Things you think about…
Posted on | October 29, 2008 | No Comments
I contemplate life while I shower. Washing my hair takes time, so in that time I plan out my next novel, or figure out how to balance my life/work/writing issues, or I think about Sarah.
I worked with Sarah at Borders in Miami, eons ago. She looked like a ballerina, long, lithe, caramel tinted like creme brule, with bright eyes and shoulder-length sandy hair. Her dress was effortless. She looked wonderful in everything she wore, from girly sundresses to white shorts and keds. She bought a car, a little egg-shaped car she named Eggbert. We weren’t friends for long, honestly. I remember feeling horribly abandoned, like she was obligated to stay with me. She was my “normal” friend – no drugs, no goth scene, just a fellow bookseller with a penchant for quick laughter and good coffee.
She matched her apartment. Trinkets, carefully selected and warm in the sunlight, poked from every corner. She was shabby chic before it was hip. The apartment felt larger than it was, an attic space on top of a massive house with rich furniture and the kind of windows that reminded me of department store displays – look, but you’ll never be able to afford such extravagance. Beautiful as she was, when I cared to look deeper, I found doors and windows that few took the time to explore. Sarah, like her apartment, felt layered. She possessed little secrets, of which I only heard whispers -the truth about her insecurity when she ran off to the Caribbean to work with her boyfriend James a yacht, her hidden dreams, only whispered in twilight afternoons thick with humidity and clove smoke.
She gave great hugs.
I will admit. I think I was a little in love with her, and wanted to become her. In striving to be tough and unbreakable, I forgot about the fragile beauty of living in the moment as she did. She smiled more than anyone I had ever met, found beauty in the color of a mural and the way wicker fades and crumbles with time. We laughed under great banyan trees, like children in a secret garden. But Miami was our garden, and our secrets, well I still won’t share those.
A hushed breath, and Sarah blew away, like wishes floating off a dandelion.
I moved to Ft. Lauderdale, still employed with Borders in 98. She visited me once (I didn’t have a car back then). Eyeball deep in a bad relationship, I didn’t have the time to set aside for her, for one more afternoon, one more conversation that explored the things we only shared with each other. I haven’t thought about her in years, until this morning
My house doesn’t look like an antique store, as Sarah’s did. But I can tell you a story about every rock, candle and toy in our home. I could tell you about the hanging dragon my mother bought me, or the ugly white blanket I insist on keeping because it was the first thing I bought for myself on my own. For all I loved about my former life, I think Sarah and I make more sense as friends now. I think Sarah may have seen who I could and would become – someone who lives in the moment, who cherishes every conversation, and someone who still wishes on dandelions, if the sunlight is just right.
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