Sam & Ella: New Beginnings

Sam

4046 Woodlawn Street. A fairly new taupe townhouse stood before me. The small front yard was beginning to show signs of the approaching cold winter on this November morning. I pulled my pashmina around my shoulders to warm myself. The unpredictability of Chicago weather had never changed; I wish I could say the same about my life. After staring at the front door for over ten minutes, I rang the doorbell. Suddenly I was warm and anxious. I wondered if she would recognize me. I wondered if we would still be able to pick up where we had left off eight years ago.

And then the door unlocked, and with it the Pandora’s Box of my past lay open before me.

For several moments we stood speechless in her doorway. Time had frozen around us; at this moment it was her and me and our memories. She looked just as she did when we had parted several years ago. Her hair more gray, her face showing signs of fatigue, her eyes flickered like lanterns that had survived many dark nights. I felt my scarf begin to suffocate me, my emotions waiting to explode. With tears streaming down my face I managed to smile. And finally the eight years of silence that stood between two best friends was broken with tearful laughter and one uniting embrace.

………………………………………………………………………………………………...............................................

I found myself sitting at Gisella’s dinning table, on the second floor of her home, staring at the walls that seemed so unfamiliar to me. I noticed that she had pictures neatly framed and displayed on her mantle and walked over to them. Perhaps I would catch a glimpse of what I had missed. And there it was, between her wedding picture and the portrait of her parents, was picture of us from our eighth grade field trip. Our untidy and wrinkled uniforms hung from our shoulders with the same disdain that we had felt for them. Our skin burnt from the summer sun, Ella with her baseball cap worn backwards and me with my bandana. Our bright colored identical friendship bracelets tied on our wrists, standing out from among the two dozen black rubber bangles that were so in style that year. We recanted the happening of that day to our families for years afterwards… how we had gone on all the roller coaster rides consecutively, how we had sneaked away from the rest of our friends to secretly ride them once again, how on the way home we were both victims of motion sickness…

“Those days were fun weren’t they?” she said almost consolingly as if she could see the remorse that clouded my eyes. I nodded without saying anything. “Do you want something to eat? You know Sam I can still make better pancakes than you,” she said smiling. Sam. For as long as I can remember, Ella had called me Sam. No one referred to me with that name anymore. I had been just Samar for so long.

“I’m sorry Ella,” I muttered. I’m sorry about everything. “I’m sorry about Aidan.”

With that the air in Ella’s little townhouse became dense and difficult to breathe. Aidan had passed away almost a year ago, two weeks before his forty second birthday. As I looked away from Ella, my gaze fell upon our reflection in her window. I realized how old we looked compared to the picture that stood on the mantle behind me. I realized I would never be able to speak to Aidan again, to tell him how sorry I was.

“So chocolate chip or cinnamon raisin?” her voice trailed with her over to the kitchen counter. This was a rhetorical question, for old time’s sake perhaps. All through our childhood summers Ella and I would have breakfast together every Sunday morning. She would have cinnamon raisin and I would have chocolate chip. Her pancakes were topped with bananas and mine with pecans. She had her whip cream on top and I had mine on the side. Our summer Sunday morning was routine, we would eat breakfast together at either of our houses, and then spend the rest of the day recreating our favorite tales: Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. I was always Alice, perhaps I still was, wandering my way through life looking for a dream that always escaped me.

“Well? What will it be?”

“Hmmm, chocolate chip,” I said. Ella laughed, “Well, it’s good to know you haven’t changed all that much.” Her eyes betrayed her thoughts because we both knew that a lot had changed.