(41) Bricks and Cliques

“Well, Daria, I had no idea you would be up so bright and early this morning!”

I glance up instantly. My mom’s mom is standing in front of me, clutching the folds of her carnation pink terrycloth robe with a blue paisley silk handkerchief wrapped around the crown of her head. She smiles at me warmly. “Well then, Daria, you can help me choose my hair for the day! I’m having trouble deciding between a brunette blunt cut, a ravishing auburn bob, and a lovely blonde shag.”

I laugh happily. The only signs of my grandmother’s advancing cancer is a somewhat more lithe body in the folds of her white eyelet nightgown. Her spirits on the other hand seem to not have been affected at all by the disease. “The shag, Grandmother, definitely the shag.” I try to keep my face serious for a moment and then burst out laughing.

“Yes, I quite agree, the shag it is then.” She bends down to peer through her glasses at the large book cradled in my lap.

“Now what do you have there?”

I put the album down on the carpet next to me and wrap my arms around my knees. “I think it’s one of your old photo albums, Gran.” I pull the sleeves of my gray sweatshirt so that they cover my hands and cross my legs in my pajamas.

“Now, I haven’t looked at these pictures for years.” She sits comfortably down next to me on the fraying couch. Let’s see what this old book has in it, shall we?” She turns the pages carefully reverently touching each picture with a fingertip as if to feel back for bygone days. As I watch her quietly I can see a far-away look transforming her eyes as they wander across the black and white photographs. It is clear she is visiting each scene vividly in her mind almost unaware of my presence next to her. “This is the grocery store your Grandfather started after the war.” She murmurs.

I squint at the faces standing in front of a newly painted building. “Is that you?” I ask pointing with my fingernail at a youthful woman sitting on a bench with a checkered apron tied around her hips.

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is.” She smiles at me warmly, “And don’t I look happy now? It took a long time to take that picture of our grand opening because my uncle was such a perfectionist. All I was concerned about was the impatient customers lining up at the door and maybe not coming back.”

I glance across the page, examining the images of more unfamiliar faces. She turns some leaves backward slowly and immediately I notice a picture where a young girl with my grandmother’s unmistakable dimpled smile beams brightly. “In this one you look happy. Who’s the girl next to you?”

“Ah, now that one is of my very best friend and I. Even though it took a while to take the photo, we kept each other smiling the whole time. Her father took the picture the very first day he purchased his first camera.”

“What was her name?” I ask interested. I peer at two girls with light colored hair, their small arms wrapped around each other’s necks in a loving embrace atop a large stone stoop.

“Mary Anne Stout. She moved onto my street in third grade and after that day we were inseparable and insufferable.” My grandma smiles and flips forward a couple of pages, pointing as she goes. “Here we are much older. This is on the field of our high school when we graduated and this one,” she sticks her finger on the other page, “this is Mary Anne holding your mother the very first week I had her.”
My eyes widen with amazement. “You were friends for that long?”
My grandmother chuckles lightheartedly. “Oh yes, Mary Anne and I were friends for life. She was the maid of honor at my wedding, helped me when I was pregnant with all of your aunts and uncles, nursed me when I was ill, and I’m willing to bet that you would have never guessed that Mary Anne, her Laurence, me and your grandpa were the ones who bricked up the back patio of this very house.
“I was the last person besides her Laurence that was with her, holding her hand for a last time before she passed on. There was no one like my Mary Anne anywhere, she had a heart of gold, that one.
I trace the face of the two girls, trying to visualize a friendship that would last for a lifetime. My grandmother pushes herself up. “Well, I’m going to go make breakfast now. Your grandpa will be up soon enough.”
As my grandma slowly heads for the kitchen I continue to look at the woman holding the small baby in her arms. A friendship that lasts over fifty years? I can’t even conceive the idea. The photo reminds me of the pictures in my DHS yearbook at home, where seniors who were once friends as children put old pictures on a page and then try to reenact what’s occurring in the scene. It’s clear to all students though, that the majority of the teenagers that have to put their arms around each other because they did it in the past hardly talk to each other today. Why is that?

I go over the faces of each of my friends in my mind and try to decide if any of them ever would be a companion of mine through college, into my married life, and even grow old with me. It seems very unlikely. Some of them hardly are loyal friends now. Days from the summer float through my mind to a night that I was supposed to go out with Charlotte. I had called her and she had told me she couldn’t because she had made plans with a group of other people just because an attractive guy was supposed to attend. Heather, the girl I had thought I had succeeded in becoming quite close to after comforting her willingly when her sister had been in a car accident had completely ignored me when I ran into her along the shore of the beach. No wave, no smile, just a look of complete indifference. I was invisible.

We now live in an instant message society where at the touch of the button we can communicate with anyone in the world.
We chat behind the alias of a screen name. We can’t see or hear whom it is we’re typing to; interacting with. We have to type things like LOL, or emotions like : ), and my personal favorite, <3 to share our hearts with our friends of the ether. I say friends… in all actuality they’re simply cyber acquaintances who have graduated to buddy lists, which I’m told you can now buy at newsstands in Japan. What a world.

I stare outside the window, completely lost in thought, where the sun now warms the dew on the grass. What is happening to true concept of human intimacy? Where has lasting friendship like the one Grandma and Mary Ann have had gone? What has occurred that has changed the importance in society from quality of friendships to quantity of friendships? Independence is no longer admired; instead what is valued is how large a group you can get to accompany you to the girls’ room.

Glancing back at the photo album, full of self-loathing, I recall how I have chosen and placed valuations on relationships like it was my father looking at an investment. Having access to a hot brother of a girl on my lacrosse team warrants a sleep over. Laughing at all of a girl’s jokes and continually and putting up with her unpredictable mood swings earns a bed in her winter house in the Caymans. I glance into the kitchen and look at my grandmother. I glance at my own reflection in the French doors of the dining room and see that same dimpled smile now turned upside down as I consider my generation and our disposable values. As I sit down at the small table I vow to myself and to the memory of Mary Ann Stout to be a true friend, to seek real friends, and to have a really great breakfast just as soon as I have checked for email on my cell phone.