Lawyer Date

I went on a date last night. It's been a while since I've been on an 'official' one, wherein the other party asked if I would like to go, and then we went. Usually, things are sort of arranged and assumed, or else they happen randomly, based on timing. People would treat me to dinner, or a drink, casual.

The Beau, as my parents called him back-in-the-day is classy-casual. I would dare to venture, always. Yes, I said my parents. And, back in the day. I don't see him often, these days.

Beau, L, and I get together about once every six months to serve up the tale of what's happened in our lives since our last gathering, and also to advise one another. We call it "Lawyer Time." Our Lawyer breakfast, actually is scheduled for tomorrow morning. This Lawyering has been a sort of tradition of ours since we graduated high school and each ended up in different states.. we all came back to our hometown in Georgia for Christmas, and usually at some point during summer break, before all dispersing again. We became adept at it by the end of college. Near the beginning, it was a little more upsetting.

Beau had a way of neglecting to call or write for the entire semester, especially early in our college careers. L and I were better at keeping in touch, being girls, maybe.. but having just spent our senior year of high-school all joined at the hip, I hated not being able to feel the love off him anymore. He went the farthest geographically, too.

Now that we're all out of college and in various stages of real-lifehood (L has a real job in NYC, Beau has decided to stay in school forever, currently in Washington state [though his summer is archaeological digging in the southwest US], and I'm putting off the grad school I think I'm going to later for a year in Japan... I told you we scattered far and wide!), it is a real comfort that we still find the time to reconnect. Even if it is the one span of a couple hours the morning after L gets in from NY in the dead of night, and just before Beau leaves for Arizona (literally, will get in his car and drive to Arizona from the restaurant).

The date was comforting too. This story has deeper roots. We were all a dream team together senior year, but L, Beau, and I all met in the 7th grade. L and Beau had known one another in elementary school, and when I encountered him lingering in my science classroom at the bell change, I began to rush to that class. When he dated L, I fed him helpful information, signing the locker notes "Incognito Mosquito." We went to the 8th grade dance together.

Embarrassment points: one zillion.

We also went to homecoming. He took me to junior prom. For all intents and purposes, we dated through high school. Except that I flatly refused to call it that. The short time we were official began like "Okay.. but what happens when we break up?" "We won't. I care about you too much for that." We're in the eighth grade, Beau, we are going to break up. He was my first kiss.

Over the course of the last ten years, we've had our requisite dosage of petty bullshit, of misunderstanding, of expectations set too high and fears about what we could or could not become. The term lawyers actually comes from the fact that at some point we sat down in the cafeteria with L and she was our 'divorce lawyer'... that day we decided we could never marry one another.

We made a lot of decisions with flair, and some even with finality. (Although I do have it written in an old journal, and I did happen to include the caveat "unless either he or I change pretty drastically.") I stormed and stewed and got fitful and got scared. I burned and brooded and yelled and bit my silent tongue. I daydreamed and despaired.

And last night he took me to dinner and a concert. Something old, and something new. We had fondue, which was one of the the most memorable things from junior prom night; I don't think he knew that, but it was where he wanted to go to dinner. I'd never been to a concert at the Tabernacle, but it was great, absolutely great.

I held his hand and we walked down the sidewalk in Atlanta.. a city so close to home, yet one I've never really grabbed for myself. It seemed fitting.

And I was just so damn glad to know that we're not done. I'm not necessarily where I want to be in several of my personal relationships. But I'm comforted to know that things change. Time moves ever forward, and change it all there is. There is the possibility that we'll look back on all this and smile sagely at the kids we were. The act of doing it right now makes me feel safer. I don't have to have all my ends tied up and my stuff sorted out. Beau and I are more on the same page, and understand one another more now than we ever have, I think. Not that we've "arrived," or anything, not that it's all "perfect." But it's pretty good.

Just because things didn't go the way I wanted them to, doesn't mean things won't be okay, perhaps tomorrow if not today.

Who's taller now?