{"id":4812,"date":"2016-11-25T13:37:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T20:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/?p=4812"},"modified":"2016-11-25T13:37:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T20:37:47","slug":"40-years-saved-stupid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/2016\/11\/40-years-saved-stupid-2\/","title":{"rendered":"40 Years After They Saved Me From Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mitzi, Denise, Tara, Aida in junior high, 1972<\/p><\/div>\n
The six of us peered into each other\u2019s eyes, trying in short seconds to excavate the girls we\u2019d known when we were sixteen from the fifty-six year old faces staring back at us. Then we flung ourselves into hugs. Wonder and words and laughter and very old trust sparklered across my Arizona lawn.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d found our safe place during adolescence on the sands of Stuart, Florida, and in each other.<\/p>\n
On this balmy February 5, 2015, we bunched on the grass after landing in Phoenix from St. Louis, Atlanta, Hayden, Idaho; Greenville, South Carolina; and Punta Gorda, Florida, together for the first time since tenth grade.<\/p>\n
For a year I\u2019ve sat in the sanctuary of my office and mined a story a week from my murky memory. I painted scenes, picked perfect verbs, imparted emotional truth. I didn\u2019t picture the three-month Facebook free-for-all that woke slumbering relationships along with recollections.<\/p>\n
Mitzi, Denise, Tara, Aida, 2015<\/p><\/div>\n
My two-and-a-half years in Stuart started at the tail end of fourteen as I fled my father\u2019s strictures and flew under Mom\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n
Mom navigated her nursing career, new marriage, and my nine-year-old brother\u2019s undiagnosed dyslexia.<\/p>\n
These girls and a couple others kept my stupid\u2014jumping off bridges, stealing candy, and inhaling a substance Bill Clinton couldn\u2019t\u2014to a minimum.<\/p>\n
But in the melee of life\u2014moving to new towns, matriculating, marriage, motherhood\u2014I lost these crucial friends and they lost each other.<\/p>\n
Aida, 2015<\/p><\/div>\n
I wasn\u2019t the only one who had found safety in our Stuart sisterhood. Denise Domansky\u2019s family had bailed Delray Beach before we met because she\u2019d gotten beaten up for being white. Mitzi had slept in Vietnam to bombs rattling in her bedroom windows. Family members of Aida\u2019s schoolmates in Colombia had been abducted. Tara\u2019s mother had survived the beheading of her first husband. For Carolyn, overrun with brothers and missing her dad who captained big boats in the Merchant Marines, our sorority meant solace and fun.<\/p>\n
Denise, Mike, Aida<\/p><\/div>\n
Aida brought a red notebook stuffed with our junior high notes\u2014some with snippets of her old bickering with Denise we\u2019d almost forgotten. Now, we guffawed over the notes we\u2019d signed\u00a0 with numbers instead of names in case they were intercepted. \u00a0Aida out-remembered us all with stories and details we knew were true the minute she spoke. Denise\u2019s brother, Mike, younger by seven years, drove from Vegas to see Denise and collect a hug\u2014forty years late\u2014from Aida, his boyhood crush.<\/p>\n
This weekend, Denise finally got the slumber party at my house she\u2019d missed all those years ago in Florida because she had to babysit. She called the trip her out-of-the-box weekend and hiked a mountain, tasted Thai and vegan fare,<\/p>\n
Me & Denise<\/p><\/div>\n
and let Carolyn commandeer her into 10,000 steps a day. Always our champion of doing the right thing, Denise segued this skill into parenting. Her dread-locked son, contemplating a step off the straight and narrow, slammed home after curfew one night, still innocent, because he\u2019d heard Denise\u2019s voice in his head.<\/p>\n
Mitzi, 2015<\/p><\/div>\n
Mitzi\u2014the loveable Jesus freak of our youth\u2014was another voice guiding our choices. She said we were the ones\u2014none of us then particularly religious\u2014who stuck by her when others called her too Jesus-y.<\/p>\n
I credit Mitzi\u2019s tenth grade prayers for pointing me to the faith that backboned my adult life.<\/p>\n