All I Can Say

X365, week 13

81|365
Karen, 1989
You had already lost your mother to cancer and I was about to lose mine to the same disease. You were helping me sew up a duvet cover, and as you guided the fabric into the path of the hungry needle, you worked your jaw from side to side, as though this could speed the machine along. Some blockage, some denial, prevented me from comprehending that I could just leave my job for a week to go see my mother. Fuck it, I could, and you told me I should.

82|365
Lin, 1988
You said, “I miss you,” on the phone to me after I had moved to Boston. It was just one of those things people say that they don’t really mean, after all you were a friend’s roommate and I didn’t really know you very well at all. I wanted to say it back to you, to be polite, but the words refused to be spoken. I was unable to say what wasn’t true, and so there was just this painful silence on the line.

83|365
Tom, 2004
There is no way to articulate your charisma. You inspired me, like hundreds of others, to want to be my best, to be the best. You are a gifted teacher. I don’t want you to die.

84|365
Susan, 1977
You were one of two alpha personalities in my cabin, and the dynamic wasn’t working. The other alpha was my best friend, but I discovered that I didn’t have to choose sides. For a while, I assumed the role of go-between, delivering messages and updates, offering my profound empathy to both parties. In time we united, but I had secretly enjoyed the drama of the divided group.

85|365
Kim, 2008
You wouldn’t let us come into the restaurant until precisely 5:00 when you opened. We explained that we wanted to order take-out, along with one Caterpillar roll for N to eat-in while we waited, since she was going straight to her dance class. You sized up N, sitting on her stool, and said, “Oh, she got the long legs!” and made a whoosh sound, sort of like a toilet flushing. You said something in Japanese to your co-worker, raising your hands to your armpits to indicate where my daughter’s legs began, and then the two of you stared her up and down, whooshing together, like two toilets flushing.

86|365
Charlie Brown, 1973
You were my first dog, but you never esteemed yourself as anything less than human. In the boat, you always took up your position in the front seat next to the captain, pointing your pure-bred nose high into the air. Your long brown ears would flap in the wind behind you like pigtails. There was that family legend of the boater who mistook you for my mother, claiming to my father, “Oh, I saw you and your wife out on the lake last weekend,” when it was you, as always, who was next to him.

87|365
Olga, 1998
I still occasionally see you advancing down the road on your way to morning mass. This is reassuring, even though you look as though you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Once upon a time we were friendly — especially when JH and I first moved in and our babies were born. But there was that neighborhood squabble, and when we didn’t side with your husband, it was as though we became invisible to you both.

X365, week 12

74|365
Mrs. Sutherland, 1967
I have only impressions of a crisp, white uniform and the smell of sandalwood soap. You were a live-in nurse devoted to the care of newborns, and moved from family to family, staying where you were needed until mother and baby were settled. It seemed to me as though you lived with us for years, but I really have no idea — it could have been a couple of months. I'm certain you were an absolute godsend.

75|365
Jamie, 1976
You were my boyfriend in sixth grade and we used to have kissing contests with our friends, but we could never hold out the longest because we would start laughing. I liked your dark curly hair and your jumpy energy. Once you went to Quebec and brought me back some maple sugar candy. Sure, it was sweet and innocent, but still, I can’t imagine my sixth grade daughter kissing a boy.

76|365
Tim, 1984
Why I had a crush on you, I have no idea. Maybe because you paid attention to me and you had smooth, yellow hair. You were tall and thin and maybe a bit effeminate. Just a momentary diversion early in my junior year.

77|365
Friedy, 1970
You were our housekeeper, moving through the rooms silently and efficiently. You worked the giant steam iron in the laundry room that you would feed the clothes into, and its heavy, menacing rollers pressed the wrinkles out of (or into) the fabric. I liked being with you in the laundry, with its smells of steaming damp cotton, and listening to you talk in your lilting accent. You called me your shadow.

78|365
Lisa, 1978
You were serious about gymnastics and had the ideal physique for it — petite, lean, powerful. You could do walkovers and handsprings when the rest of us were just trying to complete an orderly cartwheel. I had a clear view that time you ran full out down the floor, flicked your body into an aerial but didn’t make it. You kind of bounced on your neck in a horrifying, unforgettable way, and the gym teacher dropped to the floor and held you and started massaging your neck — her second error that day — but you were apparently okay.

