If we’re lucky…

We all have one. That friend we never see and rarely even talk to, but we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. As soon as we see her again, we’ll pick up right where we left off. Conversation will be as easy as it ever was. Old memories will be smiled over. Triumphs, heartbreaks, disappointments, celebrations that have taken place since the last time we talked will be shared. We’ll talk about the changes in our families. The trials and compensations of getting older…

For me, that friend is Debbie. I don’t talk about her often, although I think about her every day. She’s been part of my life since we were eighteen years old.

It was my first week of college. I was homesick and missed my friends. I was anxious about a new environment, new challenges. I was trying to learn to live with a stranger in a tiny room on the eleventh floor of our dorm.

Then it happened. Some idiot pulled a fire alarm, which meant hundreds of girls on fourteen floors would have to file down two stairwells to the parking lot outside. I stepped out of my room, and down the hall, another girl stepped out of hers. She was wearing a chambray shirt, crazily-patterned bikini panties, and the coolest socks ever. She was tiny, tanned, and had dark blond hair that fell to her waist. She’d been awakened from a nap and was none too happy about it. I laughed when this small girl let fly with one of my favorite expletives. It was so incongruous, that word coming out of such a pretty, delicate face, and I thought, THIS one. She’s going to be my friend.

By second semester, we were roommates. We were night and day. I was all drama; she was stable. I was liberal arts; she was science. I was bookish, tended to stay up all night reading, sleep in, miss classes. She liked to be outdoors, studied hard, was up before dawn, and never missed class. I was a spoiled Southern girl. She described herself as half-Lebanese, half-white trash. She’d been working in her parents’ grocery store in Birmingham for years. In fact, she went home to help in the store almost every weekend for all the years we were in college.

Sophomore year, we moved into a house on Twelfth Avenue in Tuscaloosa. Junior year, I got married. My husband and I lived in an apartment behind the same house. When Debbie ran into roommate problems, we moved in with her. The three of us lived together until we graduated. A few years later, I was divorced and back in Tuscaloosa in graduate school. After having roommate problems of my own, I moved back in with Debbie. So typical–I was always a disaster, and Debbie was always a refuge. I’d be ashamed to admit how many times she saved me except it reflects so well on her. She is everything a friend should be and always has been.

For a long time, she was my brother’s girlfriend. I was fine with that; I loved them both. But I knew to keep my distance. If things didn’t work out, I didn’t want anyone to feel like I was disloyal to either of them. By the time they broke up, they were living far away, so it wasn’t an issue. Then Debbie moved to Sweden, and I’ve only seen her one time during the eighteen years I’ve lived in Texas. We don’t e-mail enough. She usually comes back to the States at Christmas, and we try to catch up by phone.

Debbie’s brilliant. She’s a scientist who long ago got her PhD, when I didn’t even finish my Masters program. She also happens to be a domestic goddess, and she taught me a lot of what I know in the kitchen. She was always willing to engage in whatever silly schemes I came up with for impoverished college students to entertain themselves. She took me to my first Chinese restaurant. She introduced me to my first Arabic food. She taught me cusswords in Arabic, too–it’s always fun to cuss in another language!

Smart, funny, generous, kind, beautiful, and WAY TOO FAR AWAY.

I have a lot of pictures of Debbie that are better than this one. But I’m using it because it’s part of a set that is typical of a day on Twelfth Avenue. My ex took a photo of Debbie cleaning up the kitchen after we ate. She’s all pretty and feminine in a dress that she made herself. Yep. She sewed, too. And she was a good athlete. And she played the guitar.

Meanwhile, he took a photo of me after I set up my typewriter on the dining room table. There are scribbled pages next to me, research for some paper I’m writing. My cigarettes are close by. I’m holding a bottle of Liquid Paper, already preparing for the mistakes I’m going to make.

Thanks, Debbie, for putting up with me through all my mistakes. Thanks for always being the kind of friend everyone should have. So many of the qualities people compliment me for now? I learned those from you.

I hope you have a beautiful birthday today.