on proximity and distance

The other night I had a strange dream. I’ve been cleaning, organizing and as always, always, always, working on our house. We’ve recently joked that it seems to take much less time to create a new human than it does to fix our house. But in this dream I was cleaning an area near my office and found a new door inside of this small closet that has the steam release to our boiler. I opened this door and it was a gateway to a closet of a friend of mine, and into her house across the country. This is one of my many closest friends who all seem to live at least several hundred miles away. Most of my early life I moved away from people, and then as happens after college all of us moved away from each other. So I’m left with many great friends, people incredibly dear to me who each know a part of me that I often wish people in my present life knew, but these people have lives that feel very separate from me. Since these people are scattered across the country, most on the opposite side of it than I am, I often feel like there are little parts of me scattered across the country.

Parts of me that are still a part of their daily life. Parts that stay connected to them in ways impossible for the rest of me in our busy lives here in Maine. There’s something about gestating I think that makes you want to reignite those deep female connections in your life. There’s something about it that makes me want to go to lunch with my girlfriends and feel their support with a hug, and the vibrance of their lives through their stories.

I love where I live. I finally found my home after a quarter century of looking and I don’t intend to leave it. Most of the time not living near all these people that I miss is just something that I think of somewhat somberly, a part of life, a part of adulthood that is inevitable, a sacrifice for finding what I think is the best place for me to live. But sometimes the fact that I like living here so much makes the sadness of missing some of these ladies even more piercing. Because it’s an intentional choice. If feels like I choose a place over them. And even though I know with everything in me and all my experiences that it’s the right choice, it still sometimes almost makes me wish I’d never found this place.



So I guess that’s why in a dream I made a place where I could reach them, near my office, where I sit alone and write these words, where I come when I can’t sleep to read my favorite books, and where I remember other times and other people. If only there was a way to keep the distance we’ve all traveled and the experiences we’ve gathered, staying the people we are now without going back, but have a secret closet where we could still reach each other almost through time, like going to Narnia itself.