2:57 p.m. - 2004-01-03
Comfortable shoes
It's Saturday. School starts on Monday. For the first time in a long time, it doesn't affect me directly. It's the indirect affecting that I don't like so much.
For the past two weeks, both Foreman and Hermione have been home. They're both the type of person who folds themselves back into the group as if they'd never left. You see one of them at a party and it seems perfectly natural that they'd be there.
I managed to snag time with both of them while they were here - no mean feat considering the number of people who wanted to hang out with both of them - and I felt like they'd never left. Talking to them, I slipped easily back into the habit of telling them everything, just like I always have.
Hermione and I went Christmas shopping together, right when she first got back, and we spent the entire day giggling and talking and gossiping. We went out together again last week, sitting in a restaurant for hours talking and catching up and reminiscing. It's so easy to talk to her, so easy to forget that most of the time, she's a 14 hour drive away.
Foreman and I got together over dessert, a frequent habit of the good old days. We talked and talked, and as always he made me think about six hundred things and forced me to actually admit more than one thing that I'd been ignoring. It was so easy to talk to him, so easy to fall back into the old habits.
It's funny. Both of these friendships were developed over weekly drives. I drove both of them home from choir for the best part of a year (different years), ignoring the fact that neither of them live even remotely nearby, instead focusing on the fact that the long drives gave me a chance to get to know them both. I'd sit in Hermione's driveway for hours, chatting and laughing and gossiping and daydreaming. We made plans for the rest of our lives in that driveway, plans that we still stick to some of the time. Foreman and I would inevitably stop at a Tim Horton's along the way if we couldn't quite face interrupting the conversation. Sometimes we'd just go for a drive - one memorable night we got busted by the cops while checking out the meteor shower - but whatever we did, we were always talking.
I feel like these two people know me better than almost anyone. On the outside, people wouldn't see that. We don't spend a ton of time together, and when we're in big groups it's not immediately obvious that I'm so close to the two of them. But our relationships are held firmly together by the mutual memories of those weekly drives. And the secrets that were told on those weekly drives are known only by the two of us. And Rosie, I suppose. But I think I trust my car to keep her mouth shut.
I can still drive to both of their houses with my eyes shut. The familiar routes are rarely used these days - neither house is somewhere I would otherwise go. The lack of use of those routes is a sign of the changing nature of our friendships - with both of them no longer living in Edmonton, I have little call to drive down through the old stomping grounds. But when I do, it's as familiar as driving to my own house. No matter how rarely I drive that route, no matter how infrequently I see my friends, the minute I'm back on the road again it's like I never left. We slip in and out of our friendships like they are comfortable shoes. It doesn't matter how long we go between wearings. They're always waiting for us, perfectly moulded to our feet.
I miss you guys already. Come back soon.
