i want it forever; i just do.
speaking love out loud to mountains, the magic of meeting the right person at the right time, and finding grace in the pain of endings.
There’s a winter storm warning in effect for the next three days. We haven’t had consecutive days of snow since we moved to Minnesota late last summer. It’s snowed for a day here and there and then stopped and then maybe another day. Then it takes a break for a few weeks or a month. All our neighbors keep joking with us, not to get used to it. So this feels like a last chance to experience some winter. We all keep checking the weather to see when it’s going to start! When I went to bed it had been forecasted to begin with 1-2 inches an hour at 10 pm but when I woke up - nothing. I was a bit sad - I wanted the big white blanket! I wanted the kids to wake up and scream and run out and immediately get to work on making snow people. I just checked the forecast and it says it will probably start tonight now. I guess that’s ok; I can go to the store and run some errands before we lock down. I have to return the kid's skis we rented for their lessons and interview a babysitter at the library. There’s stuff to do that’s easier without snow underfoot.
The truth is I’m just looking for an excuse to stay in bed and read a bunch of books and not talk to anyone all day. I’m pouting a little after saying goodbye to an old friend Esme and I visited last week. It’s really hard to do this, just check out of a day, when you’re 45 and have two very alive and energetic children in the house - an impossible dream really. But a snowstorm might buy me a few hours if I’m lucky. A few hours to sit and miss my friend and feel sorry about the fact that she’s finally, actually, maybe getting old.
Natalie is one of my oldest friends. She is 87. I know. She’s more than twice my age. It has never mattered…not one little bit. I dated someone 18 years older than me once (I don’t recommend this) that mattered…even though for a couple of years I pretended it didn’t…but with our friendship, her age has never felt like anything to consider. We’ve always just felt parallel.
We met when I was 17 and she was interviewing me for a volunteer position. I had an idea that I might want to work for an art museum when I grew up, so I thought I should volunteer first and get the inside scoop. Natalie was the volunteer coordinator for the Tacoma Art Museum. I remember, but could also be falsifying this memory, that when I walked in there was a rare beam of Washington sunlight coming through the small PNW-style window on her right; all wood trim and watery glass and it seemed to be pointing directly at her warm smiling face welcoming me in - I walked in, sat down and immediately fell in love with her. I think this is what happens to most people who meet her. She has a lovability that knocks you off your feet. I cannot imagine anyone who would be able to resist her. I can’t imagine anyone not liking her or thinking a rude thought about her but I am sure she is not immune to such human things - still, I cannot fathom this occurring in any scenario real or imagined - not in this universe. I think that’s what happens when you fall in love with someone you just think everyone must love them the way you do, anyone worth their salt that is.
My heart dropped as she kindly shared that there weren’t enough hours available to take me on as a volunteer. They needed folks during the times I was in class, I was still in High School and my availability was limited. I thought well this was a bust. I also felt crushed because it being Tacoma Washington in the late 90’s, there wasn’t exactly a gaggle of other art museums nearby to choose from. Natalie asked me if I wanted to go get a coffee…we went for a walk and talked. I told her about Brown University where I thought I wanted to go to school. She was from Providence*. I desperately wanted to go to the East Coast but had never talked to someone who had lived there. Talking with her made it seem like a no-big-deal, quite real, place that wasn’t so far out of the realm of possibility. All of a sudden she said Sarah, I have an interesting idea! Why don’t you come and work for me? She watched her six Grandchildren every Friday and could use a hand at the house - I said yes because I just wanted to keep walking and talking with her…From that day on whatever time she offered me to be in her company, I would always try and take it. We became friends. I still feel like she may have been my first good one.
