.296 | to Dan (B1), from Brad (B2)
There is a picture of the two us, you might have it too, from the trip we took to Australia after the bar exam. We are standing in front of a railing that separates the Great Ocean Road from the shore below, and several of the remaining Twelve Apostles, the rock formations that we stared at with awe, are in the background. We are young. A stranger has taken our photo, on an actual camera in the days just before ubiquitous iPhones, and the sun is at our backs. That sun takes over the photo as it did that day, it bathes us in rays and warmth and over-saturates the print, so that it’s our faces, our smiles, our youth, that, along with the ancient rocks, are distinct.
I have always loved this photo.
We took that road trip to the other side of the world before we were ever really friends. There was the day at the law firm where somehow each of us got on the topic of where to go for our bar trip and each of us mentioned, mostly on a whim, "Australia." And, then, there we were high above the Pacific Ocean, me coming out to you, and you not skipping a beat, joking that I waited until you were trapped in the clouds to share the news. My heart raced, it did, but I knew you would be as you always were. Decent and thoughtful and funny, compassionate and true.
On the trip you spoke about a girl named Amanda who would become your wife. I spoke of a boy who would not become my husband. There was the moment before the trip really started when the customs official pulled the grapes out of your backpack exactly three seconds after you assured her you came bearing no American produce. And those first two days when your world seemed to be sideways from the long flights, much of which we spent awake prepared to fight the would-be terrorists who tried to go to the bathroom with their guitar cases (who does that?) just after the flight attendants warned us all to stay seated. Years later, we would conclude they were perhaps really just musicians. No matter. A bond was forming.
Road trips get mythologized, and this was ours. We got drunk enough that it made so much sense for you to push me through the city in a shopping cart and adopt a "What are you looking at?" persona for passersby. We stumbled on the show Bananas in Pajamas and thought it was the weirdest, funniest, most wonderful thing in the world, and one of us, I think it was you, decided to names ourselves after the characters, you B1, me B2. We were young, and the names stuck.
There was the day at the Great Barrier Reef when we each became aware at the same moment that the crew overseeing our snorkeling expedition had not a clue that we were totally separated from the group. There was, to my quiet dismay, your getting more attention than me at the gay bar ("it’s just because he’s tall," I told myself); our climbing of the Sydney Harbour Bride; the kangaroo spottings; and, finally, that drive on the Great Ocean Road.
In the evening, in the darkness, we both looked up and saw something we had never seen before or since. A glowing, radiating ball of energy, which could have been the sun or the moon or a planet or an asteroid or some unexplainable beacon. We both reacted with fear, and then awe, as we pulled the car over to the side of the road to make sense of this thing. We were young, and filled with wonder.
We didn’t know a lot of things. We didn’t know this was the beginning of a life-long friendship. We didn’t know that we’d have other traditions. Like our nights at the tavern near your apartment over a pitcher of beer and the “Basket of Goodness,” the chicken fingers spread over a bed of French fries, a brilliant, magnificent, soaring, deep-fried creation. We didn’t know that years later we’d start another tradition, the annual visit to you and Amanda and your three wonderful children in Wellesley, me joined by my husband and our one wonderful child who felt so embraced by your clan.
There would be the night when Emma would stay over your place, a gift of a night out in Boston for Chris and me. Emma would have trouble sleeping, she was scared to be without me, the one who usually puts her to bed. You’d sit patiently at her side, talk to her, hear her, and assure her, and she would be comforted, and she would sleep. This would surprise precisely no one who knows you, because to know you is to know patience and kindness and reassurance.
Speaking of my husband, this has been a bit of a running joke. That our friendship served as a kind of validation for Chris, that if “someone like Dan” was one of my best friends, maybe Chris could have faith that I was the person he hoped I was. This has been one of those jokes that’s probably not a joke. The friendship that would develop between the two of you, and the four of us, is at the top of a list of great blessings. And when I met your parents it would become so obvious to me how dignity and grace are hereditary conditions only passed down with great effort and commitment.
Have we ever fought? I don’t even know what a disagreement between us would look like. Sure, there was the day at the Italian restaurant (this, I know, is a story you tire of hearing) when I splatted the tomato sauce all over your nice shirt (it may have been pink, you pull off pink better than any guy I know, neither ironic nor showy) and you were, let’s say it, “unhappy.” And that reminded me that it’s not always easy to be patient and kind.
When I drove to see you last month I thought about our road trip a lot. It was a sunny day both ways. It was easy to think of the road trip and of the photo. In my mind, the sun is forever at our backs, and we are forever young. I hold that photo and I feel gratitude for this great road trip of a friendship, one that starts unexpectedly and leads to unexpected places.
Do you know that I admire you? Your sly sense of humor, the smile to match, the way you speak softly and only about things you know about and no more, a too-rare quality in a world that screams. I admire your grace, which I see again in your children. Do you know what I mean when I say I admire your sense of self? There is no mistaking the kind of person that you are, and I love you for that.
I am grateful and blessed to be B2 to your B1.