Grace Will Lead Me Home
Sara was my best friend growing up. (Sarah was also the name of my sister and her best friend, which made for some very entertaining dinners when my parents let us invite a friend over…) She lived about a mile away: perfect bicycling distance.
She moved back to my hometown at the end of third grade. I say back because she used to live there in Kindergarten, but she was in the other class, so I never met her then. In the days before she started, my teacher had put a picture of her on the bulletin board, so we’d know who she was when she came. I don’t know how to explain it, but when I saw her picture, it was like I knew we’d be best friends. Maybe I just was hoping, and was lucky.
We did the oddest things when we were kids. In elementary school, we started a club whose purpose was to make miniature floral arrangements out of weeds we found out during recess. In middle school, we were both huge into Star Trek, and especially reading the books, so we often talked about nothing but those books, which we traded so we both didn’t have to buy them all. I own a lot of odd-numbered Star Trek books. A lot. All the while, we’d ride our bikes and meet halfway between our houses so we could ride to one or the other together.
We didn’t go to the same high school. She went to the public school while I was attending the Catholic school in the next town. But that really didn’t stop us. We probably spent time together three or four days a week. We had a couple other friends who were a year older than us (Rachel and Kat) who we would tool around with on Friday nights. Kat was the first to have a car. We’d pile into that little red vehicle of death, put on a sound track from some musical or another, and sing along at the tops of our lungs. We never really had a destination; we just drove. Once I got my car, we alternated turns driving around.
Most weekends, we’d stop at 7-11 and buy pints of Ben & Jerry’s. We’d always forget to get spoons, and someone would have to get nominated to go inside and ask for them. We’d then take them across the street to the church parking lot, and sit on the car eating ice cream. By the way, when I said we bought pints, I mean we each bought a pint. We were all in the “I’ve eaten an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting” club. Not that there’s actually a club. Just that, if there was one, we could have been members.
Those girls were my friends, but Sara was definitely my best friend. We knew everything about what was going on in each other’s lives. We could spend hours together in her basement or my living room just talking and talking and talking. We could also spend hours in either of those places not saying a word.
When we got old enough that our parents stopped restraining our bike rides to just the path to and from each others’ houses, we started riding the bike path across the river together. The bike path in the area where I grew up spanned about 10 miles. We lived around the 2-mile mark. At the far end, there was a bakery that I would often ride to alone (this is why the Ben & Jerry’s didn’t really take its toll so early in my life). At the near end, though, was a beautiful park right along the Connecticut River.
When we went together, we always went to the closer end. When we got there, we’d just walk around in the forest, lean against the trees, talk, and sometimes sing. We were both very big into music. She was an extremely good clarinet player and I was the first chair cellist in the youth orchestra. But both of us have always loved to sing far more.
Most often, the song we’d start with, and usually continue singing for quite a long while, was “Amazing Grace.” We were both very religious at the time, and we had come up with some beautiful harmonies to sing together. We’d sing these harmonies, not for anyone but ourselves, while sitting on the dirt hill that lead down to the river. We only really got “caught” once. A guy in a canoe heard us, and rowed over to the shore to tell us that we sounded beautiful. If I remember correctly, we stopped singing after that.
When we were in college, we still kept close track of each other. And for every holiday we were home, we spent a night talking and talking and talking. She’d come over to my parents’ house, or I’d go to hers, and we spilled out everything that we had been doing, thinking, and feeling since we last saw each other. The last time I saw her, she’d come up to Worcester to see a play I had stage-managed. After the show, we spent three hours talking at a local coffee bar. By the time I got back to Worcester to pick up Mike, the cast party was winding down.
Last night, at choir practice at the Congregational church I now attend, we were learning an awesome arrangement of “Amazing Grace” to sing on Sunday. After establishing the song, it moves into 9/8 time and rolls along with a bit of a jazzy feel. I do love the arrangement, but I can’t help but think ours was better.
On the way home, I turned off the car stereo, and sang “Amazing Grace” with myself. I thought of Sara, and I was instantly full of regret. I’ve lost her cell phone number, and I’ve been too stupid or too shy to call her parents house to ask for it. I haven’t talked to Sara in over a year. That’s retarded. I have to do something about that.
I miss you Sara.
I’ve got to be less stupid about this kind of thing.