Melissa 11 comments

By Kelly Foster

Now, I’m an old sentimentalist from the word go. I don’t even require alcohol to have these occasional moments when I burst into tears, seized by the sharp realization of my indebtedness to the friends who have held me together over the years, piece by crumbling piece, the friends who have made me happy to wake up, the friends who have made me feel likable, worth spending time with, the friends who’ve made my fluttering, untethered heart feel anchored.

Par Exemple.

It’s about 8:30 in the morning on a Monday.

I’ve only had a bit of coffee. Not Irish coffee. Just regular drip coffee.

And as I was rounding the perimeter of my yard with my dogs a few minutes ago, I began to think about the time my friend Melissa came to visit me in California little over a year ago, and I started to get all emotional. She’s getting married in a couple weeks and whenever friends of mine get married or have babies, I get particularly emotional about them. I think about the first things, all the times I didn’t even know I needed them and they were there.

Mel’s visit to California was one of those classic comedy of errors trips, when nothing seems to go the way you want it to. She only had a couple days available and a free ticket with a weird scheduling requirement. Her flight was delayed. She had to spend the first night in San Francisco, three hours away from my apartment. Then, we headed back to San Francisco a day early for her return flight because she misread her ticket (it should be noted that Melissa is a true Type A personality and this kind of thing is quite rare for her, unlike me). Fortunately, I’d already booked a hotel room for myself there, and we ended up having a great time with our unexpected free day.

By the time Melissa arrived in California, I’d already had a hell of a year.

In the first month of living there, I’d broken up with my boyfriend of almost two years and had spent most days at work sneaking into the bathroom between classes to sob and then try to make it look like I hadn’t been sobbing.

Those are always the weird teachers, you know—the ones who look like they might burst into tears at the slightest provocation. But for a while there, I suppose I was one.

I had moved to California knowing not a soul. I felt displaced and intensely homesick. And there were these beautiful people I got to know gradually over my time there. Although I loved my job quite a bit, most days I still felt like the sole inhabitant of some deserted island, endlessly adrift.

And so Melissa came to visit. And it wasn’t the first time she rescued me from feeling completely alone. We’d met several years before at a summer camp where I’d made many lovely friends, but Melissa had been one of the few who had “gotten” my passion for books and music.

The next semester when I was living in Wisconsin with my friend Karoline spending most days writing alone while she and her husband were at work, Mel would read (and like) the stuff I had sent her over email and forward me quotes from Annie Dillard, Kathleen Norris, Anaïs Nin, Anne Lamott, to encourage me. She was the best possible cure for my writer’s solipsism and the first person I felt comfortable sharing my writing with.

Melissa was the reason I moved to Boston, and one of the main reasons I keep returning there.

When I was in college and for most of my life before, I was trained in all kinds of Christian apologetics. I know the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments for the existence of God, but to me, Melissa is much more convincing.

Because I woke up one morning in California, and she was already awake, washing my dishes and cleaning all the counters. And suddenly, I couldn’t imagine how I had endured all the months before and how I would endure all the months to come when she wasn’t there to wash my dishes.

On days when I hate myself and grow too tired of the sound of my own thoughts, Melissa is one of the names I call to mind like absolution, like grace, like the remembrance of first light.

I think of Sigur Ros, Damien Rice, Gretel shows, back massages, late night movies, grilling bratwurst, musical saws, ethereal high notes, driving to Shaw’s grocery store, of conversations sitting in the parking lot of the Hyde Park Blockbuster next to Tedeschi’s. I think of text messages that simply say, “How’s my favorite Mississippian?” or “How’s your Tuesday, K Fos?”

And some days this is how I remind myself I still exist and am happy to do so.

And so in a couple days, my beautiful Melissa friend will be a married to a steady, sweet, good man who has loved her for a very long time. And I will be there to wish them both well.

But you never get enough time to talk to the people you want at your own wedding. I learned that lesson at my own.

And so this, Melissa, washer of dishes, singer of songs, is what I would say to you at your wedding if there were enough time: Thank you for holding light I could not hold. Thank you for not begrudging it.