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Illustration by Juliana Neufeld
Last month, one of my childhood best friends married a person I don’t know (she seems lovely). Although our annual interaction rate has fallen to a median of zero in the last eight years, I was invited to the wedding.
It was held at the bride’s family ranch and had the simple elegance that suggested much more effort in planning and execution than a guy like me could probably guess. A hay bale amphitheatre was a short walk from stables where perfectly groomed horses watched cautiously. On long tables, each place setting was adorned with a gold name tag. I found mine at the end of a table, with unfamiliar names to my right and nobody to my left.
On arriving, I milled around the gravel parking lot turned matrimonial ballroom with nerves that had been developing for weeks. I felt that my recent successes – defending my graduate thesis, a trip abroad – would give me confidence in revisiting my past. They didn’t. Instead, I felt uneasy. I watched the groom sharing inside jokes with people I didn’t know. I saw a life complete without me. As I shared anxious glances with the horses, a pride of young suit-clad men approached me, unfamiliar, but recognizable: my childhood friends, slightly distorted by the influences of time.
I always felt that our hometown seemed small, despite the 15-minute cross-town drive on the highway and the unreasonably high number of big box stores, and maybe that was because of my friends. We had sleepovers that lasted for days. We saw each other so frequently that I never noticed them change – just as our own changes don’t register until we see an old photograph or we take an unreasonably close inspection in the mirror.
So much for castles. Our kids connected to their Scottish heritage in a souvenir shop
As we shared “bro-hugs” and smiles, I felt forgotten familiarity. I remembered the week we spent digging our own tarp-lined swimming pool in my parents’ backyard. Although we originally intended the pit to be a hot tub, our inability to get warm water from the garden hose made its temperature suboptimal for autumn lounging. We used it only once (hot cocoa cups in hand), but were later able to repurpose it into a bike jump.
I remembered when we first heard about “couch surfing.” We scoured the neighbourhood, found a free couch on the side of the road, attached rails and little plastic wheels to the bottom, and hooked it to the back of one of our trucks with a tow rope. On the maiden voyage, a slingshot turn caused the couch (and its riders) to hop the curb, resulting in a long gouge in a neighbour’s manicured lawn and a brief chat with the local police. We moved our adventure to the country roads, equipped with full-face helmets, shin pads and gloves. Our faithful couch was retired when, nearing highway speed, an unlucky trio tumbled through a gravel pit.
I also remembered the days when we didn’t really do anything, the after-school hangouts when we sat around, ate cheese-flavoured rice cakes and talked about nothing in particular. We played video games long after they stopped being fun, just because we wanted to be together. In our miniature universe, I never felt alone. I never doubted that our friendship would last forever.
At the end of high school, I did what many people do: I drifted apart from my childhood friends. I moved to the city for university and was overcome by novelty: food, people and ideas. Building new relationships took priority to maintaining existing ones. I began to reinvent myself and my childhood friendships were collateral damage. Regular calls faded to infrequent updates, which faded to, well, nothing. It was gradual, almost imperceptible, until one day my childhood friends felt like a relic from a version of myself that no longer existed.
That evening, I watched one of my childhood best friends get married, glowing with the prospect of a partner for life, with all my other childhood friends, his groomsmen, standing proudly at his side. I sat on a hay bale with a slightly obscured view, among the masses. As I glimpsed the happy couple between the heads of cousins and grandparents, I couldn’t help but feel. I am not sure what exactly: happiness for his success, mourning for the friendship that was, or some kind of reckoning that we might never know each other the way we once did.
Euchre is the card game that keeps us together
The wedding was beautiful and my old friends were kind and welcoming. I hugged the moms who helped raise me and shook the hands of people that were surprised (pleasantly, I hope) to see me there. I left at a reasonable time without making a fool of myself, and there was no drama.
What I am left with now is probably best described by longing. Whether I long for my childhood friends or for a version of myself from simpler times, I don’t know.
Whether my childhood friends are a part of my future doesn’t change how special they were to me all those years ago. They will always be with me in my memories – and I in theirs.
Joseph Krahn lives in Vancouver.