Jamie Nicole

"My god, what year was that?" She asks the question with a grin I can hear through the phone line.

"Probably 1984. Maybe 1985."

"Wow. That's a long time ago."

I agree, but I don't tell her that I remember the day like it was last week. She moves on to talk about her husband and her son. She's a nurse, he's a union worker in a factory, and retirement is close. The kid is a sophomore in college.

They built a house along the banks of that river, but way downstream from the place we met. Learning from the mistakes of our grandparents, she found a homesite atop a bluff that, barring an incredible catastrophe, will be impossible to flood. She sent me a photograph. It's gorgeous.

The last time I saw her was not long after we graduated. She missed my mother's funeral, having not found out about it in time to attend. That's when she called me, nearly in tears, guilt-ridden about not having been there for me.

We've known each other since 1985, and she was the first friend I made at That River.

I'd been going there since before then, but it was always just me and the grandparents. Maybe a cousin or two from the spot next door, where my grandfather's brother had a place. That uncle died fairly early on in the river years, though, and visits became far less frequent. His widow held on to the place for a while, but she let it go because she rarely went.

I had a box of toys kept under the bed on the porch. That bed still sits on a porch Back Home, and eventually, I'll claim it for my own screened-in sanctuary. From the box of toys, I still have two, and they sit on a shelf in my office. One is a Carter Hall can filled with crayolas. This box kept me company until I made this first friend.

When I was 12 or so, I wanted her to by my actual girlfriend, but she declined. It's probably for the best that she did. We used to visit each other frequently; our houses were only a couple of miles apart after I moved to be near that river, and we'd ride bikes back and forth. I was passing friends with her little brother, but honestly, I always thought he was a bit of a shit. Turns out he didn't improve much into his adulthood.

She was always a solid B student, a solid second-string athlete, but an A-level friend in those formative years of early high school. The friend group she chose was parallel to mine without necessarily forming much of a Venn diagram. Everyone knew each other and got along, but none of our people spent time with one another beyond school hours or extracurriculars.

We stayed in touch throughout high school, though. Chatting, calling, seeing one another sometimes. Things just sort of fell away as things do after graduation. It didn't help us stay in touch when she took those first couple of years of college far more seriously than I did. She was working full shifts and overtime before I could even call myself a junior; of course, she didn't have to work full time at night to then go to classes during the day. I use that as an excuse, really. I mean, it's true, I did clock in from 7pm to 7am more often than not to then arrive on campus for 0800 classes, but I skipped an awful lot in favor of sleep, too. Truth is, I skipped an awful lot even when I wasn't tired. But I digress.

We chatted for nearly two hours as I drove back country roads. Surprisingly, cell signal held out.

She told me about people we know, people we knew, and people we wished we didn't. I laughed a lot, and she asked me how I was doing since the funeral.

I thought about that day we met. It was a day like any other, but here we are, ripples in a pond forty years later. Friends once, and friends still. On that day, so far away but still so close, caterpillars had formed swarms. They were writhing piles on tree trunks, and should have been gross, but weren't. Each was a beautiful blue and green, and tickled young hands when scooped from their hardwood nests. She screamed and laughed, and I chased her as boys do.

"I've been fine," I lied.

As boys do.