures like these make you consider picking up the phone, but calls have become too infrequent and you are deep, again, in strangerhood. The stories of strangers are of those who become something more, it is the before and connection is the after. But after the after?

Perhaps the album where you keep your strangers are just stories of goodbyes–some easier than others. Maybe the hardest goodbyes are to the people you were never strangers with. No longer tethered to each other by the same home only exacerbating strangerhood. It feels like punishment for growing up, becoming strangers with innocence.

The image of lost innocence isn’t one that actually happened, but one that was so close to reality it so easily could have come barrelling in. His little life had flashed before your eyes while on the phone with your mother and all of the sudden you were standing in front of a casket and he was in his best suit.  That one we just bought a couple months ago and that he felt so handsome in.  And you just wanted to hold him.  Hold his little rolls that he grew out of when he turned four.  Sixteen years and now we’re throwing dirt on his body.

You’ve dressed yourself for four funerals now.  Sorry, in this moment on the phone with your mother imagining his, five funerals.  And the first time you cried because your dad was sad.  The second time you cried because she was kind of a cool lady even at 96.  The third time you cried for the generational trauma.  The fourth time you cried because she died alone.  And the fifth time you cry because your heart has been ripped from your chest and in a matter of two months you have lost every part of childhood worth remembering.  Time to throw dirt.

Instead, you are sitting in the hospital, in the psychiatric emergency department surrounded by cries for help, kids with no parents, and your brother who just wants his baby blanket. At least right now he isn’t dead.  At least we caught him. At least it’s not his body you are throwing dirt on.

He may have lived and he may still be there whenever you return home, but you feel stranger to that baby brother who used to chat to himself, make his sisters giggle, and bring light to your every day. So he, as the baby brother, has taken space in your album of goodbyes or your book of strangers or whatever you are calling it now. And even though you see him regularly and he still makes you laugh and love him unconditionally, he is your image of lost innocence, marking the end of your childhood.

Your photo album of strangers will only grow with time. Images of past loves, dear friends, and family members you find nearly unrecognizable will bring back every emotion imaginable–complex, intertwined, and deeply part of who you are. Pieces of who you are in each photo of a stranger you once shared a bit of your heart with. Pieces that are now stuck in time and accessible only by memory.

Being strangers maybe still feels as though it’s reserved for people we haven’t met yet. Strangers are the prologue, necessary for context but not the real story. But how do we reckon with the end of a story, with goodbyes, with becoming strangers again.