Like an Out-of-the-Blue Hug

Yesterday afternoon I was in my room reading - I had, minutes before, picked up "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" when the phone rang (and if you've been paying attention at all, you know that due to an unreasonable, debilitating, and just plain stupid Phone Phobia, I cringe every time the phone rings in my direction). I heard Mom pick it up and then exclaim in delight to the caller on the other end. As I sat there, still as stone hoping to go unnoticed, I could hear her approaching my room, "How ARE you? ... Yes, it's been a long time! ... Yes, she's right here."

And then she handed me the phone, a big grin spread across her face. If there's one thing I hate more than the sound of the phone, it's a surprise person on the other end...

"Who is it," I hissed to my mom.

Still grinning, she shook her head. She wasn't talking.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Paige! How are you?"

"FINE," I exclaimed with false enthusiasm while mouthing to Mom, "WHO IS IT?"

Still grinning, she whispered, "Mich." (Short for Michele.)

At which point the room dropped out beneath me and my vision became a tunnel of swirling memories, some happy and warm, some regrettable and humiliating.

She was talking on the other end, "... we were all together this weekend and you were in all the pictures with us. We started to wonder how you were and I vowed to find you and call. So how are you?"

We talked for about 25 minutes. The unhappy circumstance to prompt her phone call was the death of one of our old friends. At the funeral last weekend, her family had memorialized her life in photos, and smiling back at all those old friends from Central Indiana, were college-era girls and boys having the time of their lives. Apparently, in many of those photos was a ghost from their past, looking very much like me (but younger and skinnier). And as they relived those times, Mich vowed to track me down.

And now here she was, on the phone, sounding exactly like she did the first time I heard her voice drift down the hallway in our Freshman dorm 22 years ago. Her room was only two down from mine, and we hit it off immediately. I started hanging out with she and her roommate which progressed to going home with her on weekends where I met her amazing group of childhood friends (who are still as close as they were back then), and shared all of the normal college experiences with her - roadtrips to IU, hangovers, all-nighters, bars & boys.

But that was a rough time in my life and while we tried to hold a friendship together through all of my personal issues and bad decisions (seriously - if I had the power to do it over again...). Anyway, our lives eventually drifted apart. The last time I talked to her, before yesterday, was 16 years ago, just before T and I got married, where we met she and her husband at a local bar for drinks. I don't remember that meeting going particularly poorly, but we didn't talk again all the same. I have thought about her often during the years, and always regretted letting her go. I even tried to find her more than once, but as both her maiden and married names are fairly common, I was sadly unsuccessful.

We talked while she was in the car, catching up on our respective broods, my multitude of husbands come and gone, where we've been and what we've been doing, with plans to email, call, and meet the next time they come down for a football game. I can't begin to tell you how great it was to hear her voice. She is my oldest college friend and I've missed her so much during these long, weird years.