riley – Page 7 – beckycochrane.com

The Long and Winding Road

Last week at the loading of the van to send dogs and cats to their new homes in Colorado, I took particular notice of this guy. He’s one of a litter of five–all gorgeous, their coats like velvet–who were being taken home for a few more days of fostering by one of the terrific volunteers who make saving these animals possible.

He’s cute, right? Sweetest little face. Of course to me, every one of them is uniquely beautiful. The reason he caught my attention is that someone named him Riley. In my life, Riley was one of the friends I loved most in the world from the time we were fourteen. He died too young in 2008. Since he knew and was amused that I named a villain in a TJB book after him, I think he’d really appreciate knowing he shares his name with this handsome guy. Riley the puppy will make someone a great best friend in his new home.

ETA on December 4: Riley has been adopted! I think he’s going to have the best Christmas ever.

All I ever wanted was to know that you were dreaming

I have a passion for home, but I long ago accepted that I have no passion for house cleaning. One of the things I don’t mind doing, especially if I have a window, is washing dishes. This is why I rarely used a dishwasher, even when I had one. Debby and I used to argue over who had to do the dishes–I think that’s a natural teenage sibling thing. I remember those arguments best from the house we lived in just before she was married and moved out. (David and my father rarely did the dishes. Different times…)

After I became the only kid left at home, dishwashing was left mainly to Mother and me. I remember lots of evenings staring out the kitchen window of the last house I lived in with my parents, watching the street, the main road through our little town, and smiling when my friends or boyfriend drove by and blew their horns.

Now both my sister and I are content to be in suds up to our elbows, as my mother always was (she also rarely used a dishwasher other than her kids). I do a lot of thinking at the kitchen sink, and looking at this photo, I realize why my thoughts so often turn to people I care about. Just the items on the shelf over the sink and on the fence seen through the window evoke reminiscences of Tom, Lynne, Lisa S, Timmy, Paul, James, Tim, Jeff, my parents, Debby, Jess, Laura, Lindsey, and Rhonda–and Margot and Guinness. It’s a place of friends and family, as homes should be.

Last year during this time, Aaron and I were trading texts about his coming to stay here a few days during spring break. Tom and I were so happy he wanted to spend time with us, Tim, and the dogs, and I wouldn’t trade those days for anything.

So many memories…

Today is Riley’s birthday. How I’d love to call him and wish him a happy one. He’s another of the people I think about and miss deeply. The year 1980 was one of the most significant in our long history of friendship. I can remember the house I was living in then, and all the time he spent there, and how Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” LP stayed on my turntable almost constantly. There are so many pieces of Stevie Nicks’s “Sara” that tell a story of Riley and me. I’m sure lots of people feel the same way about the song for many different reasons–true of all the best songs, I think.

For Riley…

February Photo A Day: Your Name

I received this from my parents as a ‘tween for my bicycle. Clearly I never left my bike out in the rain because the tag isn’t much weathered. From the time of my first bike (and I remember the training wheels!) when I was a youngster, my bikes meant freedom. I try to believe that in small towns or at least suburbs somewhere, children still fly out the door in the mornings and grab their bikes, only to come home if they’re hungry or when dusk sets in.

Of course, back then, there were no helmets and lots of wrecks and crashes. In our family, my brother’s bike catastrophe was breaking his arm. I remember I was too young to be allowed in the hospital to see him when he had to stay overnight, but because I was a worrier, my mother let me stand on the grass outside and pointed out the window where he stood, waving his casted arm at me. My sister’s catastrophe: wrecking her bike on a hill. She and the bike slid down together, its pedal stabbing her in her leg, which had to be stitched. My mother said the resident putting in her sutures had shaking hands and wasn’t doing a great job. She was worried what kind of scar it would leave and gave the attending physician an anxious look. He tactfully asked the resident if he wasn’t long overdue for a break and offered to finish. Once the resident was gone, he removed the stitches and started over, making a tidy job of it.

