This is a picture of me with one of my best friends. Jody and I both worked at a now defunct bookstore called Book World. I was newly married and had just moved back to the U.P. from downstate Michigan where I'd been teaching and attending graduate school. My wife was the main breadwinner at the time, spending most of her days substitute teaching. I was struggling to find a paying job.
Now, close to 30 years later, Jody and I are still best friends; Book World has been converted into a microbrewery; and my wife now works in a call center, having left substitute teaching in her rearview mirror when our daughter was a toddler.
There is the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. That might be true. Certainly, the picture above shows two people who are obviously very fond of each other. We've both been through a lot since that first day I walked into Book World. Jody's divorced now, and she has three grown children. (When we first met, Jody was married and had two small kids.) My wife and I didn't have any kids in my bookseller days. I quit working for Book World when my wife was six months pregnant and I was going into an MFA program for poetry.
For a while after she graduated from college and was newly single, Jody moved back home to Georgia to teach. (Did I forget to mention that Jody is as southern as grits and cornbread?) But we still stayed in touch. I remember one night, when I was in the middle of some marital turmoil and single-parenting my five-year-old daughter, Jody and I talked on the phone for about two or three hours. She listened to my wale of toe, and I listened to hers. (Yes, I intentionally typed "wale of toe.") Jody always makes me feel better about my life, putting things into perspective for me.
I'm not sure a picture can catch all that history. Maybe in the wrinkles on our faces that weren't present 30-some years ago. Or my distinct lack of hair follicles. Perhaps in our smiles, which, to me, say, "Yeah, we've both been through a lot of shit together and survived."
Billy Collins' poem for today is sort of dealing with the same thing . . .
Class Picture, 1954
by: Billy Collins
I am the third one
from the left in the third row.
The girl I have been in love with
since the 5th grade is just behind me
to the right, the one with the bangs.
The boy who pushes me down
in the playground
is the last one on the left in the top row.
And my friend Paul is the second one
in the second row, the one
with his collar sticking out, next to the teacher.
But that's not all--
if you look carefully you can see
our house in the background
with its porch and its brick chimney
and up in the clouds
you can see the faces of my parents,
and over there, off to the side,
Superman is balancing
a green car over his head with one hand.
It's an amazing little poem that reinforces how we're all still little kids. That fifth grade boy that crushed on the pretty girl with bangs--he hasn't disappeared. There are people and experiences that simply stay with us, no matter how old we are, and no matter how much we try to overcome or forget them. Traumas and disappointments can't be erased. (Notice that Collins writes the entire poem in the present tense--he's still that frightened child waiting for Superman to come rescue him.)
Jody gets me. I get Jody. We both swear like sailors on shore leave after five years at sea. We love the same books and poems and art. We celebrate each other's victories and grieve each other's losses. And we both hate a certain former President of the United States. My life is infinitely better with Jody as my friend, balancing a green car over her head with one hand.
Saint Marty may need to airbrush the next picture he takes--since he and Jody haven't aged a day in the last three decades.
I Love You!
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