Four Years Ago

I lay on my bed, staring at nothing.  This didn't happen.  How could it?  It just...it just...couldn't.  Friends.  Friends don't...die.  Not the friends who took riding lessons with you.  Not the friends who laughed at your Gollum impressions.  Not the friends with the explosively curly hair.  They can't.  They don't.  They shouldn't.

But sometimes they do.

*

3/20
I called Aj yesterday.  No answer.  There was a different message on the machine.  An automated thing.  I haven't talked to her in a long time.  No church, no horse, no phone, no email.  I hope she hasn't fallen off the face of the earth or anything!


3/26
Aj was in the hospital.  Viral meningitis.  Last Thursday we went to visit her.  She would laugh and joke with me, but she had a sort of glazed over look.  And when she tried to walk (I was behind her, so I couldn't really see), Mom said she was crossing her feet something fierce.  Her dad was in front of her and the nurse was beside her helping her to walk.  And everybody kept saying she was a lot better.
She came home on Friday and Mom is gonna call her to see if she feels good enough to come and watch at horse today.  I'm gonna call Ami and see if she can ride Fini today.


I remember that day.  I had been to StateLine Tack earlier, so I took my new gloves and riding crop in to show her.  She admired them and we talked.  She said she got to watch a lot of movies.  Eragon was one of them.  I hadn't seen it yet, so I asked her how she liked it and I don't remember what she said.

Life went on as usual for awhile.  I exercised the horses while our trainer was out of town, riding Pronator and turning Fini out since Aj couldn't come to ride her.  I didn't write in my journal for awhile because I was down with chicken pox.  (For the second time.  Go figure.)

4/12
Aj has cancer.  The docs say it'll be a miracle if she pulls through.  So that's what I'm praying for.  A miracle.  God's done it before, He can do it again.  Yesterday I wrote emails to Hannah V., Karen, AG and Amy H., asking them to pray for her. [...]  If I had been Cordel last night, my eyes would have been green as the hills of Ireland.  It was the first time I'd cried throughout the whole thing.  I hope the next time I cry will be tears of joy that she's been healed.  [Mention of a story I was working on.]  I hope Aj will get to read the whole story when it's finished.  Lord ha' mercy, I don't want to lose her!  Please heal her, Lord, please!  Sandi left a message that she wanted to give us an update from Hector's visit.  I called Mom on her cell and she said she'd call Sandi.  The folks dropped off the big truck at the dealership the other day to have it serviced.  They went to pick it up today and Mom said she's going out to the hospital afterwards.


4/26
[...] We have news that some of the cancer is "melting away."  3 cheers for Aj!!!  Mom said we might go to see her today before horse.  [...]


4/28
[...] The main prayer requests for Aj are for strength and for her vision to return to normal.  Apparently all she can see is silhouettes.


5/4
Quatro de Mayo.  :)  We leave tomorrow.  Wednesday we went to Children's, saw the fam.  Before we left, Emma (Aj's grandma) went in and told Aj we were there (she had been asleep when we arrived) and Emma said Aj said "Oh!  Tell Jennette I'll call her soon as I can."  :)  Goofy girl o' mine.  So she must have been feeling better.  :)  Mom told 'em her cell phone number and said no matter when she feels like it, Aj can call.  'at's my girl.  After Wednesday's radiation treatment, they were going to move her to Kaiser - that's where their insurance is.


She never improved enough to call.  I've searched my journal, but can find no reference to what happened afterwards.  Some things can't be put into words.

*

I rubbed my eyes.  They were red and aching from all the tears washing over them.  It was so hard to believe.  Just a short time ago, she had been riding with me in the arena, sweating in the sun and the dust.  And now she was gone.  Poof.  No more.

Dust.

I didn't go to the memorial service.  I could've, but I didn't.  I don't remember why.  I still haven't seen Eragon.

Green and Yellow

Not entirely sportsy, I suppose.  But when I think sports, I think football, and when I thought football, this game was at the top of my mind.  Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the details of the actual game.  I remember the people I watched it with, though, so that's what you get.  :)

The room is dark, lit only by the projector.  I sit with my feet on the table, a Henry Weinhard in my hand.  Holding the bottle by the neck always makes me feel like I know what I'm doing.  It's a silly thing, really.  Something my brother taught me...probably when I was about ten years old.  "You hold the bottle around the neck, that way your hand doesn't warm up the beer."


Yeah.  Good to know.


We're here to watch the Auburn/Oregon BCS Championship game.  Surrounded by Duck fans, I have just enough contrariness in me to consider playing devil's advocate.  Unfinished comments about their logo being a big, fat O, or the relative toughness of a duck run through my head.  But I don't say anything - partly because I do like the Ducks and mostly because I like my friends and I want to keep them.  And my health.  Also, I have to bear in mind that if I invited my mates over for a game and one of them started insulting my team, the same person would be out on the street in a heartbeat.  We're talking football etiquette, here.  Thou shalt not bash thy host's team.  If you do, you won't get any snacks.  And who wants that?


So I keep my snark to myself.  I suck the foam off of my excessively enthusiastic root beer and try to help Amber understand how football works.  Things are pretty relaxed, the noise of the crowd roaring and the players crashing into each other hovers just under the occasional outcry from Lucas or Ted.  A call comes from the kitchen, "Pizza's ready."  We each make our sporadic dashes to the table and conversation drops off until the next pizza comes out of the oven.
"What?  There's a cowboy?  Man, I totally wouldn't have had two slices of the other."
Amber grins up at me.  "You should text Eric and tell him you have a cowboy."
"Haha!  That wouldn't be confusing at all," I laugh as I return to my seat with my slice of Papa Murphy's cowboy pizza.

