Life goes on...

Somehow, the days trickle by. Sometimes they move slowly, like a lazy stream on a hot summer day. Other times they tumble by like a class 5 rapids. Either way, I am always left feeling as though I didn't get enough done in that particular day.

My stepmom still has my dad's voice on her answering machine. Sometimes I call her when I know she's at work just to hear his voice. I almost can believe he's there when I hear it. It makes me tear up sometimes. It always comforts me to hear it though. After his illness in 2004/2005, he had a hoarse voice that never got better. Speech therapists said they could help it and make it better, but he never did his voice exercises like he was supposed to, so it never did improve. It's a short message...."Leave a message after the beep." Oh, how I wish I really could leave him a message. I miss him so very deeply. Dad, I think you're around me. I think you know what's in my heart, what I write, what I think. I love you. I miss you. I know you can't, but whenever I think of you my heart still says "Come back. I want my Daddy."

I heard from one of my best friends on Facebook today. I met her in the 7th grade. I moved to a small town from a larger city after my parents divorced. To go from a school that had as many people in my grade as the whole school had in my new town was culture shock, to say the least. I never did fit in. I never was truly accepted. These kids had known each other, for the most part, since they were babies. I was always an outsider and they never let me forget it. There was one girl though. She was pretty, but goofy looking. She had braces and huge 1980's style glasses. She sat behind me in study hall. She was skinny and short and had the most bowed legs I'd ever seen. One day she started bouncing a small red rubber ball during study hall. It would go rolling past me and I'd catch it for her and send it back to her to bounce again. She never got caught by the teacher. Of course, this was a study hall where the boys found it hysterically funny to say "hooter" with their hands over their mouths from all corners of the room. It was a euphemism for giving oral sex to a man. Later, of course, they took great pleasure in saying "B.J." as much as possible, but in the 7th grade, hooter it was. The ice was broken between this girl and me and we started making fun of the boys for being so stupid. We started whispering and passing notes back and forth during study halls. Soon we were making up nicknames. She chose Bubbles. I never did get a nickname I liked, but I sure tried. I guess I'm just not the nickname type. She was, though. Before long, we were inseparable.

All through the rest of junior high, high school and the two years past that, we were together. We got into trouble together, we had boyfriends together, we planned what to wear to school so we'd match. We went through a phase of wearing big hiking boots with bright red laces. There was also a phase of wearing knickers. There was also the phase of wearing brightly colored plaid flannel shirts. On those days we said were "going scroungy". Scrounges were the low-lifes of our school. They were the druggies, the drop outs, the ones who didn't bathe on a regular basis. Of course in our minds it was perfectly okay to dress like them as long as we weren't really *like* them. My friend had a very, very tough home life. Nowadays I realize that she was severely emotionally abused, but back then she just had a mean mom to me. Her mom was at least twice divorced and the most independent, coarse, hard-working, mean-spiritied person I had ever met. She had a tough life too, and as a single mom she worked very hard to support herself and her daughter. There was a lot to admire about her, but the way she treated her kid wasn't one of them. I frequently rode the bus home with my friend on Fridays and would stay overnight with her. She lived in the middle of nowhere on a small farm with a couple of horses and a herd of goats, plus many chickens. She had to milk the goats, gather the eggs, make egg noodles and numerous other things that made me feel like a real-life Laura Ingalls. My time there was fun, but always shadowed by the screaming and yelling that would go on when her mom got angry at her for some infraction. To this day, John and I have a "curse phrase" we use that I taught him. I use it interchangeably for all kinds of cuss words. It's "Jesus Christ, Beth." Her mom said that so often, and so loud, and in such a mean tone, that it became a phrase that made me think of anger and hurt whenever I heard it. Anyhow, Beth and I bonded and went through a lot of growing pains and teenage rituals together.

A few years ago, I stopped hearing from her. She never returned my calls, she never answered my cards or letters. No reasons given, no excuses, no nothing. I was so hurt and bewildered. She was the closest thing I'd ever had to a sister. She was in my wedding. I loved her. Suddenly today I get a message wondering if it was me. To paraphrase, she said "If it's you, all I have to do is say Muppets and Young Frankenstein." Yep, it's me, Beth. I can't tell you how happy I am to have her back in my life, in whatever form this may turn out to be. Ironically, I had just written a long letter to her a couple of weeks ago that I hadn't had a chance to send yet. It basically apologized for whatever I had done to cause her to stop talking to me, and asked her to please consider getting in touch. Great minds and all that, eh?