And so last month when she said she would be in Borrego Springs again for a month to escape the Washington cold, a place I’ve been going to visit her now for over 15 years, I immediately started checking ticket prices. My daughter Esme, being the smart kid that she is, had also fallen in love with Natalie years ago when they met. Every month or so now Esme will ask me, Have you talked to Nanny recently? (this is what she is affectionately called by her inner circle) Is she okay? (meaning is she still healthy and alive), then she’ll add that I need to, tell her that Esme loves her. Then she will whisper to me, with her eyebrows raised, you know Nanny’s pretty old. I reassure her a bit defensively that she is very much alive and healthy and that she can write her herself and tell her she loves her. But every time Esme asks me about her, it wakes me up and I immediately text Natalie and ask her if she’s okay. For a hot minute, I sit and think please god, don’t let her suddenly, mysteriously, have died, and nobody thought to tell me. I calm myself and think no, I just talked to her last month and she was fine. I prefer not to think she could just evaporate without letting me know she was leaving…I would like to think I’d get a chance to say goodbye even though we both agree goodbyes are the worst.
Here’s the thing, as I said, Natalie is 87, BUT she is a force of nature. She still travels to Borrego, and she still takes two walks up the desert mountain path every day…much to my chagrin she goes without her phone and is usually alone. She stands at the top of the path and thinks about all the things she is grateful for. Esme returned from a walk, just the two of them went on, and she told me - Naanny says OUT LOUD all the things that are on her mind that she is grateful for, the things that make her happy. I picture Esme standing there listening to Natalie speak love, out loud to the mountain, and the caterpillars, the wildflowers, and the sleeping snakes. I think they must speak back to her and whisper her name in the list of things they too have written down somewhere to love.
When we sit and play cards with her on her couch it feels like she is constantly getting calls and texts from friends and family who love her. She has a book club at the library every Thursday afternoon. When we come to visit her she is changing the sheets because she just had so and so from Dana Point down for a visit and when I leave we will change the sheets together for her good friend who is coming for a night. She is still offering her time to people. There is no frailty, or at least there hadn’t been much to point at until this last visit.
Suddenly when we’re driving, she’s repeating herself. In the springtime, we usually see the Big Horn sheep who come down into the valley. Sometimes they’ve been right out in the backyard. She hasn’t seen one this season, not in the valley not even up on the mountain in the distance. She asks me Do you think the sheep are having babies and that’s why they’re not coming down Sarah? She asks me this several times an hour. It’s a sweet loop if you’re going to be in one. To be wondering about the world around you and if everything is okay with the sheep. But it’s a sign of aging and it scares me. She’s not aware she’s doing it and so I smile and say, I think so, probably just lots of spring babies.
There are more signs as the days go on; I call her daughter (which feels a little like telling on her) after the trip to talk about it. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe as I start to imagine a world where I can’t call my friend and talk about what books she’s reading and tell her what my kids are up to and hear her say things like…that’s wonderful Sarah and Oh, that’s marvelous - you leave conversations with her thinking the world, and maybe you too might be marvelous and wonderful.
She has always asked good questions and then listened. I don’t remember her ever offering advice, even when I wished she would just tell me what to do already. She would just ask me more questions. She made me believe I could trust myself if I just kept asking the right questions, that my heart would offer up the answer. A little white-haired lady Plato in sensible tennis shoes and a pastel turtle neck cheering me on incessantly from the sidelines of life. It’s a journey isn’t it Sarah that’s what she always says to me in the kindest softest most loving voice you’ll ever hear. I convince myself I’m being overly dramatic. She will live to be a hundred. I desperately scan the mountain looking for sheep.
We went and walked around in the wildflowers, Esme sketching all the caterpillars she found in the petals. Nat and Esme knitted presents for each other during the day while we talked and talked and I cooked too much food; which Natalie did her best to eat. We played very competitive games of crazy eights and I failed again to learn cribbage even with Natalie’s otherworldly patience. Of course, we continued to ponder the whereabouts of the sheep, she filled us in on the remarkable adventures of her grandchildren, and we wondered about the state of the world. She tells Esme about all her travels; a trip to Japan, Mexico, China, Egypt, and why out of all of them London was her favorite; she loved the history. I adore that Esme’s eyes get wider than I’ve ever seen them every time she mentions each different country, she looks shocked and asks incredulously have you really been to all those places? As if she’s meeting a real-life Miss Rumphius. She answers that, besides having a family travel was always very important to her. I remember that it has always been important to me too and I still haven’t gotten the girl’s passports. I watch as Esme listens, her eyes distant and dreamy.
