I thought about Brenda today. This doesn’t happen everyday but it does still happen often enough to make the connection between us…as tenuous as it is these days…still feel real. Well, to an extent, anyway.
Once upon a time we were thick as thieves, friends who each other’s first calls at times of joy and, especially, each other’s first calls at times of travail (large and small.)
Once upon a time, we saw each other through new loves and tumultuous loves and broken loves…safe havens in those most stormy of seas.
Once upon a time we were as close as two people who were not…and, because it was outside the realm of our relationship, were never going to be…be lovers could hope to be…sharing mundane concerns and fanciful imaginings with no fear of mocking judgment.
Once upon a time, we folded into each other with patient ears, open hearts, and unselfconscious laughter, tears, and shy but undeniable tenderness.
Once upon a time…that time when stories (good, bad, and indifferent…real and imagined) begin and end…we were. And then…time and distance and circumstance conspired (with our compliance)…we were no longer.
But still…at random moments and from random angles…I think about Brenda…her quick wit, her fair beauty, her intense Irish eyes, her bright joys, her soft melancholies…and thinking about her soothes me in bittersweet, undeniable ways.
So I thought about Brenda today…missing her and feeling connected (however tenuously) to her at the selfsame time…and it made me smile.
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