Miriam

"You don't have to have anything in common with people you've known since you were five.  With old friends, you've got your whole life in common." - Lyle Lovett

I was thirteen when we met.  It was my first year of high school and we met in drama class.  Miriam and I were both actresses, though she was better at it than I.  She reminded me last night that in those days, we looked alike - olive skinned with long dark hair, neither of us very tall and both wafer thin.  We were pretty girls.  We both acted in every major drama production through our high school years.  She was Lady Macbeth.  I was a witch.  Double, double toil and trouble.  I still remember my lines.  One year we shared the stage in a two-person, one-act play called Please No Flowers.  Miriam won the best actress award that year.  I didn't even get an honourable mention.  

In spite of our aspirations to both be leading ladies, there was no competition between us.  We were very close friends.  She spent a lot of time at my house.  I was never at hers.  I did not know her family.  Outside of school, we had very different home lives.  When high school ended, we went in different directions - I went off to university; Miriam got married.  By the time I graduated from university, Miriam was a few months from giving birth to her first child.  I moved away. We lost touch as people often do.  She had a tree planted in Israel to honour my dad when he passed away.  I was very moved.  I sent her a thank you note and then twenty years went by.  It happens.

One day a few years ago, I opened my mailbox to find a letter.  The return address was from a house a few blocks from my childhood home.  The last name on the envelope wasn't one that I knew but I knew without opening it that it was her.  Since our last contact she had divorced and remarried.  I am easy to find.  I kept my own name after I married.  It was a beautiful letter.  She wanted me to know that she still thought of me after all the intervening years.  She didn't leave a telephone number and her phone number is unlisted.  It took me all of about three minutes to find it anyway.  I called her.  We arranged to get together for dinner when she was next in Toronto.  Her children live here now.  

I was a little nervous about seeing her after all these years but of course I needn't have been.  We are a lot older.  We don't look alike anymore.  Our lives are different.  Our hearts are still the same.  Since that dinner, we've kept in touch.  Last year, Merv and I met Miriam and her husband Sheldon for dinner one night.  They are so well suited.  It made me very happy to see her so well partnered.  Last night they came to our place for dinner.  I made a simple supper.  Miriam keeps kosher so I made fish.  It was perfect for me.  I had time for visiting without being tethered to the kitchen. During the twenty minutes of kitchen time the meal demanded, we left the guys and chatted alone.  While the fish baked, I adjusted the size of the bracelet I made for her last year for her sixtieth birthday.  We were sixteen again.

In a few short months, I will be sixty.  As I age, I am growing increasingly nostalgic.  I find myself trying to draw back to my life all those important people who have somehow slipped away.  I'm so thankful Miriam took the time to find me.  It is a blessing to have her in my life, though truth be told, she was always in my heart.