An ice storm landed on Berea, KY one December day in 1977.  Eric and I took one of the most glorious walks of our lives.  Everything was coated ..with ice: Pine needles and telephone poles, mailboxes and street signs. 

A huge white quilt had been tossed across our town; snow so thick we could hear nothing but our boots as we stomped through it.  Even the hills and mountains were laced with icicle trees.  Their branches beckoned to us with crystallized, translucent fingers.

A silent, sparkly winter day- and my best friend and I were eleven years old.  In breathless amazement we ran, leapt and laughed toward a seemingly giant diamond which was our mountain. I remember that it looked like an ice-castle in a fairy tale.

We 'kerchunked' through the snow as fast as we could.  I'll never forget the frozen mud, clinging to rocks and the frozen branches until finally reaching a ledge near the top.  There we sat, rosy cheeked and smiling at each other from under itchy hats.

We had prepared a feast of melted onion bullion cubes in hot water and Frito corn chips.  Salty-flavored steam mingled with our frozen breath as our hands greedily snuggled tin cups for warmth.  Bullion never tasted so good!

Our journey back also was an adventure.  We decided to explore a frozen creek, and we tip-toed on its untrustworthy ice until one of us fell through and soaked our boots.  I'm not  sure who sloshed up a frozen bank that day, but I know one of us got a good laugh as theother limped home groaning about cold toes.

The roads were still icy and slick the next day, so we couldn't ride our bikes. This was in Kentucky were snow would come one day and be gone the next, NOT Michigan where it stays for months – where I live now in my adulthood.

My black banana seat bike and worn basketball sat unused in the carport that next day. We missed school the next morning, too. This was a time when we enjoyed exchanging dreams or nightmares of the night before, or playing endless hours of chess and monopoly.

Sledding was still an option! We slid on inner tubes and card board boxes- anything that reached our standard of moving fast enough on the snow.  When our bodies were finally exhausted from the frenzy of running up and then sliding down icy cold hills, we lay on our backs in the snow and made angel shapes by fanning our arms and legs to make wings and a robe. Then we'd stand up and get a better look at our sparkling creations in the moonlight. 

We liked to lie on our backs in the snow, and watch fat snowflakes drift toward our faces.  We'd try to catch them with our tongues before they landed on the ground. When Eric and I weren't enjoying ice, rain or thunderstorms, we played endless board games or spades, told ghost stories or debated passages of books, especially spiritual ones.

On warm summer nights we 'chased around' with the neighborhood kids, and played hide and go seek or kick the can.  As best friends at the age of eleven years old, we knew by heart each other's basic essence; that inner childlike energy which seems to remain inside us through out life.

In high school we remained best buddies and even made a pact at the bowling alley while a bit drunk, so the pact was made by exchanging beer can flip lids as little friendship rings . . . that no matter who we were dating at the time, we'd go to senior prom with each other, as a symbolic end of a great era of friendship.  And a couple years later we did just that, I have our prom photos to prove it!

I last saw Eric about eighteen years ago with his wife, and we smiled at each other with what I can only describe as 'joyful recognition'.  I almost said, "Hey Eric lets play some spades!"

And that's when I knew Eric had acknowledged the playful eleven year old 'childself' in me and I in him.  It was that same connection, I saw our ice mountain and all those nights of camping under the stars . . .  sparkling in his eyes.

We are 'timeless', because we first bonded in that magical, androgynous time of preadolescence.  And I am so grateful for the memory of that friendship and it burns inside me always, especially on sparkly white winter days!

 

By Fawn