What's a best friend?

I learned about, and internalized, the impermanence of relationships at a very early age. 

When I was in kindergarten, my best friend was Aubrey. My memories of Aubrey are hazy, but I remember that she had very dark hair, darker than mine, and she wore dresses, which I disliked, but  in spite of these—obviously crucial—differences, we were best friends. I remember playing My Little Ponies with her at my house. I remember other kids from that time. Two twins name Clint and Christy (who didn’t believe in Santa Claus, WTF), the ever present Jamie and Chris, who we kind of grew up with, and others, but Aubrey is who I called my best friend. 

Aubrey moved away and I didn’t quite get what that meant for a while. I remember being told that she was moving and I wouldn’t be able to see her, but I didn’t really understand that at first. I felt like I had been friends with Aubrey for a long time. Who knows what that means to a four year old. A year? Six months? Still a big chunk of my life at the time.

In first grade my best friend was Amy Aratae. I have no idea if that’s how her last name was spelled. I just remember enjoying the sound. I apparently developed a liking for alliteration at an early age. Or maybe this is why I like it. Amy was cool. She had a pixie haircut and pierced ears. (I never got my ears pierced. Never had an interest.) She had light brown hair and blue eyes and smiled a lot. I hated wearing anything tight, patterned, or overly bright—I was basically an 80s fashion ‘don’t—but Amy wore cool acid washed jeans and slouchy shirts. She didn’t act like a ‘cool kid’ though. She was down to earth. I don’t remember anything that we talked about or what we did. I just remember we were happy.

Amy also moved away and this time I ‘got it’ a little more. In the 80s there was no email. Long distance phone calls cost money. Six year olds don’t make long distance phone calls. Although I think I remember that Amy and I got to call each other once after she moved. I could have made this up, but I remember sitting on the side of my parent’s bed using the phone in their room. I don’t remember the conversation and I don’t think there were ever any more. I have no idea what we might have even talked about. I don’t remember being particularly loquacious on the phone until I was a teenager.

Courtney standing next to me at a birthday party.

My next best friend was Courtney. I remember our friendship vividly. It spanned a couple of years. We both loved cats, making up songs about the things we liked and recording them on blank cassette tapes, playing outside, playing inside, we both had younger sisters that we sometimes played with, sometimes fought with, we were funny. We were having ice cream once and Courtney took a spoonful of the melt and dripped it down her face like tears and pretended to cry. We laughed so, so, hard that my mom took a picture. (This was back when you had to pay to get that film developed, so not everything merited a picture.)

Courtney, like many of my friends through the ages, was cooler than me. I still didn’t care what I looked like really, as long as I was comfortable. I didn’t actually care if it was weird for me to be galloping on the playground instead of running if I was pretending to be a horse. Even if I was just galloping around by myself to the horse story I made up in my own head. But somewhere around age ten, other kids started pointing out how weird I was, you know, in the nice way that kids do. I did eventually assimilate, but it took a while.

Meanwhile, Courtney had found another group of friends. They did cool things. They didn’t gallop around on the playground and wear weird baggy clothes. At first, she made up reasons that we couldn’t play together. “We’re playing double dutch and you can only play if you can jump in.” I went home and told my parents that I needed to learn how to jump in. So they got out two boat lines and twirled them in the driveway for me and I practiced until I got it. I went back to school and ran up to Courtney at recess where she was holding the ends of two ropes, twirling them for all of the kids who were allowed to play with them. I told her that I had learned to jump in and asked if I could play. She just stared straight ahead. I repeated myself. She ignored me. I ran away.

As you can see, I’m obviously a tiger, not a human.

Later that week, she found me and told me that she thought our friendship was ‘broken’ and to fix it we should ‘stay apart until the end of May.’ Obviously when the school year ended. I may have been a little behind the times on fashion and socially acceptable playground etiquette, but I knew I was being broken up with. I ran away.

(Courtney went to school with me throughout high school and apologized in a few yearbook signatures. We have actually reconnected at our reunion and on social media and I really like those times I’ve talked to her and hung out as adults.)

I decided I was done with best friends after that. I would have friends, but no one needed to be elevated to the ‘best’ title. ‘Best’ was stupid anyway. Friend was good enough. This was about the time that those ‘best friend’ heart necklaces were going around, where you would have one half of the heart and your best friend would have the other. So one half of the heart said, ‘Be Fri’ and the other one said, ‘St End.’ I scoffed at these. 

I did make friends, of course. Eleven to Fourteen was rocky because my ‘horse girl’ reputation followed me for a while, regardless of the fact that I hadn’t galloped or neighed in years. And I still liked drawing, and drawing horses, and still hated tight clothes and refused to put hairspray in my hair. Yech. So the friends I did collect were the ones who didn’t care that I was a little different.