There are only a few of my own accidents that I remember. My training wheel slipped off the sidewalk once and I was thrown into a ditch. I remember screaming all the way home and sitting on the kitchen counter, feet in the sink, while my mother washed my wounds and applied iodine (that hurt worse than the wreck). One time I found an iron rod, probably a piece of rebar, and was dragging it behind me as I rode. I stupidly let it get ahead of me and pole vaulted myself over the handlebars, landing in the middle of the street on my back and, as they say, getting the wind knocked out of me. The only witness was a woman standing in her kitchen window. She ran out to make sure I was okay and helped me and the bike to the curb. After a few minutes, I was on my way. She kept the rebar. Another time my foot slipped off the pedal and I scraped the top of it on the asphalt (it was the South; I was barefooted). For years, I had four little circular scars at the base of my toes, but those are long gone.

Then there was the time my bike and its tag betrayed me. It was probably ninth grade, and my boyfriend (Tim) wasn’t delighted when I spent lots of time with just Riley. But Riley had taught himself new songs on the guitar and begged me to come over after school one afternoon to listen. Riley lived several blocks from me, but right around the corner from Lynne, so I told Tim I was going to Lynne’s that afternoon, then pedaled straight to Riley’s. We were in the basement–where his drums, piano, and guitars were–when the doorbell rang. Riley went to answer it, and I heard Tim’s voice ask, “Is Becky here?”

“No,” Riley lied.

“Her bike’s outside.”

“Oh, yeah. She and Lynne went somewhere and asked if they could leave it in my yard. If you want to hang out here, you can probably catch her when she comes by to get it.”

By that time, I was out the garage door, grabbing my bike and hauling butt to Lynne’s. When Tim drove by later, Lynne and I were innocently sitting in her front yard, my bike next to us, making dandelion chains. Was he fooled? Who knows. But it gave Riley a favorite story to tell on me long after Tim and I were a distant memory.

Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.

Legacy Writing 365:343

Since today’s the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, I think of Riley. The other day when I posted about my high school band director’s death, an old friend from high school commented, saying she’d checked my blog to see if I’d heard the news. It made my heart ache a little, because I know she’ll never forget what happened in 2008.

I’d mentioned Riley in a post I wrote about the Beatles, because their music was all over the manuscript I was working on (which would become A Coventry Wedding). Susan happened to read it and sent me an email to tell me she was sorry about Riley. When I answered with panicked questions, she was horrified. She thought I wrote the post knowing that Riley had died. She didn’t know that no one was sure how to find me, so I hadn’t heard the news. (If you read this now, Susan, I hope you never feel bad about that. You had no idea, and without your telling me, I wouldn’t have known to get in touch with Riley’s mother and a friend of his who could tell me all that had happened.)

David was visiting, and he and Tom were in the living room watching a ball game. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell anyone; that would make it true. I couldn’t breathe. I walked out of the house and stood outside, blind and stupid. Finally I went inside Tim’s place, walked upstairs. I stared at him a few seconds, then I broke down. Tim thought something had happened to my mother. I don’t know how long it was before I was able to tell him that Riley was dead.

I haven’t lost as many friends to death as some people I know, but I’ve lost too many, and Riley’s death took something from me that I’ll never get back. No one outside my family and Lynne knew me so long, and I’m not sure anyone has ever known me as well as Riley did and STILL loved me. He was part of my soul. He always will be.

John Lennon… I never, ever forget hearing that awful news on the radio that late night when I was visiting Tuscaloosa, cutting my trip short, and getting back home to Riley as quickly as I could. I remember every one of those days afterward vividly. Riley and I had endured such misery in 1980, and still we’d never imagined the year could end with something so shattering, something that would make us feel like all the things that youth offers–resilience, hope, giddy excitement, promise–would vanish on one cold December night.

Today, I decided to open up the bin of my old journals and see if I’d managed to write anything worth reading about that December, that event.

In all that mess–of course not! Why write about something profound when you can instead be a stupid girl and waste pages and pages and pages on some guy who broke your heart and whose memory means absolutely nothing to you now and you wish you’d never even met? Or worse, some boy who you THOUGHT broke your heart that now you don’t even remember knowing and have to struggle to see a face with the name you’ve wasted so much ink on?

Maybe the real heartbreaks are written somewhere deep inside us, where no one else can ever read them by accident, but only if we choose, after time has tempered them and given them context, to put them on paper. I don’t know. But while going through all that stuff, I did find a bunch of Riley’s poems and songs. I smiled over a song he’d written for me, that I’d typed for him, which is still so, so dear to me. Then I flipped through a few more pages and found two versions of that song in his handwriting–one with strikeouts and one final draft.

“Becky’s Song (I Knew You When)–dedicated to a best friend” he’s written on the top and bottom of the page.

