I like people who make me like them. Saves me so much trouble forcing myself to like them.
--Charmion King, Anne of Green Gables, 1985
I’ve known Hayley Robinson forever.
Good friends through sixth and seventh grade, we became best, inseparable friends in eighth grade. We spent all day at school together making faces and copying each other’s homework, then go home to talk on the phone every night. I have vivid memories of replacing the receiver in its cradle, smiling to myself because of our long conversation on Keanu Reeves’s best feature and the funniest line from Parenthood. We were a team, one for both and both for one. Gradually we began to spend more and more time together. I don’t think our relationship has ever been unhealthy, but with years to give me objective, I see that in connecting so completely with each other, we were missing out on other healthy aspects of normal teenage life. We were so close we became isolated from other friends and other activities. And then we became isolated from each other. To put it like that, it sounds very dramatic—and it wasn’t. There was no falling out, no fights. Just growing up. We simply grew apart.
I don’t regret any of the time we spent together and I don’t regret the time we were more distant. I wouldn’t trade those years for anything because they only made us work harder to stay friends. And that made me see how extraordinary and incomparable our relationship is. Yet, at the same time, it’s completely mundane. We’re two ordinary girls who know each other inside and out and have been friends forever.
Sure, forever only amounts to nine or so years in calendar time, but Caesar is highly overrated. When I read Hallmark cards and see cheesy movies about “old friends” who can pick right up where they left off with no awkwardness and guilt about the time that has passed since they last saw each other, I know that Hayley fits that mold in my mind. In 35 years, I’ll pick up the phone to hear someone singing, “Just like me, they long to be, close to you,” and when she gets to the part where she forgets the words I’ll jump in and try to help, and only cause more confusion until we’re laughing so hard we’ve regressed and are thirteen years old again, tying up the phone lines for “important calls.”
Then we’ll probably make plans to go to dinner at Applebee’s where she’ll order a peach daiquiri and I’ll order a strawberry, and we’ll each take a sip of the other’s drink. We’ll check movie times and agree if we spend an hour or two in the restaurant, we can still make a movie. We’ll order and then, a few minutes later, look around us and realize that, one, the restaurant is closing and the staff is glaring at us impatiently to leave and two, we missed the movie. Again.
But neither one of us will be disappointed or, truthfully, even care.
We’ll probably drive around so we can continue talking about the things we talk about now. Her life and my life, memories and old times, mutual friends and work. We’ll catch up on family and talk about movies and books and entertainment gossip as if we know these people personally.
And later I’ll try to put my finger on what makes our relationship pulse.
Hayley peppers her speech with words like “sweetie” and “honey” and she feels them. While I constantly say things like, “When I grow up…,” Hayley looks at me and sees who I am, who I was, and most importantly, who I want to be. I don’t mean she understands who I want to become, but that she sees that person already inside of me. She’s not telling me what I want to hear, but she is encouraging me to find these things within myself.
Hayley is the only person I’ve ever met who looks for a life lesson in every situation. When life hands Hayley a lemon, she pushes herself to look for options beyond lemonade. Every person she meets and every situation she comes across will teach her something. She looks for her answers. And she’s learning them. She evolved right before my eyes. And I’ll continue to see it for as long as I know her.
She’s so full of her own wisdom and so humble in sharing it.
Our friendship is not any more special than any other relationship she has or I have. It’s not more valuable. It’s not that we’re closer. In fact, day-to-day details of our lives are often left untouched during conversation. I find out about things that happened months afterward (a car accident comes to mind) and vice versa. And the distance makes it no less easy. But we’ve worked too hard to get here and we’ve both got too much invested. Perhaps if it were anybody else, it would be an effort to maintain this friendship.
But it’s not anybody else.
And it’s no effort. No effort at all.