Around age fourteen grunge hit and suddenly shapeless baggy clothes and unstyled hair was in style. And I had been doing it long before it was cool. I found a lot of things I enjoyed in high school. I ran track and cross country. Joined the Thespians, Yearbook, was in Talented Art and Theatre. Being a bit of a weirdo was no longer something to be ashamed of. The ‘90s were a fabulous time for young misfits. I also began growing into myself. It’s amazing how much better people treat you when you’re attractive. In high school there were also twice as many kids. I was no longer surrounded only by the kids who knew me as ‘horse girl’ and was allowed to be known for the person I had become after age ten.

Me on the left and Natasha on the right at around age twelve.

I still didn’t use the ‘best friend’ label, although I undoubtedly had them. But I also had several different little groups of friends that ebbed and flowed. Drama with the thespian friends? Spend a little more time with the track guys. Track guys obsessed with jealous new girlfriends? Call up a yearbook friend. Or call Natasha.

Natasha became my friend during that weird ten-year-old phase and she stuck around. She’s seen every single boyfriend breakup, friend breakup, success, failure, move, marriage, pet, job change, phase that I’ve been through since age ten. She was my maid of honor at my wedding. Her first ever trip on a plane was to come see me when I was living in England. (New Orleans to London is a hell of a first plane ride, y’all.) I’m not sure when I started using the ‘best friend’ phase with her, but I eventually did. Still do.

However, the phrase has a different meaning for me now. I have a handful of ‘best friends.’ I have two in England. I went through a nutso, crazy, twenty-one-year-old, biltz of a time while I was there and somehow came out of it with Tom and Julie, who managed to see beyond the whirlwind that I was blasting through at the time and hang around. (Or perhaps they were just as nuts as I was back then.) We obviously don’t see each other often. Overseas trips have been reserved for each other’s weddings (all three of us ended up with stupendous spouses), me going to France to punch the world, or a handful of vacations between London and Chicago. Still, they’re in that group of people that I know I could call at 2am if I need to. (Especially because they’d be awake already.)

Me and Charles at a party. I’m pretty sure this was a costume party.

Charles became my Chicago best friend. I don’t remember a lot of our early bonding because we did a lot of inebriated carousing in the streets after our violent hobby of punching and kicking. I do remember closing down the bar multiple times. I also remember a lot of dinners, singing Jesus Christ Superstar at the top of our lungs in his car, SEEING Ted Neely in JCS when it came to Chicago. Charles was man of honor in my wedding. He and Natasha actually share the same birthday (a few years apart) and thus my dedication to Scorpios was formed. I have actually called Charles in the wee hours of the morning before when I’ve been in emotional distress. (I believe I interrupted a date once.) I called him when Dean had his seizure and we needed to get to the hospital. When Charles got back from his trip to Africa, I looked at all 500 of his photos while we shared champagne. (He then fell asleep on the couch for a while from jet lag and I put together a bookshelf from Ikea until he woke up again.) He later left the camera on top of his car. I remain the only witness to those photos.

I don’t see or talk to these people every day, or even every week. Often we have to schedule times to have a phone or video call—barring those 2 a.m. emergencies of course—and they’re often over an hour long. Sometimes we do just throw each other funny memes or news headlines with no other comment. Sometimes we’ll catch each other online randomly and have a chat. But when we do catch up, it’s comfortable. Like coming home. 

My Nash-bestie, Patti is moving to Chicago today, Friday morning. The friendship that we’ve grown the last two years since we’ve moved has been fantastic. She’s helped me be more comfortable in my own skin, being myself, wearing what I want, owning what I like. And I’ve done my best to support her as she’s gone through law school and various. I’m not quite sure that I’ve processed that she’s going.

I’ve done my best to help pack, found her a kitten in the woods to take with her, and made her a playlist for the road. I remember needing to leave Chicago several years before I actually moved. The plan was always there. I knew it meant leaving some friends behind. I knew it would be hard. I still needed to do it. So I understand why Patti is leaving. I get it. I do not like it. I know that even though we’ll stay in touch, it’ll be different than it was before. There’s something about ‘we were thinking of grilling if you wanted to come over tomorrow’ answered by ‘I was literally just texting to see if you wanted to hang out’ that I’m going to miss. 

As usual, I’m writing this on Thursday. My plan for the evening is to head over to Patti’s after Dean brings the car back and we’ll help her clean her place. I have a few boxes if she needs them for leftover odds and ends. I’ll offer to bring dinner. She’ll probably say she has food. I’ll see if there’s anything else she needs that I can help with. I’ll try not to cry.

We’ve already got a ‘meet in the middle’ trip planned for October, which makes it less painful. But she’s starting a new job, reconnecting with old friends, moving in with her girlfriend in the same city for the first time, blending their animal family, she’s going to be busy. I know that I’ll have to start scheduling phone or video calls. And it’s okay.

When you connect with an awesome soul that helps you grow, that you can give back to just as much, you hang on to them. Even when they move away. 

I have another best friend in Chicago now.