The Visit

Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to see you. This morning I am drinking a green passionfruit tea that I have never tried before and it is very refreshing. Almost as refreshing as visit that I just had with a dear friend. Let’s talk about that for a bit.


So, just to illustrate the circumstances of this visit I have to bring you in to the start of it. My friend and I had been planning this visit for a while now, finally landing on the best dates that worked for both of us. Also, my friend usually stops and spends the night with another friend she has in a town just about half-way between my friend’s city and mine. This also serves as a break in the long journey’s drive as we are no longer ‘spring chickens’. At first I was worried about her driving during the eclipse day but realized she would be safely ensconced in her friend’s home by the time of the big event. 


So, one morning last week I had decided to take a walk on a different route than I usually do because the weather was spectacular for April in Northern Ontario. As I’m plodding along, listening to my tunes and enjoying the sunshine I get a text message from said friend. The text read, “Just leaving North Bay. Long hauling it.” I read, then re-read the text message, then checked the date (nope it isn’t April 8th, otherwise known as ‘eclipse day’) and so I text clarified, “On your way here?” My heart fluttering as I stood on the sidewalk watching the replying text bubbles. The bubbles disappeared as her one word message popped up, “Yes”


It is amazing how just one word can strike such panic in a person. I’m standing on some sidewalk on an unfamiliar block because today, TODAY, I decided to be adventurous! I have no idea how long it will take me to walk this route home but I do have an idea of what I need to do when I get there. I need to put fresh sheets on the bed in the guest room, clean the guest bathroom, and finish the dusting I had started last week , abruptly stopping when my family suddenly arrived early for dinner and I had never got back to finishing. 


Oh, wait! I’ll call one of my daughters for a ride I thought, phew! So I text her, she who is usually around, she who is not working today, she who is available. Yep you guessed it . . . not available to come and get her mother. All the times I dropped everything to go get that kid, you think she would be more grateful and drop everything to return the favour. “Ok, ok”, I started calming down as I remembered that North Bay is still a four hour drive from here. 


If only I knew how long it would take me to find my way out of this maze of a subdivision and get home. Surely it won’t take four hours. I pick up the pace. About half way home there is a road closed sign as the city workers repair yet another mine-shaft sized pot hole. Going around would take me an extra block of distance and time. Wait, the sign does not say ‘sidewalk closed’, and suddenly I see a fellow with a cane coming toward me on said sidewalk. Off I sprint before any workers can tell me not to use the sidewalk, and by ‘sprint’ I mean walk really fast. Made it!


So I enter my house, assess the cleaning priorities, and get moving. Well, moving as fast as a person can after walking twice as far as usual. I managed to get the bulk of the tasks done just before my friend drove into the driveway. “Is it the 8th already?” I asked. Laughingly she said her plans had changed. I would have been completely mortified if she were anyone else but as she is one of the most non-judgemental people I know, (and she was a week early after all) I was only a tad mortified. Phew!


Finally, her car is unpacked, suitcases safely in her room, the tour of towels, closet space and hangers, extra soap and such is over, so we go into the living room to relax and catch up. Suddenly, as we are sitting there talking, my attention is caught by a dust bunny behind the chair she was sitting in and a fine line of dust (that I had obviously missed in my surface cleaning frenzy) on the side of the organ just about a foot from her head.Mortification loomed again so that’s when I opened the wine.


I don’t know about you but visiting with a friend you knew ‘way back when’ but whom you do not see often is like being in a time machine. I met my friend when I went to live with my grandmother for a ‘victory lap’ of grade 12. I was temporarily living in a new community and going to a new high school in grade 12. Grade 12 is a year where friendships are long established and relationships are often at the ‘future planning’ stage. I just wanted to get in, get my three lost credits, and get out. Then I met my friend and her boyfriend. Spending those few days with my ‘way back when friend’ brought me right back to our teenage angst, to our being groupies for her boyfriend’s band, and to the fond memories of just having fun. We talked about students we knew then and where they are today.  We updated each other on our adult children and our grandchildren of course but we mostly enjoyed walking down memory lane. 


I don’t have a great memory but my friend seems to have an almost eidetic one, so she was able to refresh my recall of the many experiences we shared during my ‘victory lap’. We also talked about living with our grandmothers, I temporarily and she, permanently. I guess I had never really thought about it before but realized that she had been raised in a kinship scenario, abandoned by her birth parents just like I had been. That’s when we knew we also have trauma in common. We talked about the impact this probably had on us when we were teenagers and how that rejection maybe explained some of our risk-taking behaviour. We both agreed that our feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem were probably products of that parental rejection. It was definitely an ‘ah hah’ moment for both of us. For the rest of her visit we would sometimes look at each other  during a story or memory and say, ‘See? That feeling of rejection was actually trauma.” Or, “OMG, now I can see why I was so insecure and never felt I was good enough.”


While she was here there was an extremely heavy snowfall. She had gone out to get something from her car but seemed to be taking a very long time so I looked out the window to check on her. There she was, a woman in her mid 60s, building a snowman. She was very focused on the task at hand. She had even used a scarf from her car to tie around its midsection. I brought her out a hat and some mitts, (but did not offer to help). As she progressed, and it became obvious that she wasn’t going to quit, I brought her out some grapes for eyes and a carrot for the nose. I took pictures out my window and a short video. I poured myself a cup of tea, stood in the window, and watched my friend’s inner child playing in the snow. It made me smile. 


The next day we went for a walk to enjoy the beauty of the post-storm snowfall. As we were passing a heavily snowed in driveway there was a man, probably in his eighties, making his way slowly down towards the half frozen pile of sand/snow blocking his driveway, left there by the city snowplow. Without even looking at each other my friend asked him to hand her his shovel simultaneously with my asking him if he had another shovel. He apologetically offered me a slightly broken shovel. My friend and I worked together to move enough snow for this elderly couple to get out of their driveway and off to their appointment. I know my friend was paying it forward with a nod to her grandmother being there for her. Without consulting one another we just stepped up to help, I believe that our kinship and adoption histories leave us with the innate need to give back whenever we can. 


Later that day, we chatted about her leaving time the next morning and she indicated she was in no rush, so she was thinking around 9 a.m. but she didn’t want breakfast as she was going to gas up, grab a Timmies, and be on her way. Yep, you guessed it. I heard her up and about around 6:30 the next morning so I hit the shower, dressed and headed downstairs where I found her suitcases all packed and resting at the top of the stairs. I looked her in in the eye and said, “Hmm it looks like your 9:00 am departure turned into your April 8th arrival!” She laughed and said she was awake early and so thought she may as well get ready and head out on her long drive. 


I helped her load up her car, and as we passed the melted snowman remnants on the ground, the grape ‘eyes’ the carrot ‘nose’ and various twig limbs and hands, we giggled at the memory of her out in the snow storm building it. We hugged and said our goodbyes as she got in her car. As I was walking back up the driveway I noticed a twig, so I picked it up and returned to her car. I gestured for her to open the window and when she did, I handed her the twig saying, “Here, in case you need a hand.” Then, both of us smiling, me with a tear in my eye, she drove out of our driveway and off onto another adventure. Until next time my friend . . .


Thank you so much for visiting with me (and my friend) today. I so enjoy your company and I hope you enjoy my stories. As always, feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. See you next time.