Poshdeluxe

over the weekend, my parents and i returned to lafayette, LA, the place where i was born.

our trip wasn’t really planned. but you see, about a week ago, a guy in a rental car decided to run a red light while traveling at 98 miles an hour. and he hit a car with a family in it– a mother, a father, a daughter, and two foster children.

and all of them died.

the mother in the car was named christy, and when i was growing up, she was my babysitter. more than that, her family and mine were interwined by the same neighborhood, the same church, the same love of camping trips and christmas caroling and potlucks. christy’s family, along with several others, formed a community for me, a warm and light-filled place that allowed me to grow up in safety, in peace, in love.

when i look back, i realize how idyllic it all was. and yet, it wasn’t a utopia or a black and white pleasantville. it was real, supported by people who *worked* at loving each other, forming steps with their bare hands to lift each other higher and higher.

and so mom, dad and i drove to this place, where i first learned what “community” really means.

the service for the family was beautiful, actually, and filled with hope. that might sound crazy, given the tragedy, but it was. and to be perfectly honest, that’s not really want i want to write about today. so you don’t need to say that you’re sorry in the comments, because it’s the world’s loss, not really “mine.” and, based on this weekend and my previous experience with the people of lafayette, i know that the remaining family members will be comforted in their grief by a vibrant and caring community. you can read more about the family here.

maybe it’s selfish, but this trip, for me, was about coming home, or to an idea of home, that suddenly felt threatened by the shadow of death, the inevitable passing of time. and that’s what i want to write about.

we spent the night with the butts family, or rather, mr. hal and miss chris.

i believe i’ve mentioned their daughter, katherine, on this blog before… we went to elementary together, and in kindergarten she won the coveted role of “mary” in the christmas show (obviously i’m totally over the snub. obviously).

as i walked into their living room, a hundred memories flooded my heart… painting katherine’s little brother, david’s, toenails while he was asleep, marching down the street in our own parade, and most distinctly, creating shows to perform for our parents after their bible study ended.

so this may look like a regular room to you, but trust me, it’s a magical place.

katherine’s house featured the added allure of a tiny cemetery tucked away in the trees behind her backyard, which seems to me, now, like something from a coming-of-age movie. i guess it was *my* coming of age movie. i remember biking down a little trail and cautiously wandering around the perimeter, whispering “what if” histories for the bodies silently rotting under the green grass. the petiteness of the graveyard made it seem less frightening and more of a curiosity, death as a romantic mystery, “the clearing at the end of the path” as stephen king would say. walking among the stones, i felt like anne shirley, reciting “the lady of shallot” in a rowboat on the river and goosebumping with the thrill of gorgeous tragedy.

many of the trees have been cleared, and the new chain link fence really cuts down on the romance, but the cemetery is still there, meaning, there is a least a little magic left.

it wouldn’t be a true journey home without seeing my first best friend, emily philips. to tell you the truth, i felt a little nervous as i stood on the front step of her house and raised my fist to the door. i was about to see my first friend, and perhaps, in the purest, most innocent sense, my truest friend. what if she was different? what if i no longer recognized her laughter or voice or, god forbid, her smile? what if the *nowness* of her wiped out all of our shared history, ripped out the roots of who i am?

she opened the door, and my heart flip flopped, because i knew that face. i knew that smile. i knew this girl.

of course she has changed, because that’s what happens when you deal with time. but the core of emily, just like the core of “us,” hasn’t yielded one single inch. when i look at that picture, i still see these girls, crammed into a photo booth at astroworld in 1992.

and i still see THESE girls, growing up together on sweetbay lane.

the girl in the middle is mandy, who lived across from me. i didn’t like her as much as i liked emily. i think cos she was bossy. but you know what i DO like? a red sweatshirt with my name on it.

emily lived right down the street from me, and, in true bff form, we never, EVER got tired of each other. i’m pretty sure that we hung out every single day, our imaginations running wild with possibility. we made drawings and then sold them on the street (ah, neighbors. thank you for being so kind to two little girls); we climbed trees and “spied” on people with emily’s toy polaroid camera; we wove wild onion flowers into headdresses and tirelessly cleaned my swing set, which was actually a castle ruled by an evil queen.

i’m not sure what we’re doing in that picture, but it involves house plants and an umbrella and i’m sure it was incredibly amazing.

together, we experienced those milestones of childhood that are, perhaps, less intense than the struggles of teenagerhood but no less important– the first time we realized that boys were, maybe, ok… the first time we were teased in school… the first time we discovered that music, especially tiffany, *spoke* to us… the first time we saw snow in lafayette, the miracle of all miracles.

when i saw emily the other night, we discussed how sweet and untouched our childhoods truly were. i remember playing hide and go seek with all of the neighborhood kids as the streetlights popped on, our ears perked for the first mom to yell, “it’s time to come inside for dinner!” as the shadows, friendly rather than threatening, deepened in our hiding places. how little i knew of the world to come! and yet, i’m glad for that warm, easy ignorance. there is a time for innocence, and when i see emily’s face, i am so thankful that we grew up slowly rather than suddenly.

nostalgia is often as sweet as it is painful, a bitter pill coated in layers of fragrant ambrosia. when my parents and i finally arrived back in austin last night, i sat on my bed for a while and let the nostalgia have its way with me. i even opened my two special boxes, where i keep old notes from high school and ticket stubs and printed out emails from college, and sorted through my twenty-nine (ok, more like twenty-four) years of memories.

sometimes henri calls me “the girl who hates time,” and i think it’s a pretty appropriate label. as i looked through my assorted mementos, i couldn’t help but wish that all of my friendships and relationships could stay the same… we could all be just as close as we were, when we went to camp together or lived in the dorm together or played hopscotch on sweetbay lane. each person, each experience, is a piece of who i am, and remembering makes those pieces more distinct until their edges begin to pierce me.

but i know things can’t stay the same, nor would i want them to, because if i had never left sweetbay lane, i would have never met the pigbutts in houston, and then i would have never found the powersuite in college, and then my heart would not be populated by all of the amazing people i’ve managed to collect.

during the service for the family who passed away, the pastor offered some ideas on how to live our lives to the fullest, so that, no matter when we die, we will have loved and served people and appreciated the magic that is living. we will have LIVED.

one of the tips was, “keep yr relationships current.”

and it made me think about the way i cling to friendships, new and old, because i’m terrified to lose all of these precious pieces of myself. i’m so afraid of change and time that i keep these bits of paper as tangible proof that my memories still exist; when i saw that cemetery behind katherine’s house, i breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant that my childhood was, somehow, still intact.

but maybe, my clinging to the past can become, is becoming, an embrace of the present and the future. maybe my obsession can be a gift, a way to reach out to *people* rather than ghosts. maybe, all along, i’ve been fueled by my reservoir of memories to maintain friendships that are still as true as they were five, ten, fifteen years ago.

maybe i need to see that the passage of time yields experiences i have *gained* rather than lost.

in one of the boxes, i found a picture of emily and me, another photo booth shot from astroworld. and i realized that as much as i miss those days of headbands and swatch watches, i love knowing emily NOW. i love seeing her face, bereft of baby fat, and the way she smiles when she talks about the love of her life, which, by the way, is no longer kirk cameron.

i’m grateful for my memories, but i want to be even more grateful for the present.

because the present gives me the opportunity to embrace living, breathing, beautiful friends, who, unlike ghosts, will hug me back.