My Best Friend

I’ve always had a bit of an adversity to the word ‘best’-best cup of coffee, best basketball team, best day ever. But I must say, I was blest to grow up with a ‘best’ friend since I was five. I’m not sure how it happened-I think perhaps geography; our parents decided to settle in the wilds of North Haven-not near one of the neighborhoods that seemed to teem with kids to play with. Our homes were a tiny bit more remote yet the school bus dropped us off just down the road from each other. We both came from large families that seemed busy with the necessities of existence and we were often left to figure out life on our own.  

Joyce’s house was just a mile bike ride down a quiet winding road and her neighborhood had not yet been lost to development, so the woods, which seemed endless, were an invitation for adventure. My house was on a quiet creek bursting with crabs and eels and minnows with a Grumman canoe that became our invitation to the sea. There was a great deal of freedom growing up in a large family in this safe salty part of the world. Our spirits and our imaginations ran free and our days were filled with creative exploration. I grew taller than my three older sisters and my family alleged that Joyce pulled me up-she was always a bit taller.

Joyce and I never spent a dull moment in front of a TV-we egged each other on to write poems and miniature novels about our teachers, we built forts in the woods, we climbed trees, dug for Captain’s Cooks’ treasure, we made puppets, taught ourselves how to play the guitar, wrote songs, camped in the backwoods, learned to develop photos in her dad’s dark room. We drew and painted, and carved paths in the woods. We rode our bicycles everywhere, we played basketball in the yard, swam off of the canoe in the channel at high tide watching for blue claw crabs and jellyfish. For money we would dig mussels to sell to my Uncle Jimmy for five dollars a bushel and then spent some of our new found cash to buy Scooter Pies, Mr. Doodler markers, Super Pinky balls at the Five and Ten, and penny candy at the Ideal.  Quiet days were spent catching falling leaves, listening to music and dreaming what we might become when this glorious childhood came to an end. Though quiet on our own, together we were a force.

Joyce had become a member of our family, and I think I was a member of hers as well. I’m not sure anyone would have quipped or even noticed one more at either of our dinner tables. I’ve come to realize that I would have never become who I am without my best friend Joyce. She was a critical influence in the composition of my life, in who I am and how life’s energy runs through me. Together we staved off boredom, loneliness, growing pains-we encouraged each other to create and explore-we curbed each other’s fears-and filled any and all emptiness.

In tenth grade Joyce’s father decided to move the family to rural Canada, onto a square mile of wooded land, with a quiet stream and a big old farmhouse. I think he felt the rising popularity and dismantling of Sag Harbor long before it had arrived. They invited me take the trip to Canada with them-a caravan of cars and trucks and a U-Haul in which I sat beside her dad. The long bumpy ride felt like a dirge, the end of childhood as we knew it-the severing of a portion of my soul.  

I’m not sure either of us have ever recovered from this sudden move, this disruption of life’s foundation, but we have maintained our friendship long distance and continue to companion each other through life’s transitions and challenges. Some folks have many friends and some folks-just a few. All are treasures for which I am grateful. I will always thank the heavens that I have had this gift of my best friend Joyce. My life is rich with countless wonderful memories of growing up with her in this most beautiful place in the world.