Boomer

A tale of life-long friendship

She calls me a boomer.

I don’t even know what that means, which probably proves her point.

Does technology give me anxiety? Yes.

Do I ask her what acronyms like FML and SMH mean? Yes.

Do I still write checks? Yes.

Do I hate automated answering systems and hit zero over and over until I reach a real human or hang up in frustration? Yes.

Have I refused to wear a bikini in my 40s, or shorts that don’t reach my fingertips?

Yes.

If all of that makes me a boomer, I’ll polish that badge and wear it with honor.

She’ll roll her eyes at me.

We’ll laugh.

Still, we’re best friends.

We met in kindergarten—maybe before that. Our only proof is a single photograph of a Halloween parade in 1989. An image of excited children in costumes, walking two-by-two along a neighborhood sidewalk.

I was a bride. My dress, a white satin nightgown. Matching gloves rolled up my forearms. A lacy veil hanging over my cropped brown hair.

She wore a full bumblebee suit from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, a costume far too hot for that sunny October day, and perhaps the cause of her lifelong disdain for heat.

We smiled big for the camera, our dimpled cheeks pulled high.

Our friendship bloomed in the third grade, when we were finally in class together again. Where she was quiet and reserved, I was lively and outspoken. Where she followed classroom rules, I followed my own. A teacher’s pet and a teacher’s nightmare.

Opposites—drawn to the features of the other.

In the fourth grade, she invited me to her birthday party.

I didn’t know that the apartment I visited that day was a recent move out of necessity. That family trauma had brought her, her mom, and her older sister to a two-bedroom, one-bath unit barely big enough to shelter them from the rising storm.

I can still see us sitting on the couch in that cramped living room during our first sleepover, a big bowl of green grapes in her lap as I watched her eat them, distracting me from the movie playing from her tiny TV set.

I hear the snap of the grape skin as her front teeth sank in; the crunch of the fruit as she popped the rest in her mouth.

I loved that sound.

“Again! Again! Eat another one!”

“You’re so weird,” she’d laugh back.

Snap. Crunch. Gulp.

My personal ASMR.

In the fifth grade, we studied pioneers and were assigned a group project. We joined each other in a group of four and decided to perform a short play for all of the fifth-grade classes, depicting a family preparing for the pioneer trail.

Of course, I directed.

I took control of our costumes, the backdrop and props, the script—shining in all of my bossy glory. The other three just needed to memorize their lines.

I oversaw that, too.

She didn’t want a speaking part. She was adamant. Still sensitive and shy, she wanted to sit on the floor in the background and quietly and play with her doll—the silent role of a young daughter, happy to blend in with the voiceless props.

I gave her a line anyway.

On the day of our performance, she was a ball of nerves. That single line haunting her.

Quite honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t cry.

As the play reached its finale, the spotlight fell on her as she knelt by a wooden doll bed, a prop loaned from my own bedroom. She picked up the small, hand-stitched doll—also mine—and looked down into its black-thread eyes. The fond gaze we’d rehearsed ad nauseam.

“You hear that, Pontas? We’re going to America!”

Her gap-toothed grin reached the sky, her dimples displaying pride, as the audience of other nine- and ten-year-olds clapped and cheered.

I knew she could do it.

Through the rest middle school, we continued in our own personal world of make-believe while our friends outgrew their imaginations. Looking back, I think her sense of wonder and play distracted her from the chaos unfolding between her parents, a coping mechanism to drown out the adult problems she was too young to grasp.

Our lingering Barbie adventures—her saving grace.

I was just content to have a friend who still wanted to play, who, like me, wasn’t wrapped up in the expectations of adolescence.

When the time finally came for us to grow up, we floated along the fast-flowing currents of our teens side by side, barely making it out unscathed. Where dolls and stuffies had once dominated our time, we had finally caught up to our friends.

Boys, fashion, boys, music, boys, makeup, and…

Boys—replaced the games we once loved.

