simply gwyneth

I studied abroad in the fall of 2001.  I was in Italy when the planes hit the twin towers. It was a surreal experience, magnified exponentially when I returned to the US and realized that while Italy had moved on, the USA had not.  I still remember watching Katie Couric on the Today show in January, speaking with survivors, and relatives of survivors … as though 9/11 had happened the day before.  I don’t mean to trivialize ~ I just know that it was a strange thing, experiencing something so earth-shattering thousands of miles away, amongst strangers.

But that is a story for another day.

My whole intention of being in Rome for the fall semester was to convince my parents to let me stay for the spring, thus spending an entire year in Italy.  Life before Italy hadn’t been full of sunshine and roses, and I needed something to remind me who I was – somehow, at about age 18, I’d lost my way, and I was still grappling to find it.  I worked hard to get to Italy ~ it was my only goal for a majority of the year leading up to it.  Even when things felt black and dismal, I hung onto the thought that I would be spending six months in Italia.  And that thought was glorious.

Imagine my surprise when the world’s largest known terrorist attack occurred weeks into my soujourn.  But again … for another day.

Fast forward to December.  Somewhere along the line, when Rome had gotten cold, and riding my Honda motorini to and from school had become an exercise in creative layering, I stood at the bright orange pay phone, and listened to my mother’s voice tell me that my father’s company had given him early retirement.  I cried, but it was silently, and with my back to the room.  They were still coming to visit, she assured me, but things were changing.  My hope of staying in Rome was snuffed out like a flickering candle.  My father, who sported a moustache for as long as I could remember (in fact, my whole life, and the full extent of his courtship and marriage to my mother), shaved it one morning on impulse in Rome.  Life catches you off guard that way.

We celebrated my 22nd birthday in Rome,  eating dinner with my cousin who lives there, at a tiny restaurant run by a man named Augusto.  I believe I ate rabbit, and my cousin Sarah gave me a brown courduroy Benetton purse.  Creepy memory, remember?

When we came home, we rode in a limo from the airport… reminiscent of the recently departed days of my dad’s job.  My brother and some friends were waiting at the house.  My shiny red Honda named Helen was there as well.  I felt a little like a deflated balloon ~ in Italy I’d remembered myself for a minute, and back in Wyomissing, I felt lost again.  I spent two weeks, give or take, on the phone with my friends from Rome, planning trips to New Orleans and Maryland … trying very hard to hold onto things that were slipping from my grasp.

And then January arrived.  Cold, gray ~ completely unlike this current January.  And it was time to return to Penn State.  Time to return to school.  My brother ~ possibly the most charismatic person I have ever met ~ had arranged a room for me, through a girl he’d met in Italian class.  It was a house, he told me, just a five minute walk from campus.  I would have my own room.  It would be great.

What he failed to mention was that said house was an unofficial sorority house.  (Sidenote: I was not then, nor have I ever been, in a sorority, despite my father’s attempts to persuade me ~ he may have had a point, but by my senior year, that ship had sailed without me).  My parents dropped me off, surrounded in boxes, and proceeded to Dave’s fraternity house to settle him in.  I stood in the middle of my new room and felt empty.  I looked around at all the boxes filled with my things, and I felt nothing.  And I also realized that there was nothing to do about it, except get settled in.  With a heavy heart, I began arranging my room.

It was during this time that I met Jess.  Or, as I like to call her, Minda.  She came bouncing up the stairs and poked her head in my room.  She had reddish blond hair (although she’ll say blond) and it was pulled up in a high pony tail that swished when she moved.  She was much too happy and much too smiley for my present state of mind.  She talked really fast.  Something about a bed, and the old inhabitant of the room, and her boyfriend … it was whirlwind.  And then she paused, and cocked her head to the side.

“Are you a dancer?”  She pointed at my feet.  “Because you’re standing in fifth position.”

I think I smiled then, and nodded.  I probably stammered something about my major, and that dance wasn’t particularly my forte, but I loved it.  She smiled back and shrugged.  I don’t remember what she said ~ she probably does.

Anyway, she was having some dinner and watching an episode of “Buffy.”  Did I want to join her?

Jess and I have been friends ~ minus a small bump ~ for over ten years.  When I think about it ~ a girl who moved her whole life and never stayed anywhere or knew anyone for much longer than two years ~ it’s something of a miracle.

Now my friend is a wife, a mother, a teacher ~ she crafts and sends cards for all the right occasions.  She married that boyfriend from over ten years ago, and every Wednesday, the four of us (well, technically, the seven of us, counting their four month old daughter and the two pooches) get together for dinner.  We call it WeHangsDay.

Tonight, as I ushered Lucy into the Mini and drove over, my heart was full of love for my friend.  It hasn’t always been easy (we lived together for two years after college, and upon leaving that abode didn’t speak for over a year).  We may not have always been fair enough or understanding enough of each other.  But, in the end, after taking a deep breath and being honest about a lot of things, the truth of the matter came down to this: Minda and I became friends on our own.  We drank White Merlot and had Buffy marathons.  We cooked pasta dinners and taped The O.C. for each other.  We, and eventually our significant others, watched nearly every episode of Lost together.  When the man and I go, we sit near each other in church.  We love each other’s families, we take care of each other (although she’s just way more together than I am most of the time!) and to me, she is my family, my sister.

And every first of the month, she says ‘Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit’ before anything else, for good luck.  So today and tonight, I say it in honor of her.  Women are tough on each other, but every once in awhile, you find a friend who walks through fire with you.

To Minda, to Toosdays, and to all the good stuff in-between.