I'm not missing you at all
I’m pretty sure my mailman hates me. I would hate me if I was my mailman. It’s not my fault though; it’s just a case of poor design. The garage is on the side of the house, making coming in through the side door more convenient. The mailbox is outside the front door- the door I never use. The mail builds up, probably enraging the mailman. So it took me a while to find your letter since it was so cleverly hidden right there in the mailbox.
I like to offer this as an excuse for why it’s taken me so long to get back to you. But as you pointed out yourself, neither of us has been particularly good about keeping up the lines of communication. I could blame facebook. I see your posts there and I click through the pictures you post and it feels almost like we’re flipping through an album together. That is the illusion that being so “connected” has brought us. I feel like I’m still a part of your life, but what I am really is apart from you.
Here’s where I go off on a tangent. But you know how I like to unfold a story, so bear with me.
All the best lessons in my life have come from books. Someone gave me a picture book when I was 16. At least I thought it was a picture book. It was definitely a book, and there were pictures on every page, but the target audience was…older. Maybe. It’s written to a child on the occasion of her fifth birthday, but I don’t think a five year old would really get it. I was sixteen and I barely got it.
I remember reading it right there at the restaurant table and thinking how this story might work for other people, but not for me, especially not coming from my mother. I can still feel that bit of anticipation that came when I read the part in the book where the girl gets a ring as a gift. There was a chance that after I finished reading the book, there would be a small gift box with a shiny piece of metal that would fit perfectly on my finger. I was sixteen, nearly a grown up after all, and while I knew I’d never get a car, I ring might be within the real realm of possibility. My mother was going to give me jewelry, something to prove that maybe the tide was changing. Maybe I really was worth something, worth at least this token, the same token someone had given a five year old in this pretty book. I was eleven years past due, right?
As I turned the pages reading toward the end of the book, the story unfolded and the ring was only imaginary. I knew there would be no real jewelry and that the book was the gift. I don’t know how well I managed to mask my disappointment. My heart aches today for that stupid sixteen year old girl who ever thought her mother would care for her in that way. Not that I didn’t learn something from moments like these. To this day, I care more for the sentiment than the physical. Not that I don’t crave the physical. I do. I really do. I want things. Lot of things. But I prefer little things that have some kind of thought and kindness in them.
Believe it or not, sentimentality is not the lesson I learned from that birthday book. Because the book wasn’t really about a ring, no matter what that sixteen year old version of me wanted. The ring was a symbol. A Freaking symbol! That’s just what every sixteen year old girl wants!
But I digress.
Rings are circles, never ending loops that go on and on forever and always amen. An invisible symbolic ring could loop around a finger of a fictional young girl across the planet to the heart of the gift giver miles and miles away. Bitter angry non-ring-receiving sixteen year old me saw what was going on. My mother would be attached to me no matter how far I ran. She’d always be with me.
But part of me knew my mother wasn’t ever going to buy me jewelry. Her interest wasn’t in making me feel like a princess. I might be the only girl born in the last century to never have had a princess moment. My mother seemed more focused on raising me with more truths then dreams; more realism and fewer tiaras. I’m probably better off without an over developed inner princess. So my birthday bitterness came with a strong dose of reality. Of course she wasn’t using this as a change to give me a pretty bauble to celebrate my birthday. This was another learning opportunity!
Did I learn the lesson my mother was hoping I would take away? I have no idea. Probably not. Because what I took away was that miles cannot separate us from friends. We are never really apart from the people we love, because they are always with us and we are always with them. And since my mother qualified neither as a friend nor as a person I loved, I was safe. But this isn’t another story about my problems with my mother. This is about you.
I know I don’t call you like I should. I don’t have a good reason. I don’t make time to meet you for lunch. I don’t visit. I don’t even send Christmas cards. But I don’t miss you. Because miles do not truly separate us. Time has not come between us. There is nothing to apologize for and no need to promise to do better in the future. We are still a we and that hasn’t changed. Our circumstances may be different, but that doesn’t change the way I feel.
We are more than the minutes we log together. We are a hundred cups of coffee, a shared book, a tv show we both love, a crafty project, venting to each other on the phone about co-workers, thousands of tacos, late night talks about boys, quick texts to make sure we made it home late at night, midnight shopping trips, inside jokes that make us laugh until we pee, and a million little moments when we say “I wish I could share this with…”
Miles do not separate us.
This is where my story comes full circle. This is why I kept that book all these years despite the other things my mother taught me. This is what I learned from that birthday book.
Miles do not separate us, my friend.