Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Love letters to friends

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious
daring starts from within.
Eudora Welty




We ate shrimp and grits at a small round table, and we drank a lot of wine. We drank so much wine that I drew stick figures on a napkin proving that I wasn't a prude, and you leaned so far back in your chair (you might have been laughing) that it tipped over. We might have been screaming with laughter, as far as I know, the rest of the people in the restaurant receding, their mouths open, silent. Years later, I picked you up from a Greyhound bus station in Nashville, Tennessee, trailing an enormous suitcase. You fixed my air-conditioner and swept out my apartment, and when I came home from my shift, I lay on the bed and you on a sleeping bag beside me and we talked in the darkness, and we talked through the years on the phone and in letters and now over polenta and eggs and no one makes me laugh harder.

13 comments:

  1. Oh, friends like that are a certain treasure. I am positive that the recipient of these words is honored, indeed.

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  2. i so love these treasures you share, these perfect gems of memory, brought to life. such beauty in each facet. you have a gift, dear elizabeth.

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  3. Yeah. You're rocking these. Love it.p

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  4. I've always loved that Eudora Welty quote.

    And I've always treasured those friendships that involve talking in the darkness, and through the years.

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  5. I'm in love with these words--your words--Elizabeth. Damn, this is beautiful. It makes us immediately want to know the person you speak about and then smile as we imagine the friends of our own who conjure up such images.

    Thank you.

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  6. it doesn't surprise me that you would honor this friend in this way, but it does touch me deeply. love it.

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  7. These are getting better and better, Elizabeth. Keep a goin'. x0 N2

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  8. Another beautiful one Elizabeth. For me they are little escapes. I am grateful for your words!

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  9. Wonderful -- such a simple collection of images and emotions and yet so evocative!

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  10. Oh....friends like that. I never realized how truly special it was when I was younger.

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  11. I love Eudora Welty and never heard that quote before. I wish people still wrote letters! I do, and people are always so shocked, like it is so "quaint" that I still do.

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