walk me home
My friend and I walk until our tender feet tell us to turn around, after stretches and stretches of water-textured and glittering sand. The shore begins to rub away our blunt edges, until we become warm and worn and honest. My friend lifts her finger, silently stirring the air so as not to stop the conversation, and I nod, and we turn without slowing the pace. We could walk miles more, but our bodies betray us. When we return, the rest of our friends say we’ve been gone a long time, but it hardly feels like more than a short curve we’ve traveled, just one tiny turn in miles of years. And we have so much more yet to say to each other.
I think of this on the way home, when my mom calls to say that one of her best friends, whom I’ve only ever known as my honorary aunt, is dying. “She’s going home,” Mom says. “I’m going now to see her.” To walk her home. It’s something Zoe says at the graying end of an afternoon spent with a neighborhood friend, hurrying into the room with her brassy ponytail swinging. I’m going to walk her home. I think of my friend and me, walking the beach for miles of years, rubbed down like the bits of shell beneath our feet. I think of Enoch, who “walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (Genesis 5:24). Friendship is a long, wandering walk that tenderizes our feet and makes us honest.
I remember the way Mom and Aunt Agnes looked as younger women, all salt and pepper and ginger, standing side-by-side in our kitchen, stirring up supper in their housecoats and slippers.
“But I’ve already put on my pajamas,” I’d heard Aunt Agnes say more than once over the telephone at my mama’s ear.
“So do I,” Mom would always say and laugh, and in a few minutes they’d be over.
Together, these two women taught me what it means to call someone friend. In fact, Mom called Aunt Agnes a 2 am friend, because there wasn’t a time they wouldn’t be there for each other. Not 2 am, and not now, through the valley of shadows.
In the afternoon, Zoe and her friend climb a hill beside another friend’s house and hike through the weeds to the sidewalk along the street beyond. They ask me to come along, but only so that Zoe will not have to return home alone. They talk with a sigh in their voices because they’re not quite ready to go. But even so, these two friends laugh along the way, continuing a conversation that began hours ago, picking up in the middle of a sentence. The wind lifts their hair, flinging it into their bright eyes, across their warm cheeks. They hardly acknowledge me walking behind them. They travel together for one stretch and then another, until Zoe’s friend arrives in sight of home. Here, the two reluctantly go their separate ways. Bits of their laughter fly in the wind and fade as they call back and forth to each other, raising their voices. They have so much more yet to say, and the growing physical distance can do little to interrupt. Zoe waves, still in the middle of a thought. She watches without moving until her friend skips up the steps to the front door and slips inside, until I have caught up to the place where they parted. Then waving one final time, we both walk on.
On the way home from the beach, I hang up the phone and stare at the date, the unassuming glow of the digital clock. I push aside the idea that Mom will sit under the cool ultraviolet light in a hospital room holding Aunt Agnes’ hand; that Dad will pull up a chair beside the bed. Instead, I imagine only that they have walked for miles of years beside the sea, that Aunt Agnes lifts a finger and begins to stir the air. They could walk for miles more, but their bodies betray them. Mom nods. Yes. I’ll walk you home. I imagine the wind lifting their hair, flinging it into their bright eyes, across their warm cheeks. I imagine the way their conversation begins, in the middle of a paragraph; the way bits of their laughter fly and fade as they remember. These two dear friends have so much more to say, and the distance growing now between them can do little to interrupt. So now, as Aunt Agnes arrives in sight of home, my mom reluctantly stops to wave, to watch without moving until her dear friend skips up the steps to the front door and slips inside. It’s the sort of thing friends do for each other; we walk each other home; we wait; we watch each other safe.
And the rest of us now, we gather, knotting up together in that parting place for one final wave. For a time, we must walk on.
