I rarely if ever answer the phone. Truly. Hate.The.Phone. But there I was, lying in bed, just starting to drift off. You know that blissful, foggy feeling right before you sink down into deep sleep? That's where I was when the phone let out its piercing, ear bleeding siren. It's 11:30p at night. I rolled over to look at the caller i.d. because I wanted to direct my anger at the appropriate person for CALLING AT 11:30p AT NIGHT and I see the area code is from Colorado, my family lives in Colorado. I immediately think the worse possible scenarios - death, car accident, dismemberment, drug deals gone horribly awry - something with lots of fire and brimstone.
It was my sister, and in between heavy sobs I make out "party", "best friend", "loved him". What?
To backtrack a bit, it's important to know that my sister is a substantial number of years younger than me (lucky her, I'm sure she has nice pink, plump ovaries). This hasn't been a bad thing, quite the contrary, it's given us a relationship void of classic sibling rivalry. I love my sister enormously and am infinitely proud of the woman she's become. While I at her age was dying my hair blue, blaring The Ramones and drinking myself to near death or at least humiliation, her rebellion, if you could actually call it that, was that when she fell in love for the first time - she fell completely. Who amongst us hasn't made a fool of ourselves in the name of love? It's not a youth thing, it's a love makes you ape shit thing.
Sobbing "I told my best friend that I loved him tonight, that I wanted to say it before I left for college. Do you think I made mistake?"
Ohhhh, I so remember this from my youth. I remember being in my best friend's white Toyota, chain smoking and listening to something we thought was incredibly deep and spiritual, something like Duran Duran or Yazz. For me it was a boy named Tim. Tim had been my buddy for years, platonic and wonderful. Then one night, during the Homecoming Dance, I told him how I felt, I told him that I loved him - he didn't respond. I was horrified and more than a little hurt. Of course at that age it didn't occur to me that boys were just idiots. Eventually we danced a slow dance - and I will never forget this - he softly asked "do me a favor", "whenever you hear this song, think about me". That song was "I want know what love is" by Foreigner (uber hip hunh?) and to this day,I still think about him when I hear that song. Time has eroded the fine points of Tim's face, and for the life of me I can't remember is last name anymore, but I remember that song and that one perfect moment. He never did respond to my statement of affection, as a matter of fact the relationship always stayed platonic, but that's o.k., actually it's better than o.k. because it's one of the last pure teenage romance moments that I had and I treasure it.
One day in the not too far off distance, when my daughter has made the transition from "Mommy" to "Mom" to "Mother" said in a disdained acid-tongue, my darling sister will get a phone call at 11:30 at night from Emma who is devastated because she's told the boy she's fallen in love with how she feels. She'll ask my sister if she think she's made a terrible mistake and I hope my sister remembers last night and those wonderful, dramatic feelings and tells my daughter, just as I told my sister "of course not".
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