79|365
Bill, 1980
The first time I ever saw pot was in a little baggie that you had left on our kitchen table. Your Ralph Lauren cologne wafted in the air in your wake. You liked fashion and pretty things, tradition, fun, drugs and evidently men. The dissolution of your family was heartbreaking, but anyone paying attention could see it coming.

80|365
Tina, 2007
For a tiny girl you have an unusually husky voice, but it suits you. You are focused and adept at karate, much more skilled than your husband, who you constantly seem to be directing. Not only are you more skilled, but you put so much more effort into it than he does. From everybody else you keep your distance, with a wry smile that conceals what you are truly thinking.

X365, week 11

67|365
Henry, 1982
You were the head of the French department and my advisor freshman year. You spent every other year in France with the abroad program and seemed utterly out of your element in upstate New York. Even when you weren’t speaking, your lips were pinched in a constant pucker, ever ready to produce that difficult and dreadful euwww sound. Damn you for rejecting me from the French program, but it pointed me in a new direction — writing — a better fit, and far more useful to me than French.

68|365
Mr. Rumple, 1973
You were a dear friend of my parents who I remember sitting in our kitchen on any given night, having dropped in for a cocktail on your way home from work. You were short of stature, with dark hair parted to the side and a walrus moustache, and you scarcely opened your mouth when you talked. You referred fondly to men in your circle as “that goddamned so-and-so.” As a young child I understood, through you, that friendship was something adults cultivated, too.

69|365
Roberto, 1980
You were about fifteen but looked in body more like twelve, and it was shocking to see you smoking your cigarettes like a fiend. The dark shadows under your eyes suggested you slept poorly, and aged your face by decades. You were from an “important” family in Bogota and sent me brochures on your beautiful, lush country, asking me to come visit you. Your gentlemanly manner with women seemed way beyond your years, but you were like a little brother to me.

70|365
Toby, 1980
Could I have conjured up a more stereotypical Brit? Your pasty complexion was prone to sunburns, and you were tall and thin with straight, fine hair. You even wore black socks with white tennis shoes. But you were an excellent companion that summer in France, ready to go anywhere, game for anything.

71|365
Dorothy, 1983
I thought you hated me, but my mother’s theory was that you hated men, including your son. I don’t actually think this was true, but you certainly seemed bitter and miserable and overwhelmed. Your house was a jumble of clutter and you were constantly working on a part of it, getting one room painted and decorated and perfect amidst the chaos. All those years later you called me and asked if I would reach out to Duncan, who was in some kind of distress, but I was in no position then to help him out.

72|365
Nina, 1980
You were my Quebec exchange student and to be honest I was disappointed when I first saw you at the train station. You looked fat, but it was just that you had large breasts, whereas I was flat as a pancake. You were obsessed with McDonalds, and so independent that you figured out how to take the bus to the nearest one and frequently went there by yourself. You refused to speak any French at my house, but when we switched to your house, we stuck with English because you were more motivated than me, and it was just easier that way.

73|365
Liz, 1988
We were roommates for over three years and developed a kind of symbiosis in which we would alternate paying for things, keeping mental tabs, and when we reconciled we almost always netted out even. You could never laugh without crying. You were voracious for information of any kind and would read newspapers, novels, pamphlets or the backs of food containers with equal absorption. If I were ever on Millionaire and needed to call a friend, you’d be the friend I’d call.

It's Business Time

Thanks to my friends Annie and Phil, your day, too, can be brightened by this.

X365, weeks 9 and 10

56|365
Barry, 2007
You and your wife were playing ping-pong poolside, and G became your self-appointed ball boy (more like ball puppy). Your wife tried to ignore him but you seemed to get a kick out of him, and soon you were teaching him how to play the game — and he was a quick study. Every time G saw you he badgered you to play with him, and on the last day we were at the hotel he swam over to where you were lounging by the pool and said, “Barry, I think we have some unfinished business.” Your name came up the other day and G said, “Oh yeah, the guy who taught me ping-pong — he was funny.”

