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Bound by Books
by
Anne Michael
My friend, Terry, with whom I’ve been friends for 40 years, celebrated her birthday a couple of weeks ago. As is our custom, we telephoned each other on our birthdays. Because of our 2 1/2 month age difference, she teases me on my birthday about the fact she is younger than me. I return the favor on her birthday and remind her she is no longer younger. It’s a silly game started many years ago, but these phone calls have become a tradition. We have a lot of traditions between us.
During these calls, we generally end up being astonished at how the
years have flown and re-live some of our history together. One of our
favorite memories is from the early days of our friendship when we
taught ourselves how to speak sign language on a rudimentary level so
that we could converse without getting in trouble for “talking” in
class. We helped each other grow up and still continue to help each
other grow. We have far more memories, however, of the times when we
had nothing except a few late basement/early attic treasures with which
to furnish our new apartments as young married women. We laid the tea
tray out with our tea pots and mugs on cardboard boxes covered with
dime-store dish towels and sat on the floor in what were empty dining
rooms for hours imagining what our homes would look like and what our
lives would be like. While reality was nothing at all what we imagined,
we persevered! We found joy where we could. We shared with each other
the books we read, we traded cuttings rooted in old coffee mugs or soup
cans from our best plants so our windowsills were always covered with
something green and growing. and sometimes we shared fabric for sewing
or the new stitches we learned as we embroidered. As time passed
furniture filled our homes and our children played around us. There
were conversations over hot pots of tea as we shared who we were, who
we became and who we are.
When I called with birthday wishes this year that day was no exception.
There was the delighted recognition of the much-beloved voice on the
phone, the smiles in our voices and the things we wished to share
jumping to our lips, and ears eager to listen as we started a
conversation that was special and memorable for both of us. It was with
great excitement that Terry told me she had been reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. She told me how much she had enjoyed it and said, “Lily and Snow Flower are like us—old sames; I’ve always known that our friendship was special, but for it to have a name is wonderful.”
I had the same thoughts when I read that book. I, too, recognized the
kind of relationship the two women had as being akin to the friendship
Terry and I have always shared. I did not feel as though I could
describe it in a way that would make sense to Terry, so I never
mentioned it in previous conversations. Instead I determined that when
I had the extra money, I would send her the book. It wasn’t necessary;
she came to the book on her own.
I forgot to ask how her how she discovered it. Perhaps it was
recommended to her by another friend. Maybe it was the reviews that
Nicki Leone and I wrote for Bibliobuffet that did it. It could be she
chanced upon it when she last visited a library or bookstore. It
matters not. What is relevant to me is that my good and dear friend saw
the same things that I saw and instantly related it to our longstanding
friendship, born in childhood freedom, sustained through our lifetimes
of living and that still remains steadfast as we journey toward the end
of our days many years hence. I am thrilled that she cared to share
with me her thoughts and emotions. We don’t always get to do this with
our busy days at work and fatigue at day’s end and our families. I am
gratified that my treasured friend felt as I did and was as happy with
the comparison as I was.
When Terry and I were very young women we’d often talk about books. We
read every chance we could grab and would often swap them. They took us
out of our daily worlds of dirty diapers, dusty corners and cobwebs,
incessant preparation of meals and endless sinks of dirty dishes. The
books gave us things to talk about besides recipes and mundane local
gossip. We did this over pots of tea as we held sleeping babies in our
laps or soothed toddlers that had bumped their heads.
Forty wonderful years and 1,500 miles distant, we are still drawn
together by a book and its characters. Despite the vagaries and aches
of older bodies and the occasionally pedestrian requirements of our
careers, dirty dishes, dusty floors that always seem to be there we
remain connected by the books we read and talk about with the same kind
of excited laughter and amazement and pleasure with which we discussed
Poe, Shakespeare, Catcher in the Rye and the poetry of Shel Silverstein in high school. Life’s journey is somehow easier with a good book and a great friend.
At age 10, Anne realized she was never going to get to be Miss
America since reading a book was not an acceptable talent. So she went
on to get a job and raise a family. Along the way, she fixed meals,
picked up toys, helped with homework, and collected a drawer full of
rejection slips for her “great American novel.” It was not all bad,
however, since she ended up wallpapering a closet with them. She
currently designs and creates greeting cards for her tiny company, The
Frog Prints, LLC, and also works full-time as a Training Specialist.
Anne is currently tethered to reality by a loving spouse, two dogs and
the occasional hurricane that blows through Florida, although falling
headlong and happily into a book is still her favorite “talent.” She
can be reached at
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