The last evening Esme and I went to walk the hill alone, we had walked around a lot that day, and made a trip to the nearby town of Julian. Natalie said she’d already reached her quota, and her foot was bothering her. Natalie opened the door to greet us as we were coming back from the hill and Esme sprinted to her with such joy you would have thought they hadn’t seen each other for a year. She stopped short careful not to knock her over, and hugged her so carefully burying her head in her chest I could see the grin beaming off her face to the side, Natalie stroking her hair - the simple joy of seeing the person you love standing in the doorway.
I want to see her standing in a doorway waiting to hug my kid forever. I know it doesn’t work that way. But I still want it.
Esme and I crawl out of bed after finishing a chapter of The Sword of Summer, we forgot we wanted to see the stars. Borrego is a dark sky community so it’s a good place to do some constellation gazing. We walk out barefoot, the night is cool but not too cold, the sky is blazing with stars and Esme says Oh my goodness, they are twinkling just like in a movie, Mom they are so beautiful they don’t look real. I think about how none of it feels real sometimes; the stars, my kid, the desert, and this friend I made so long ago, sleeping just a few feet away - how I was a 17-year-old kid dreaming of college with very few friends at school or people who could actively ground me in my life. I walked in and there she was, just there - like magic. I think if I wanted to I could go in and wake her up and I bet she’d just laugh and come out with us; she’s always up for the adventure (way more than I am). Esme is wearing the little scarf Natalie knit for her and clutching the stuffed puppy we got in Julian that day, and I want to grasp all the pieces of the moment and lock them away somewhere safe; soft, twinkling, cool, a little unreal and filled with a feeling of Oh my goodness…it’s so beautiful.
The next day I’m dragging and grouchy, pretending I’m not getting on a plane in a few hours. I’m also anxious to leave; I don’t want to go but I feel a desire to rush through the goodbye; because I hate saying goodbye to Natalie more than anything. And even though a part of me knows this isn’t the last one, that someday, which is the last one seems closer now, like maybe we can touch it and I don’t like that…not one bit.
She walks us out to the car and after four rounds of hugs for each of us, I hold her face in my hands and stroke her cheeks which are so soft and wrinkly but somehow feel like velvety flower petals. Seriously she’s so soft. I pet her very white hair and tell her she’s so beautiful. She laughs at me. I’m trying to take her in but it’s hard to hold a moment like that, a moment you know is likely going to be few and far between. We kiss each other like we always do, and her voice cracks a little as she says, Don't say sad things like goodbye. I hug her tighter and say, Of course not, I don’t say goodbye to you, I say I’ll see you soon.
As we drive away I’m trying not to let Esme see I’m crying. Natalie had told me she doesn’t know if she will be coming back to Borrego next year. This might be our last goodbye in the desert. Inside my head like an incessant prayer, I hear myself whispering over and over thank you…thank you…thank you…my friend…for that first cup of coffee, for every invitation, every day, walking and talking with you… isn’t it marvelous?…isn’t it wonderful? I’ll see you soon.
* Previous versions of this story incorrectly had Natalie being from Newport. She was born in Providence.
“I desperately scan the mountain looking for sheep.” 😭😭😭
This is so beautiful. I’m tearing up reading this in the San Jose airport in Costa Rica. Natalie sounds like one of the people we come to earth to meet. It’s so wonderful you can share her with Esme. I love her too!
This is so beautifully written! I was always thankful that you have such a loving meaningful friend in Natalie! We all have that someone that makes a difference in our life!