57|365
Gabi, 1974
You moved into the house behind ours and appeared one day like a mysterious character out of a novel, speaking no English, spelling out your name with a stick on a log since it was unfamiliar and I wasn’t sure I was hearing you correctly. In less than a year you were speaking English fluently and accent-free. You and I became best friends, but it was a tumultuous friendship, and when your family invited me, at age ten, to spend the month of July in Germany, I wanted to go but we were fighting so much I didn’t know if I should. In the end I went, and it was a great, growing experience for me, although I was desperately homesick.

58|365
Mrs. W, 1975
You never really learned English, and seemed so isolated in your home, wearing your odd European sandals, catering to your husband, son and daughter. You were older than any mother I knew, and looked more like a grandmother with crumpled, papery skin. You had a soft spot for me, and when I was so homesick in Germany you tried to comfort me, even while my crying at night was disturbing to your daughter. In the morning, I would line the headboard with tissues so they would be handy for me at night, but at some point during the day you quietly took them away.

59|365
Mr. W, 1975
You frightened me. It may have been a combination of your language and the quality of your voice, but it always sounded like you were angry. One day in Germany when Gabi was engrossed in a book at the breakfast table and was ignoring me, your commands to her in German escalated in force until you eventually snatched the book out of her hands and flung it across the room. While I understood you were only defending me, I was unused to such wrath and ran to the bathroom in tears.

60|365
Bob, 1976
You were Gabi’s teen-aged brother and you were unwilling to adjust to the family’s move to Canada. You learned English, but never shook your thick accent. You made friends pretty easily though, and were always holed up in your room playing Nazareth records and banging on your drum kit. It bothered me that, unlike your sister, you refused to accept Canada as your home, and when we watched the Montreal Olympics, I wanted to know which country you were cheering for, but it was always Germany, “greatest country in the world.”

61|365
Mrs. Wiseman, 1977
You were my seventh grade reading and writing teacher (what we now call literacy). During personal reading time, you used to watch us, and made a big deal out of the fact that I was moving my lips as I read, which was slowing me down. The book everyone wanted to get their hands on that year was Judy Blume’s Forever, about a girl’s first sexual relationship and a giant leap from her Are You There God It’s Me Margaret. You confiscated the school’s one copy to determine if it was appropriate reading and withheld it for what seemed like forever.

62|365
Jeb, 1977
We had assigned bus seats, and you were required to sit between my best friend and me. You tolerated our teasing and gave it right back to us, but it must have been pretty obvious that we both had a crush on you. You were short, with a broad smile and freckles stippling your face. It was something about your neatly rolled-up shirtsleeves that captivated me.

63|365
Michael, 1985
You were an ass. Already in college you looked like an old man, with thinning hair and an unhealthy skin pallor, and when I saw you at reunion, you looked exactly the same. And did I see you on the news attending John Kennedy, Jr’s funeral? It would have been just like you to be at that event, and just like you, too, to be lingering on the sidewalk outside the church in full view of CNN’s cameras.

64|365
Mark, 2008
I know that to do so doesn’t respect your dignity, but I can’t help feeling sorry for you. You are good at what you do, and from what I can tell you are a good worker. But you aren’t valued the way you deserve to be, mostly because of certain personal qualities, like your disheveled appearance and your creepy Ren/Stimpy laugh, heh, heh, heh. I know you’ve had a very tough road and that you struggle every day to keep it together.

65|365
Dave, 2005
You were the least gregarious of the lot, and I was hoping we would be matched up to someone with more immediate personality. You were very quiet the first day or two, but as you settled in I realized how lucky we were to host someone who was older and more mature than some of those crazy young guys. On the way to the soccer fields each morning we listened to BBC radio on NPR, and I wondered if it was comforting for you to hear news of and by your homeland. On your last night with us we took a ferry out to one of the islands to have dinner at a (posh, you said) restaurant, and the next morning when we said goodbye, I recognized the same stillness in you from a week earlier when you had arrived, and I understood how hard these transitions were on you.

66|365
Melody, 1974
Despite my protestations and mortification, my mother signed on to be a Brownie leader. She was called Snowy Owl. There was also Tawny Owl and one other owl I can’t recall. My mother noticed you at our first meeting and told me how much she thought you and I looked alike, but your hair was longer and shinier, and I thought you were much prettier than me.