Temporary Best Friends

(Orginally published April 2002, The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

I think it was somewhere between the pot stickers and chop suey that I looked up and saw her. And all I could think of was the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.”

As she made her way closer to our table, my memory overflowed with boys and “the Buzzard,” softballs and sore legs. Then, just as suddenly, the type of guilt often associated with painful break ups hit me in the gut. I wanted to hide.

She was my confidant, my kooky sidekick. Her page-long autograph is featured on the inside cover of my yearbook. She is someone I don’t know anymore. She is one of my long-ago temporary best friends.

We all have them. People whose contribution to your life is measured not by duration, but by direction. They are in large part why you stand where you do today. And there’s usually no reason and every reason for why they fade from your life. But your smiling eyes linger a bit longer on their names each year when organizing your holiday card list.

I wanted to hide when I saw her because I knew our conversation would be, at best, awkward. I also knew how wrong it would seem that what we had would be reduced to long pauses and nervous giggles in a Chinese restaurant. Most of all, I didn’t want to Make Plans. I just didn’t. Somewhere along the way, our lives didn’t fit together anymore.

Not all of my former temporary best friends elicit this response. Sometimes you’ll find me sprinting through a mall to grab a hug from one of “those people I don’t know anymore.” Maybe their contribution to my life has become romanticized over time. Maybe some of them wouldn’t even be held in such high regard if we had become friends of a more permanent kind.

But when I truly think about this subject, my mind immediately wanders to the summer of nearly two decades ago when the planets were perfectly aligned to summon to my realm of the Universe an amazing group of temporary best friends.

It was the best and worst of times. I had finally come to the realization that my seven-year relationship was not going to produce a potential marriage that was going to produce a potential son named Brandon Alex who was not going to potentially stand at the corner of Elm and Pine to catch a bus to the school where I would potentially be PTA president in six years.

I felt like an astronaut who had lost her tether to her mother ship. And then they arrived to pull me in. Some were new friends, some old. Our common thread seemed to be that we were all “in between” things -- marriages, careers, colleges. Perhaps we needed each other.

Soon, this city girl was camping and white water rafting. I even stopped wearing make-up and became a vegetarian folk concert goer. Rather, we became vegetarian folk concert goers.

On any given night, you’d find us dusting the dirt with our bikes on the path. And every mile I pedaled that summer, with sweat and shallow breath, was one more mile towards my new uncertain future.

I often think of a photo I have from that time taken on the day the guys moved me into my very own apartment -- the apartment that would eventually come to foster my independence that led to self-financed vacations and solitary hikes through the Metro Parks. The place where I was re-introduced to me.

My smile is exuberant and my arms are wrapped around my personal movers. And they are holding me up with one arm and flexing their sofa-hauling muscles with the other. Literally and figuratively.

Soon after my move, I stopped considering dates’ last names as my own. And after that, I stopped considering dates at all. I was too busy biking all over Canada and experimenting with vegetarian recipes. And when I met what was to be my future husband, the fact that I had a life gave me life.

What has become of this group? Most of us try to arrange a gathering every year or so. We are no longer “in between” but well in the middle of our careers, marriages, children. Sometimes there are awkward moments as we catch up on our daily lives. But mostly we give bear hugs, look deep into each other’s eyes and see how far we have come.

So here’s to all of our temporary best friends. Our camp buddies, college party animals and former co-workers. It’s not that we hardly knew ‘ye. It’s just that, for a very short time, we knew you very well. And we are far better for it.

And here’s to my future temporary best friends – those soccer moms and school levy parents I’ve yet to bond with and share a different sort of challenge – growing children years. I can’t wait to meet you. But I’m warning you. I make a mean tofu casserole.