So a friend sent me a real estate listing for the town I used to live in and my stomach started to hurt. The listing was the house of ex-friends’ of ours. For years this couple’s boys and our boys played together. Our youngest were close friends until high school when they went their separate ways. Our eldest boys stopped being friends around the time our middle son started to struggle. But I remained close friends with the mom until suddenly she ended our friendship. My husband and I both respected and liked her husband. We enjoyed hanging with them as a couple. There was some tension around this because another couple they were friendly with had for totally inane reasons decided he disliked my husband because of the company he worked for. I would often talk with the mom several times a week. And she was somebody I felt I could share almost anything with. She was the first person I called after my parents when my granddaughter was born and I felt like she was a sister of sorts to me.
Seeing the space in real estate photos brought a wave of emotions. I had spent quite a bit of time hanging out in that space. I have memories that used to be positive but are now tainted because I still do not quite understand what happened that resulted in her decision to eject me and my husband as a friend. Although I do know based on our last conversation that she disagreed with me about the climate emergency, which continues to baffle me since she liked to think of herself as somebody who was scientifically literate and we had brought her to hear Al Gore speak at Harvard years ago. I imagine politics also played a role. With Trump’s election I was adamant that those who were voting for him because of their political ideology were turning a blind eye to the racism and sinister aspects of the party. Which historically has led many a nation and country down an ugly path. I imagine my language around this was difficult for somebody who had family and friends who were Republican or Libertarian. But because this person was unwilling to have “hard discussions” it will always be a mystery.
When somebody decides to cut you out of their life and not communicate with you it leaves a strange void. It also left me with a lot of distrust around her past actions. We had been very generous with them as friends. In fact I had given her quite a bit of art and furniture over the years. Often it was art she expressed an interest in. We paid for numerous meals out knowing they were not quite as well off as we were. When she cut me off I thought about asking for the art back. I did ask for some chairs back. I didn’t really want the chairs and instead she sent me a check for them, which we cashed. But since the art had no clear monetary value and I did not necessarily want to store it, I let it go. Now I imagine that art ended up in the trash and I am incredibly sad about it. Friend’s and fellow artists in Lexington said they happily would have collected it if they had known. Last summer as my work was gaining some traction and recognition I probably would feel bold enough to email her and ask what happened to the art. This summer I am not in as confident a place again but also I fear that what is done is done and there is nothing I can do.
Meanwhile what am I working on artistically. Well I have sunk into craft and reading as a distraction. Right how I am embroidering a denim jacket for my granddaughter and reading a lot. I just finished “AfterLives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah which was an epic and beautiful novel. Back to reading something fun and light I am reading Eleanor Catton’s “Birhmam Wood”. And we are walking and cycling. And I am trying to still deal with my back.
We saw a monarch laying eggs. Could it be one of the monarch butterflies we raised? We took an egg on a leaf home and now it has hatched. We have a baby caterpillar. Not sure if it will make it but it is very cool.
