Fast friends in the 1960s each coupled up and by the 1970s we two had become we four, close and dear friends bonded by modest adventures, moderately priced wine, overlapping values, and just liking each other a lot. It was a friendship we simply assumed would be lifelong.
Then reality as profession, wishes, desires, and dreams sent us to live far apart, New England and Alaska. Communication was infrequent, the possibilities limited to expensive long distance phone calls, dry and time consuming letter writing, or prohibitively costly air travel.
Had we been able to imagine such as email, Facebook, Twitter, or texting we would likely have thought it magical thinking and too sterile and impersonal.
Then we discovered cassette tapes, or rather he did. In 1975 the first arrived without notice in the mail one day and we listened as they hiked along a trail, the pleasure of their exertions, the heavy breathing, news shared, impressions as they looked at the wilderness around them. It was almost – not quite, but almost – like being there with them.
Tapes were exchanged three or four times a year. Making a tape meant more than reciting greetings and happenings. There was ritual. Often an evening was set aside, a glass of wine or other, a comforting fire, favorite music playing in the background; Judy Collins, Baez, Lightfoot, Simon and Gar.
And then just talk. Talk to them and to each other. Talk about news, trips taken and tasks accomplished. Seeds planted and fish caught. Interesting foods or recipes such as Indian Pudding or Ezekiel’s Seven Grain Bread. Consider the future and discuss plans, sometimes even changing them during the taping. Ideas, hopes. Books read and movies seen. Comment on their last tape. And laugh. That was always the best, I think.
Excitement when a tape, always without warning, arrived in the mail. Look forward to listening, plan an evening or a weekend afternoon. Get comfortable, turn on the tape player, and listen to best friends. Half of a party. Dream with them. Make plans. Respond to what they say as if they are there in the room. Laugh with them.
Life’s journey. Growth, experience. Children. New responsibilities. Time compressed.
Gradually the frequency of trading tapes decreased and finally stopped. They moved to the west coast of the lower forty eight. We visited each other every few years, child or children often along. The dynamic of communication changed but not the depth of our friendship.
Tapes from them sit in some corner in an old shoebox, dust covered, untouched for decades. Tapes from us similarly stored in some west coast cranny, nearly forgotten. They are given to us on our most recent visit, the full set now in one place.
Listen to the tapes. Listen to them in order, first one couple then the other. Sometimes a cassette is broken and there is a strange sense of loss, as if something almost tangible has been taken away. Hear stories and details that still burn so brightly that no reminder is necessary. Others that had been lost to memory but upon hearing are recalled, often with a smile, a shrug or the shake of a head. And others that no matter how complete the telling prompt no recollection at all.
“Really?” “They actually did that?” “Did we really say that?”
Listen to us or to them recount a time we are together and allow the mind’s eye to recall the view from our ancient New England farmhouse or their mountainside log home, me in my favorite flannel shirt or he in his ridiculous robe and think about how wonderful it was to be together.
Listen to the excitement in the voices when the talk turns to the future even while the voices drown in pleasure while we eat granola sundaes or they their dehydrated bananas. Some ideas and intentions, dreams really, listened to many years later are so improbable as to sound silly but are described with an enthusiasm and optimism that could never have been expressed in a letter nor recalled from a phone call. There is a sense of anticipation, of eagerness, almost as if we can barely wait for the future to arrive.
Those voices celebrate a certain time, a present future, when life offered different paths from which to choose. And an assumption that one could simply go back and choose another.
Now these many years later, listening to the tapes, hearing the voices, being reminded not only of what we did but of the plans and hopes and dreams, we know the answers. We know how things turned out. There came a time, gradually and unnoticed, when going back to choose different paths made less sense or perhaps was not even any longer possible. Over the years some plans were altered, some abandoned, but there were new ideas offered and dreams, even the silly ones, did not disappear. The present seemed sweet when the tapes were made and seems sweet now while the future for which we could barely wait arrived and arrives still.
The voices were so warm and comfortable, the four of us simply assuming we would remain close and special friends, still interested in and a part of one another’s lives, still bound by that which brought us together and that which followed.
And that, indeed, is just what happened.
Originally published in print in Pure Slush.
03/31/2025
01:44:24 PM