Like the world, Riley and I lost all the music John Lennon still had left to write. I had twenty-eight more years of Riley after that, and I’m grateful for every one of them. If I close my eyes, I can hear his guitar and hear him singing “Becky’s Song” to me again, and like a world grateful for what we were allowed to have from John Lennon, I’m grateful for these words, music, and memories I still have from Riley.

The last two lines of the song:

I wrote this song for you
’cause you knew me then.

I wrote this post for you, ’cause you knew me then.

I miss you.

Button Sunday and Legacy Writing 365:253

This is another of Lynne’s buttons, and I don’t know if it was for a particular retailer (maybe the old Blockbuster/Sound Warehouse chain?) or if it’s somehow affiliated with the decades-old Give the Gift of Music campaign.

I’ve talked on here before about some of these music-as-gift moments of my life: when Riley gave me George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and also all the times he sang and played for me; the mix tapes Tim used to send me from NYC and all the music he introduced me to that I’d somehow missed, especially from the 1980s; the time my brother found out I gave Riley the John Lennon photo from my White album and surprised me by opening his White album and giving me his picture; the first albums my mother ever bought me with my new record player when I was a young teen; some of the best concerts I’ve been to through the years with Debby, David, Lynne, Tom, Amy, and friends from high school and college; listening to my nephew Josh play drums in a blues band; the countless hours I’ve spent listening to music with friends and talking about it, singing along, and just being quiet and digging it, as Riley might say.

I have a zillion music-related memories. It would please me very much to turn this over to you in comments and hear a way or time music has been a gift in or to your life. GO!

Riley, December 1980

Legacy Writing 365:244

When our friend John died in 1996, his roommate Charlie shared a story at his memorial service. He said he’d once been told that when we lose someone to death, it’s important afterward to “watch for the signs” that show us comfort is being offered–perhaps even as messages sent by the ones we’ve lost. The day after John’s death, Charlie was on a transatlantic flight when a woman he’d never seen before placed a small green stone inside his palm. “I can sense that you’re sad,” she said. “This will help comfort you.” Of course it did, because for Charlie, that little stone was a gift from John.

I believe in those kinds of signs, too, and have my own experiences with them. Recently my lifelong friend Riley, who died a few months before my mother in 2008, has been very much on my mind. There are so many times I wish I could pick up the phone and call him. I want to hear his unique perspective on things that have happened this year–the stuff only he would say.

Several times I’ve blogged about Riley and our connections, including the Beatles. One post was this memory about Riley, George Harrison, and me.

Tonight Tom came in and handed me a guitar pick he found on the street outside our house.

Front and back of the guitar pick. Or vice versa.

Who knows who dropped it or when? As a sign, I’ll take it.

Thanks, my old friend. I have an album I should listen to now.

Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for
George Harrison, Beware of Darkness

Legacy Writing 365:221

Does anything say summer like the humble lawn chair?

Ode to a Lawn Chair

reach into that jumble
of toys, balls, rain coats and chairs
wander over the field
pick your spot
yes – out on the edge
of the soccer field
nice spot
further out the town houses
ring it all around
single family homes next
and mini van roads
suburbs – yes,
but this is your spot
your place
of your lawn chair retreat.

Some of these photos are repeats, but it’s all to celebrate the lawn chair: who leaves patterns on our legs and moments on our hearts, holds multiple children or one parent, frays and buckles as it ages, and tucks itself in to any pile of refuse or floats listlessly down any stream, abandoned, forgotten, yet dense with the histories of our lives.

In the shade of a tree: Uncles Grover and Boots, Don, Daddy, unknown, at Mother’s family reunion, 1981.

Blowing bubbles at Tom’s parents’ house.

As a wee child, Lynne apparently prefers her little red wagon to her lawn chair.

Tom’s Grandma waving the flag on July 4, 2001.

Waiting out Hurricane Rita in good company, 2005.

Tom and his skinned knees hanging out with his father and little brother.

Legacy Writing 365:123

While I was downloading John Irving’s new novel In One Person to my Nook, I was thinking of all the copies of The World According to Garp that I’ve owned. For years, every time I bought the novel, someone borrowed it and never gave it back.

