But not today.
Today, I hit the cement walkway ready to be invigorated...and I started crying. Groundhog's Day, I thought. I should write a blog post on Groundhog's Day. For her. I haven't been thinking about her lately, though I spent most of the summer holding back tears for her. Her birthday was February 3rd, the day after Groundhog's Day. I didn't know why I thought of it right then, let alone how I remembered such a far-off fact. But there it was, intruding on my nice, comforting walk.
I spent an hour on the same 3/4-mile path, treading it over and over, glad I happened to grab my sunglasses for the first time since I started going to the park. They let me cry without worrying the strangers I passed would see.
Her name was Christine. She was, without a doubt, the single most obnoxious person I had ever met when we sat down in 7th grade science class together. 6th grade had taught me that friends were a liability, that girls weren't to be trusted because they would smile to my face while seeking ways to destroy me when my guard was down. So when 7th grade started, I was committed to keeping my head down and my company to myself. The absolute last thing I wanted was a lab partner who seemed physically incapable of shutting up. Yet the day we were assigned partners based on our seats, the chair next to me was the only one open when she showed up just ahead of the bell.
Our first unit was taxonomy through entomology. In other words, we had to catch, kill, pin, and classify a variety of bugs. She whined about it. A lot. I spent most of two weeks trying to ignore her. I remember half-heartedly chasing down grasshoppers on the playground with the smell of fingernail polish remover wafting from my bug jar, wishing she would just take the bleeping hint. Just. Shut. Up. PLEASE!
Somewhere along the line, as the best stories go, we became best friends. I learned to love people who talk a lot, partially because it took the pressure off of me. But I don't remember having a whole lot in common. In fact, this many years along, I don't remember much about what she did or what she liked. She was a band geek; flute, I think. We had Spanish together. And math. And English. She spent a lot of her time doing homework.
Who she was, however, I will never forget.
Christine was a fountain of energy. She didn't just talk a lot; everything she did occurred on a shorter, more excitable wavelength than anything I could muster. She was sunshine to my moonshadow. Happiness to my depression. Loud to my quiet. Where I had already begun to truly embrace being a gifted slacker, she was ambitious, driven, and self-demanding. She got As on everything, including all the extra work she might or might not have asked for. When we performed A Christmas Carol in English class, she locked down Scrooge's long-ago love, Belle. Not because it was the best role, but because it was the one she wanted. (I was the Ghost of Christmas Past...because it *was* the best non-strictly-male role. (If memory serves, my arch-nemesis landed the role of Scrooge for one of two performances, in spite of being female. She was not the one I admired.))
Looking back, the things I loved best about her were the things I had already lost. The trust in and connection to teachers that earned a teacher's pet label. Belief in the self without the crush of peer pressure. Childhood innocence. The freedom of learning that came with knowing school was a safe space. Personal drive and determination. Her spirit made her seem younger than she was, though the know-it-all, Hermione-esque side of her also made her sharply authoritative at times.
Halfway through 7th grade, when our best-friendship felt like it had been in place for forever, but was still only four months old, my family moved to Parker. She introduced me to a friend of hers who went to my new school at her birthday party a couple weeks later. In 8th grade, that friend and I had theatre together with a couple of her other friends. That's how I met and got to be friends with Amanda, the other half of what our people now call the "Holly-n-Manda entity." In a beautiful life circle, Amanda introduced me to a girl who not only had the same sort of spirit as Christine, but who looked like her enough that even my mom commented.
Christine's family moved to Canada in 8th grade. We were pen pals far longer than we were in-person friends. Somewhere in storage, I have a box full of Lisa Frank stationery and glitter stickers and letters that use a lot of exclamation points as they describe the life of an energetic and delightfully youthful girl. That first Christmas, she sent me a critter-in-a-can because she thought it was hysterical. And because she thought so, I did, too. Her enthusiasm was contagious, even in print.
We lost touch eventually, as tends to happen with childhood friends. And then, through the magic of the internet, she found me again. She had graduated from college and was now in grad school. I was living in Albuquerque, trying to make a life of my own the way I wanted it to be. We were both gamers now, and internet addicts, and writers. We were going to exchange stories, but the holidays got in the way. We only chatted once or twice, but it was a delight to have her back in my life again.
After Christmas break, I waited for her to get back to school. I watched my AIM buddy list for her screen name, the significance of which I hadn't gotten a chance to ask about yet. Was she a roleplayer, like me? Did she, too, have a community of online family filled with ridiculous drama? Had we really grown up to be so very alike, in spite of the missing years? But I never saw it. I figured she was busy; grad school, and all. I figured that one day we'd catch each other online at the same time and go from there.
A year went by. Then two. I got married. Fell apart. Moved to Florida. Pulled myself back together again. And then Facebook arrived, and I thought for sure she'd be there. But no luck. I started Googling her. Surely there must be a record out there somewhere. Graduation. New job. Maybe a story publication, because if anyone was going to beat me to it, it would be her. Never so much as a whisper. I started hoping she had forgotten me, and tried to convince myself she had gotten a job that was best done without an internet footprint. My best friend from fourth grade only has his law office page, after all. It's not so unheard of. Even for an internet addict...
For years, I Googled her periodically. Searched for her on Facebook. I racked my brain time and again trying to remember her little sister's name, but it always eluded me.
And then last May, elbow-deep in purging past romantic relationships and sorting out the mess of issues that followed, I went to bed one night thinking about something completely unrelated. And there, before my eyes, played out a memory on the night-dark wall beside the bed. Christine, yelling at her sister. They had a loving yet volatile relationship, so I probably heard them yell at each other dozens of times. My fingers shook as I typed her sister's name into Google.
As I had dreaded for so many years, she hadn't forgotten me; that same winter break we reconnected, she had an asthma attack that stripped her sunshine from the world.
It's amazing how much you can miss someone you haven't seen in over two decades.
I spent the summer trapped in grief, in the unfairness of it. Tortured by all the things she never got to experience, all the amazing things she would have done if only she had been allowed the chance. By the fact that so many years had gone by, and I never knew. That I couldn't say goodbye. That I never got the chance to hug her mom.
And today, I went to the park and I cried for my long-lost friend. I scripted half of this blog post and a dozen more beautiful sentences that I didn't write down and have now forgotten, in fresh air that felt like spring but smelled of autumn. And I said goodbye as the sun set behind our scraggly desert "mountains."
I checked her obituary when I got home. My brain didn't remember, but my heart did.
Rest in peace, my energetic, youthful friend. I will do my best to remember your example, to embrace the sunshine and reawaken the driven little girl I put away so very long ago.
Save me a seat at the next science table, okay?
<3 <3
In Loving Memory of Christine Lotz, 2/3/81 - 1/7/04
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