My BFF

Much to my surprise a few years ago, I found a diary from high school long hidden away in a box of my childhood in the very back of our attic. For just this one very brief period of time in my life, I had put pen to paper to tell the story of my everyday life. I had no idea I had done this that summer of 1979, but I was grateful to 15-year-old me for writing that love letter. Could I have already suspected that 50-something-year-old me might just need the love found within those pages?

That love letter to myself included my assessment that my mom was my best friend. That we both loved the new Billy Joel album, The Stranger. That we were going to Westgate Mall that night together to buy it. I was excited to share this buried treasure with my mom when I found it. She was so happy that I was so happy to have this proof of these years I had long struggled to recall. I remember realizing, though, that none of the story from the diary seemed to surprise her. She'd always had a knack for holding on to the best of times.

My 1979 mom was an unexpectedly single, working mom of seven kids between 12 and 23. That fact had naturally taken center stage in my childhood memories all these years, leaving little room to remember much more than that plot line. 43 years later, we found ourselves in an unexpected time and place where we could travel back in time together as she shared bits and pieces of her life's story, one of which gave context to that summer of the diary.

On a cold winter morning in January 2022, her lilac fingernails immediately caught my attention when I walked into her room at Normandy Care Center. It was her nature to start each morning with a plan for what she wanted to accomplish that day, and her recent move to Normandy, initially against her will, sure wasn't going to slow her down. That day's plan must have had a nail polish change as the first priority for the day. With that task complete, it seemed clear the day was off to a great start already.

I moved a chair to sit right in front of her, and took her hand in mine to admire the beautiful color she had chosen from the rainbow in her drug store nail polish collection. I then took in the sight of her mother's ring, set with our seven birthstones. I can't remember a time that this ring was not on her finger, I was reminded of the comfort in knowing she had chosen to keep us all so close all these years. I think I had always assumed my dad gave her this ring that she had held so dear, but when I turned the conversation to her ring, she told me otherwise. She remembered the exact day she got the ring very well. She had purchased it for herself on the day her divorce from my dad was finalized, which was apparently also my oldest sister's 21st birthday. January 30, 1979 ~ just before the summer I claimed her as my best friend.

As my conversations with my mom often seemed to do, we had sailed from the gentle waters of her lilac nails to her mother's ring, and now on to the choppier seas of a very sad divorce. She described the very real need to protect the seven of us from the tragic effects of my dad's disabling mental illness. And protect us, she did. She must've known, or worse, had to wrestle with the decision, to not weigh us down with these scary details way back when we were just children. There was so much I didn't know or understand then, but the one thing I'm very sure I knew and understood was that she was so brave, so strong, so resilient ~ just what anyone would want in a best friend, what I still cherish in my best friend.