Ayla

 When I was in High School my best friend was Amy.  I don't remember how we met or where, but somehow we just clicked.  I believe it was probably on the patio where in the 1980's you could go outside and smoke cigarettes with your friends on free mods or breaks.  Yep those were the days.  

We were in 10th grade which made us 15.  I smoked Parliament light 100's  with the recessed filters (IYKYK) and she smoked Benson and Hedges.  She was a cheerleader that was so far from the "cheerleader" type it would crack us up.  We wrote notes in those days, scraps of paper that we would purge our daily trials onto, fold in some triangular football shape and pass to one another in the hall.  We could fill a note throughout the day and then I would throw it into a box for the ages to find someday. 

We were able to talk endlessly about music, people, boyfriends, animals, school, college, parents, divorce, siblings, hours of chat.  We also had equal parts of quiet.  I often thought that we remained friends so long because when she didn't want to talk, we would just be quiet.  I wrote poetry, stories, essays. 

Amy would read.

I was not a reader.  I could write a story about imaginary places and things or stories about myself disguised as characters.  I wrote poems about love that I had not experienced yet, or feelings of invisibility.  My poems always led back to hope.  The someday and someone that I would encounter or create to change "everything".

Amy was never without a book.  NEVER.  Her books were hardcovers that she carried along with all of school books and notebooks.  Her favorite classes were English classes where she could hash out the classics with our very qualified teachers.  She could tangle with the best of them and would exit her English and literature classes with a smile on her face.  Still carrying the extra books to just snack on during her day.

My school days were boring and necessary.  I didn't enjoy any one subject, I just trudged on through them.  My days were spent lost in my own thoughts and imaginations.  I was a dreamer I guess.

Back in the early 80's in the upper class town we grew up in we spent our weekends at house parties.  Monstrous homes with spoiled kids trashing their parents houses with other spoiled kids.  Amy went to more parties than I did, but most weekends she spent with her boyfriend one night, and then one night with me.  We would hide out in my pink bedroom doing homework, talking about boys, smoking cigarettes out my bedroom window.  Until one night my Dad came in and put a smoke detector in my room.  He knocked, came in with a step ladder, under his arm smoke detector in hand and screwed that thing into my ceiling then pushed the button.

It roared to life, the blaring screech of "You two are not going to smoke in here all night long anymore." he grinned and left.  Never talked about it.

I had a twin size bed.  covered in a patchwork quilt that would remind you of Holly Hobbie meets the Grateful Dead (I was a confused woman/girl lol ) Amy would bring her giraffe covered bag with her book of course and shampoo and conditioner wide bristled brush for her long auburn russet hair.  Amy had a sense for quality classic things but came from a place that she could not indulge in those things.  She would ask for a Ralph Lauren sweater for Christmas.  One sweater on her list and she would get it, exactly what she wanted.  But that would be it.  She loved that sweater, took amazing care of it and probably still has it.  That was the same year she had a love for ET.  She got the ET stuffy and she had that forever I am sure.

The nights we spent at my house she slept on the floor and I slept in the twin bed.  We would set up our space for the night and settle in.  I would end up asking her "what are you reading about?"

Her answers were usually about characters in lost London, the classics or an occasional mystery too intricate for me to care.  Amy would often say that she wished I would read a book for enjoyment.  I wouldn't.  I didn't have any motivation to do so nor did I have a clue what I liked.  I read what I had to for class and that was it.  More often than not I would fall asleep to Amy snuggled with her book on the floor and I with my markers, colored pencils and writing tablet.  When we woke in the morning she would say she stayed awake until the early morning because she just couldn't put the book down.  I envied that sense of enjoyment she had with a book.

One evening while each doing our own thing I noticed the cover of a new book, it looked different from the others.  "what is that book?"  I asked.

Clan Of The Cave bear she responded.  Amy was just beginning the book which to me looked as if it was thousands of pages long and tortuous.  I don't recall if she had gotten it as a gift or if it were a library book but it had the crinkly cellophane clear wrapping on it.  MASSIVE BOOK.

I asked the question that literally as I look back now, changed my life.  "What is it about?"

She replied, I can't tell you, I will read it to you.  Amy went back to page one and began reading to me.  Her ability to portray multiple characters without sounding theatrical was comforting and fed my curious mind.  The story is about a young woman in the prehistoric ice age times and her dealings with her clan of neanderthals.  Amy's commitment to getting me interested and engaged was heroic.  It worked.  I looked forward to our reading nights.  I got invested in the character Ayla and her struggles.  SO much so that I didn't want Amy to read ahead of me.  I would think about Ayla and her adventures, struggles, and feelings.  She felt like an outcast, different, but eventually knew she was smarter than the clan.  It was a story of us, we related.

More than that I asked my Mom if she would go to the library for me and get a copy of the book so I could read during the week so when Amy came over on the weekends we would be in a close proximity of one another in the story.  She read much faster than I did and also read every free moment.  I was not as committed.  I discovered a deeper appreciation for my imagination, and ability to distract and get lost in somewhere not even real.  Alhough I had a copy of the book, Amy continued to read to me on the weekends.  She enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed listening.  We would talk about the events and laugh together cry get angry and live through the events as if we were in them.  There were 4 or 5 books in the series.  Amy read the first two books to me.  Valley OF The Horses was the second book.  We graduated High School before the rest of the books were published and we never read together after that.

Amy and I remained friends for many years after High School.  She was my MOH at my first wedding. I remember when she told me she was expecting her daughter Frannie.  The excitement and all that having a child entails was palpable. Years would pass and we didn't talk, then something would make one of us call and we would catch up.  I visited her a few times in Red Bank and she visited me a few times wherever I was living.  It has been many years since we have talked.  

The people that come and go in our lives I have been told they are 

A reason

A season

or a lifetime

I look at Amy as all three.  She awakened my love for reading, I read at least 3 books a month in a slow time.  That love has lasted a lifetime thanks to her and her desire for me to open a whole new world.  She wanted that for me, that was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.  I have nothing but love for her and the life she has led.  Sending all sweetness and light to her tonight.