I randomly text the boys sitting on the next couch over and get excited game commentary in response.  My aunt sends me a message saying something about the Cam Newton controversy.  Things settle back to their previous state.  There's a knock at the door and Enthusiasm walks in wearing a green sweatshirt and a yellow hat.  Wait, is that...?  Yup.  It's a duck bill.  The guys get up to greet him and Lucas laughs his approval. 
"Yeah, I was on my way out the door and my mom handed it to me and I was like yes!"
I grin.  He would.  Jordan is nothing if not die-hard.  There are frequent outbursts from the other couch now.  It's always far more entertaining to watch a game with an excited fan.

Pretty soon, there's another knock and Sarah is sitting down at my left.  Now I know Sarah is definitely outgoing, but I'm not sure how much of a Ducks fan she is.  Either way, Oregon is her state, so I figure this should be good.  I settle in and expect to enjoy myself, maybe do some shouting of my own.

"What?  No!"
"YES!"
"Go go go go!"
"Aaaugh, run, you idiot."
"Oh, bad call."
"Wow.  What's with all the Cam Newton commercials?"
"Oh, that's awkward."
"What the heck.  That was a paint commercial?"
"Did not see that coming."
"Run, run, yes!"
"Aaaahhhthatwasbeautiful!"

The clock is ticking down and it's halftime sooner than I expect.  Someone flips the lights on and the sound off and I get up to stretch.  Lucas turns on some music and quite suddenly Ted is dancing to Maroon 5.  Jordan is ditching us to go to another party for the second half, but as he walks out he leaves his goodbye ringing in the air.

"GO DUCKS!"

Coffee for Hannah

Hannah just shouted at me to write her something.  So because she's my cousin and I love her...
*

I really have no idea how this happened.
Because I don't drink coffee.
I have had it, yes, when I'm with friends and we're at a coffee shop.  But I don't make a point of drinking it.

 --

The first time I ever purposefully ordered coffee was in Edinburgh.  Betsy and Hannah and Auntie M and I had just finished the tramp down from the castle and were cold and hungry, so we ducked into a pub and sat down.  We requested sticky toffee pudding (because if you go to Scotland and don't try sticky toffee pudding, you are an unintelligent being, probably more ape than human) and because I was in a new country and feeling moderately brave, I ordered a mocha.  It was delivered in a tall (blue?) mug, with a saucer catching the ambitious drops that wanted to be drips.  We ate the (phenomenal) sticky toffee pudding and I drank about half of the mocha.  All I seem to remember about it was the chocolate being extremely rich.  And it was from a pub in Scotland.

The second coffee based drink I ordered probably doesn't even count.  We were in the van on the way back from the shoot at Powell's when Rowan decided to take us to Bipartisan.  So to Bipartisan we went.  Considering our group consisted of over a dozen photographers, there was a bit of difficulty just getting through the door.  But we crowded in and the air was cool and the wood floor was rough.  Being a newcomer in the land of coffee, I asked Justin what was good and he ordered us each a mocha milkshake.  It was sweet and intense and bitter all at once.

The third coffee was from Fourbucks (a word which here means Starbucks).  I discovered Clari was studying at the one approximately 15 minutes away from where I was staying.  Since it was January and the last time I saw her was in July, I found it absolutely necessary to crash her study party.  We sat and chatted until Rachel arrived and said something along the lines of "What are you doing here?!"  At which point, I gave her a big hug and the three of us hung out and caught up.  After an hour or so, we figured we should probably actually buy something so we wouldn't get kicked out.  Clari texted me from ten feet away while Rachel and I stood in line and I paid for a caramel macchiato.

The fourth coffee I bought was at Mission ConneXion.  (The X makes it more cool and famous.)  That event deserves an entire post to itself, but the relevant part is when Amber and I were getting hungry and didn't have any food with us.  We wandered aimlessly for awhile and then discovered we were near the coffee cart.

"I kind of want coffee.  And I barely even like coffee.  Do you want coffee?"
"Sure."

It took us a month or two to decide, but eventually we quit messing around - she had a white chocolate and raspberry mocha and I had an Irish cream (flavored syrup) latte.  We discovered an unoccupied cubbyhole between the bookshelves, so we claimed it and read awkward titles of books and laughed and drank our coffee and talked about random things.

 The fifth cup of coffee was a Kicker.  Lauren and Amber and I were spending the day together, going to the bank, looking at the saddles at Coastal, eating sandwiches, and generally having randomly awesome adventures.  We dropped off the cookies, and after we went to the library, it was decided that I needed to experience Dutch Bros.  The only hard part was finding our way to the right one.  We did get there, though.  Once again, I relied on guidance of others to choose my beverage.  Once again, I had good advice.  I think I like Irish cream (flavored syrup).


--

And now here I sit, crunching salted almonds, typing away and sipping coffee sweetened with vanilla sugar.  No cream, no chocolate, no milk.  Granted, the coffee/sugar ratio is probably around 3/1.  But I voluntarily poured it for myself.  I chose to drink coffee when I had other options.  Weird.

Quiet, Please

"I hope you don't mind that I don't really talk."
"Oh no, it's all right."

*     *     *

Some silences are awkward.  Some silences are painful.  Some silences ache to be filled.

And then there is the comfortable sort between friends who know each other and feel no need to clutter the air with speech.  I recently reread The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (lovely book, by the way) and one of my favorite quotes was something Juliet said in one of her letters:

I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

It's definitely something I agree with.  Try imagining someone you can't be comfortably quiet with.  For the rest of your life.  Painful, isn't it?

So.  Thought of the evening - I hope the chap for me is fairly skilled at all the witty banter and so forth.  But I also hope he can be content to simply be silent.  That is comradeship.