Then there was the mistreated copy. When Lynne and I lived together in what I always call “that house on Francis,” I was sound asleep one night, no doubt dreaming of where I could get a fourth job (I had three–times were hard!). Suddenly Lynne stomped through the hall from her bedroom, flung open my door, and hurled The World According to Garp at me while shrieking, “YOU DIDN’T TELL ME [name of character redacted] DIED! I HATE THIS BOOK!” While I struggled to remember who she was and what she was talking about, she retrieved the book, marched back to her room, and continued to read.

I was looking for photos of “that house on Francis,” but all of them have people in them who we either don’t know anymore and who might not like ancient photos of themselves splashed over the Internet, or include an ex-boyfriend of mine who never gets real estate on this blog. However, I did find this photo taken in the dining room. It’s crappy-blurry and has blue scratches on it, but it’s Riley and me.

I’m sitting behind my typewriter because he always brought his poems and stories to me for editing and typing. And he’s probably reading my poems and telling me how to make them better. Actually, he’s flicking my very expensive tabletop crystal cigarette lighter and probably threatening to burn my bad poetry.

What I wouldn’t give to sit at a table and argue about writing with him again.

However, Lynne, we can skip reenacting that whole book-hurling thing. E-readers are pricier than paperbacks.

Legacy Writing 365:68

One year when I was living with another person who was on a break from graduate school (and who I completely lost track of later, though I think she was originally from Houston, and for all I know, may live on the next block from me now), Riley came to Tuscaloosa with the theater department from his college for a theater festival that the University of Alabama was helping host. His school was putting on Death of a Salesman, but the memory of it has been overshadowed by another production–I think from Auburn University in Montgomery–of Equus.

Not, however, because Equus was so good, though it might have been. All I remember about it was that I was sitting next to Riley in the auditorium and suffering from the WORST MIGRAINE OF ALL TIME. To this day, the mention of Equus makes me feel nauseated, so you can imagine how unthrilling I found all the publicity surrounding Daniel Radcliffe’s taking the role of Alan in the play’s 2007 revival.

Riley never traveled anywhere without his guitar, so I’m sure he eventually strummed my headache away. I still kind of miss my antique bed, pictured here.

Riley took this shot of me on the same visit. I’m holding back my hair as I bend down to pick up something, not clutching my head in pain, but it makes me wonder: Do big puffy sleeves cause migraines?

Today is Riley’s birthday. We lived apart so many years that it’s only on his birthday, and mine, when I’m forced to remember that he died in 2008. I miss our birthday phone calls, and the way he always made me laugh, and his guitar. Still, the most beloved friends never really leave us.

I love you, MVP.

Legacy Writing 365:4

There’s no reason I should have this photo or the other four that were obviously taken the same day. I didn’t shoot them; I wasn’t there. That I do have them means I badgered someone into giving them to me: either Tim, who’s front and center in the water, or Riley, the boy closest to him, next level up. I’d be willing to bet it was Riley who reluctantly handed them over.

Even though I wasn’t friends with the other three boys in the photos (one of whom isn’t pictured here because he was obviously manning the camera), and though I haven’t seen them in more years than I wish to divulge, I can name them all immediately. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen them in all those years; they are fixed in time, always young, always long-haired, bell-bottomed, wearing illegal expressions on their achingly young faces.

I also don’t know where in North Alabama these photos were taken. I hope there are still as many remote places of natural beauty as there were then, where even a short hike would take you far from whatever troubled your spirit.

And when you’re a teenager, something is always troubling your spirit. It’s your job. You’re new on the planet, and it’s not perfect, and neither are the people trying to teach you how to be here. Everybody’s got advice and wisdom, and what they’ve forgotten is that no one older and with more experience could keep their lives perfectly on course, either, when they were young. They–we–you–everybody has to stumble over their own rocky terrain, take their own falls into cold, rushing water, get up, keep going.

It’s because of Tim and Riley, and everything we learned together and taught each other, and all the ways we betrayed each other and found our ways back those first decades of our lives, that I so easily slip into the world Stephenie Meyer created. I don’t care about the writing flaws. I can strip away the supernatural elements. What I see is three teenagers who are dealing with emotions and choices, desires and missteps, confusion and clarity, with fresh minds and untried hearts.

And this photo… One boy long out of touch; the other one dead. But here forever, in this blurry photo, are the boys who gave me music, art, poetry, laughter and tears, and my first lessons in the crazy beauty of romantic love.

Here forever in my heart, too.