Michelle

I actu­al­ly post­ed this as a response to some­thing sumob­abe said.

Once a year, I call an old friend of mine on her birth­day (Novem­ber 18). Michelle and I were best friends in mid­dle school and high school. She was my maid of hon­or the first time I mar­ried. Then we grew apart—I was get­ting divorced as she was get­ting mar­ried, I left the church as she was get­ting more and more fun­da­men­tal­ist, etc. Her daugh­ter is 9 and I’ve yet to lay eyes on her, although I’ve sent most of my daugh­ter’s out­grown cloth­ing to her through our par­ents (who still attend church togeth­er) all these years. Our daugh­ters have met, briefly, while with their grand­par­ents. We’ve seen pic­tures of each oth­ers’ kids, but it isn’t the same.

Any­way, I still miss her. We have a lot in com­mon, still, but we have such dif­fer­ent val­ues that a real cur­rent rela­tion­ship just isn’t very fea­si­ble. The fun­ny thing is that I have two oth­er friends (one extreme­ly close) who are far more con­ser­v­a­tive than she is—they’re sim­ply more tol­er­ant of dif­fer­ences in others.

When I called her this year, she knew who it was imme­di­ate­ly, which sur­prised me. She said she feels guilty every year when I call because she does­n’t remem­ber to call me on my birth­day (Novem­ber 12). I told her that does­n’t matter—I just want to know what’s up with her. We used to talk about get­ting togeth­er since we live maybe 10 miles from each oth­er. We don’t do that anymore—I guess we’ve accept­ed that it isn’t going to happen.

I miss singing with her. I trea­sure the fact that she did­n’t think she COULD sing until we sat around at the piano enough for her to gain con­fi­dence to final­ly try out for the cho­rus I was in and join me, and now she sings solos all the time at var­i­ous church­es and in wed­dings. I miss her snarky sense of humor. I miss her sto­ries about life in New Hamp­shire (which seemed very for­eign when I was in mid­dle school). I miss try­ing to get her hair tamed—we put three full sets of hot rollers in her hair while set­ting it for her wed­ding! I miss her want­i­ng to bor­row my shoes and com­plain­ing that her feet were too tiny for them (size 6)—the only per­son I’ve ever heard com­plain­ing about her feet being too small.

Michelle, even though I can’t imag­ine you will EVER join LJ—I still love you.

Cur­rent Mood: 🙁melan­choly
Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
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