The first time we met eleven or so years ago Lli was wearing a leopard print skirt, some kind of military surplus jacket, and lots of wild half-dreaded hair. My sartorial choices would have been much less ambitious – I was likely drifting around in a tattered old Smithfield t-shirt, and my hair was almost certainly bobbed and dyed black. Spectacles? I think I had on the pair I wore at seventeen… all of this, of course, a by-product of poverty so severe I could not even afford to go to the thrift store.
She was holding a beautiful blonde baby, and I was clutching one also. Those two infants could not walk or talk when they first met, but they remained friends as they grew and grew, consistently the tallest in their social scene. We all moved away from Portland on the same day five and a half years ago – Lli and her daughter to Pittsburgh, my small family to Seattle, then Europe.
In the years since we have met up again back in the old neighborhood, in NYC, and even in London. We’ve all changed substantially, growing independently into various careers, educations, styles, lives.
The incredibly fascinating thing is the fact that the children pick up the friendship without even a seconds pause. They still share the same attitude, interests, sense of humor, even matching winter coats… and of course, excessive height.
The girl is taller than her mother, and me, and my boy is only half an inch behind! It is truly a gift to have this continuity between a life I loved and abandoned, and a new life that continues to amaze. Kids at the Warhol Museum:
