Resurrection

After reading the diaries from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade I was eager to see my old friend. Marie and I have known each other since we were eight years old. Our paths went separate ways when I went to a different high school and then on to college. Marie got married and had children right out of high school and soon moved to Louisiana. My visit with her would be only the second time we had seen each other since around her wedding – 35 years ago.

The first time I saw her after her wedding was 28 years ago, when we were 24 years old. I was in graduate school and had spent the summer in Alabama teaching African American children in summer school. Marie lived near New Orleans and had two small children, grew her own herbs and vegetables and was looking to have a plant nursery. I drove from Alabama to Louisiana along the gulf coast to get to her house. I loved the old hotels of Biloxi, MS, the beautiful white beaches, and the steamy weather.

We had a good visit. We shared our history and told each other some secrets from our childhood. I vividly remember going with Marie and her daughter to see The Muppet Movie. It was great, funny, and uplifting. Kermit sings in the last song of the movie:
” Life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we’ve set out to do, thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.”

The lyrics have stayed with me. They spoke to me of how my life felt then – full of possibilities and optimism. Marie and I were just getting our dream lives together then and we were ready to be all that we could be.

This trip I saw Marie again. Twenty-eight years later, life had added wrinkles and challenges to us both. We laughed about our childhood but also shared the pain of our families. We had lost parents, babies, and money. We both had had health challenges and parenting challenges, marriage challanges and generally been thrown around by life. Still we were happy to have our history and to know we had weathered it all and that life still held possibilities and hope.

After I left her house I again drove the gulf coast as I had done 28 years ago. I wanted especially to see Biloxi since Hurricane Katrina. As I turned onto Rt. 90 a piece of music came on a classical station I was listening to: Requiem for a Dead Princess by Ravel. It was so moving and so appropriate for all the destruction I saw. I cried as I listened, for the town of Biloxi and for Marie and I. We were no longer young princesses of our lives. We had lived through many life hurricanes and losses and yet…

I stopped in Biloxi and talked with a local man. I asked how they were doing and he was filled with hope: “ We will be better than we were, we are doing well, thanks” and then I remembered Kermit’s words: “Write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we’ve set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you.”

Marie and I would flourish and so would the gulf coast, thanks to all those who have and will support them and us.