When hormones came, so did scathing sass and unrelenting attitude, sometimes—unavoidably—directed at each other. Numerous were the long periods we refused to speak to each other until someone broke and reached out first.

She usually won that particular game.

What we always did best—

Laugh.

No one understood our humor. Our sayings, our inside jokes, the quotes we stole from movies to apply to everyday life—all were ridiculous to those on the outside. But to us, they were belly-laugh worthy, the kind that made her wheeze like a tire losing air, eyes watering, squinting so tight they looked closed, mouth wide enough to swallow the world.

Infectious.

When we were sixteen, I taught her how to drive a stick-shift in my white ‘79 convertible Beetle. Top down, our screams and roars of laughter could be heard clear across our small town as she stalled it and ground the gears, sending us hopping and jerking down backroads.

When we were seventeen, she taught me how to sneak out. Bedroom windows were her specialty, though, I never reached her skill level. All it took was one terrifying look from her mom on a night we were caught to send me into retirement.

She never joined me.

The first time we left each other was after high school.

We went our own ways for college—her to Vegas, me to Chico—vowing that distance wouldn’t affect our friendship. We saw each other on holidays when we came home and let our cell phones do the rest.

Then she came my way, moving to Chico after two years gone. We picked up right where we left off, leaving piles of debauchery in our wake along those college-town avenues.

Until she left.

Again.

I made the nine-hour drive with her to San Diego. I brought along a case full of burnt CDs filled with our favorite songs. We sang at the top of our lungs like we were still on those Chico dance floors.

A distraction from our upcoming goodbye.

Visits and phone calls were put to work again—invisible tethers connecting us, making distance easy to ignore.

But then another adventure came calling; her biggest one yet.

The hardest on my heart.

A move to Pennsylvania.

We kept in touch over the phone during her 35-hour drive. She’d describe scenic stops along the way—stretches of desert, ranges of Redrock—and the decrepit motels she could afford when she needed rest.

I pictured eerie, dilapidated, L-shaped structures. Plastic blinds hanging in smudged, cracked windows. Slats missing or bent from years of prying eyes. Neon “Vacancy” signs ominously sputtering on and off. Weeds sprouting through neglected gravel parking lots.

I envisioned her crossing her fingers so tightly they cramped on the steering wheel—her telltale sign of fear—as she slowly rolled into the shadowed carports that covered the front office doors.

Norman Bates waiting behind a dusty counter to welcome her.

She was always so fun to scare.

One night, she called me crying. Devastated. Her boxes only partially unpacked.

Her new life was not panning out as she’d planned.

“I made a mistake.”

This is it! Now’s my chance to get her back!

The words lived on my tongue, ached to be released—

Come home!

But my conscience slapped a firm hand over my parted lips. Begrudgingly, it always made me do the right thing, and it knew she needed to stick it out.

With my fist clenched around my cell phone, knuckles white, heart caught in my throat, I told her to stay. That she needed to prove to herself that she could do it.

She didn’t argue.

Because of that choice, she found faith in herself. Faith she’d carry with her into every next move she’d make.

She built a successful career and made it soar.

She found a new man. One who wouldn’t break her heart or make her question decisions. One who had been waiting for her all along.

She married that man of our dreams. Yes, our dreams—he needed to exceed my expectations, too.

Her biggest accomplishment?

The family she created—her silent vow born from trauma, to give her children everything her own mom desperately wanted to give her but couldn’t.

What she took from her mom can’t be overstated: resilience, independence, confidence.

What she gained on her own—drive, determination, fierceness—propelled her into the life she told herself, and believed, she deserved.

Our 37-year-old bond has stretched its arms wide to envelop our families, to create ones of equal strength between our husbands and children, even with the distance that still separates us.

History repeating itself.

We are 42 now.

Still, she is everything I want to be when I grow up.

If being a boomer means being her best friend, her number one fan, then yes—

I am one.

I always will be.

.