Pictured

“Really? You want to see my office?”

My friend Erin was puzzled.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Your office, plus the conference room and reception.  The kitchenette, too, if you’ve got one.”

“Okay,” Erin replied. With my two kids in tow, I’d driven eighteen hours from Central Virginia to Madison, Wisconsin to visit her. She wasn’t about to deny me a corporate tour.

That wasn’t all I had planned for our five-day stay. I also wanted to see her grocery store. Her son’s school. Definitely her favorite restaurants and parks. Maybe even the recycling center where she deposits old phone books. Since Erin moved back to her hometown seven years ago, we’ve maintained our friendship by phone. This visit was my chance to animate the green screen behind our conversations, to drop a set behind the chats we’ve stolen during errands and lunch hours. In future calls, if she were to say “Let me grab my sandwich from the office fridge,” I could picture the correct black Amana, instead of my mind’s generic, beige Frigidaire. If she were at a playground with her son, I’d know to ask, “Circle Park or Winnequah?”  Should it be the latter, I could imagine her directing him away from the slide with “WEED!” emblazoned on the side.

Erin and I were nearly inseparable during our first two years of parenthood. For 100+ weeks, she, our friend Mary, and I threw life rings to each other at the deep end of the day: the hours between 3 and 5 pm. By that point in the afternoon, each of us had gone seven hours without seeing another adult. Each of us had filled a workday with failed attempts at productivity that eroded our Type-A morale: unanswered emails, unfinished articles, unsketched plans, and unsuccessful naps. We were operating on minimal sleep. At 3:00 on the dot, (the time the baby sleep books say to punt on the afternoon nap), our Stone-Age cell phones would light up. The three of us would meet up, that was certain; it was just a matter of where. We’d listen to each other’s delusional agendas and hold each other’s babies. Erin, Mary, and I still wrung our hands, but we wrung them less-chapped together.

Our daily visits ended when our babies turned two-and a half. That was when my husband and I welcomed our second child. A week later, Erin and her family moved back to Madison. Then Mary’s son started preschool.  Just before Erin left town, she visited me in the hospital, and then one last time at home.  I sat as still as a statue in the glider chair and held my newborn son. A powder-blue ice belt rested on my c-section incision. “May I refresh that drink before I go?,” she asked, pointing to the belt. “Yeah, I’ll have another round,” I said. Riffing on medical paraphernalia-as-booze was our weird way of coping. Here was someone who knew the exact nature of what I was going through, and she was about to melt away. An hour later, Erin backed out of our driveway, her car packed with a husband, a son, and 10,000 Legos. She blew me a kiss through the windshield and waved. I steadied my cankles and waved back. I was happy for her. And I was totally screwed.

Since 2006, Erin has come back East several times. During each trip, she’s made time to reconnect with me. On two occasions, I met her in Washington DC for a day. From dawn until dusk, we did only what we wanted to do. An 11 AM dal and Kingfisher ? Done and done! A shop with fragile things on low shelves? Undoubtedly! A store with grown-up books and records?  Champagne pedicures? A doughnut? Yes, yes, and yes.  This was our 3-5 PM dream of years past, and we were determined to live it for eight whole hours.

Last summer it was time to reciprocate Erin’s cross-country treks by racking up some miles of my own. The trip to see her in Wisconsin was a turning point in my life as a parent. To make such a long drive with now-old-enough children was a liberating coup. The days in the car were tiring, but pleasantly memorable. In Illinois, we witnessed a “corn storm.” Enormous bolts of lightening zigzagged like flights of stairs connecting black skies to green fields. We saw wind farms, and a sign for Tonica—the tiny town where my Japanese host sister lived as an exchange student in 1986.

True to form, Erin spoiled my kids and me during our stay in Madison. She brewed homemade chai, and plied us with udon at Umami. She proved that a lake-front bait shop with a grouchy proprietor can serve world-class ice cream. Erin’s wonderful husband and son kept my kids busy playing Ladder Toss so she and I could yammer on about poems and Fritos. She even let me use her library card. Erin welcomed us with cool breezes and Venetian light.  Which is another reason why, when she calls, I’m so very glad to see her.

My, how you've grown!

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In addition to being a kick-ass friend, Erin Hanusa is a brilliant poet. Her book, The House of Marriage, is available here.