I had lunch with one of my best and oldest friends in the world a few days ago. This will likely be the last time we share a meal together for quite some time. Soon he and his new bride will be loading up a U-Haul trailer and traveling over a thousand miles cross-country to start a brand new life in Washington D.C.
It was a meal befitting of such a good and lasting friendship. We chose Tori Ramen, who has the absolute best Japanese ramen in the Twin Cities.
I’ve spoken about Juan (@luckyfellow here on Hive) and in my blogs before over the years and chronicled our creative collaborations and our trips. We've been friends since 1998 when we struck up a conversation on a shuttle bus from the Cancun airport to a beachside resort we had both booked.
Juan and I performing a Bob Marley song in Cancun in ‘98.
Our friendship has weathered many different changes and phases of life and we’ve made some good memories throughout each of those eras. We published a children’s book together in 2003 entitled If I Had Thumbs Like People Do and a few others that are now either out of publication or never managed to cross the finish line. During our friendship we’ve each gone through divorces, marriages, health-issues, career changes, retirements, personal and professional milestones, the passing of parents.
Around 1999 we decided to take a break from the grind and booked a trip to Las Vegas. That weekend getaway led to a ritual of annual trips that stretched, mostly, uninterrupted for the next twenty years. Although the destinations changed—Chicago, Montreal, the North Shore of Lake Superior the goal was always the same—a reset, a rest, a celebration of our individual accomplishments that year, and a little adventure.
We have so many incredible, indelible, and sometimes unbelievable, stories surrounding those trips that we find ourselves reminiscing about almost every time we get together. Those first few trips to Chicago, shenanigans ensued but all of it was harmless and fairly tame. We were on a shoe-string budget, we were still steeped in the naivete of our younger years. It wasn’t unusual for us to stay out until 4am in the Chicago jazz clubs, many which didn’t survive the pandemic, and stumble back to the hotel after a few too many drinks.
Photo from 2001 at the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago.
Juan even had an encounter with infamous Chicago legend, “Mailbox Mary” while we were waiting for a table outside of a Rush Street restaurant. There was also the bran muffin incident, the details of which I'll leave to your imagination. I’m happy we got to experience Chicago before the corporate shops and franchised restaurants took over, there were still echoes of 1920’s/30’s-era Chicago around every corner. We still sometimes laugh until our sides almost split recalling some of the experiences we’ve had in the Windy City.
During those first few Chicago trips we were both so poor we each had to write down our daily expenditures to make sure we didn’t go over our daily budgets. We ate our weight in $4.99 Subway sandwiches during those early trips. Those first few years we stayed at the Cass Hotel, which was a dilapidated but very cheap independently owned hotel from the 1920s (not the renovated hotel that’s now owned by the Holiday Inn). Back then we didn’t mind, we were just happy to be able to have a place to rest our heads after our adventures and rest our feet after miles of walking.
Fast-forward to 2017, our first trip to Montreal. By this time we’d finally both established ourselves in our prospective careers (writing for me and art for Juan) and we could afford to splurge, treat ourselves. At last we didn't have to count every penny.
We practiced our French as we were out and about, explored the city on electric bikes, had great meals, zip-lined across the waterfront in Old Port, trudged up Mount Royale, mastered the subway system, treated ourselves to haircuts at Belgard. We put many more miles on our feet.
Between annual trips we arranged and maintained a weekly lunch to stay caught up on things, help motivate each other to the next plateau, and plan the next trip. We managed to keep this streak going until just a couple of years ago.
Sitting there at the restaurant table this past weekend on a warm day, serendipitously the last day of summer, the gravity of the moment began to settle in. Here we were twenty-six years later—greyer, wiser in some ways, battered a bit, with almost three decades of individual triumphs and tragedies under our belts—having one last lunch and not really knowing when the next one will be. It could be months, it could be years, there’s a chance it might be never.
Taken after Sunday's lunch.
These moments in life are surreal and grow increasingly common as we reach middle age. This is a phase of life with more endings and goodbyes and ever fewer beginnings and hellos. When we reach our fourth or fifth decade we begin to learn not only how to navigate these moments with a little more grace and mindfulness but also appreciate them and give them the importance they deserve.
Despite the best of intentions, I know far too well how difficult it is to predict what the future holds. Because, well, life happens and time, it has a way of marching on in ways that are often unpredictable. I’m just extremely grateful for and celebrate the friendship and the memories we’ve made. It would be easy enough to dwell on and wallow in the selfish grief of the possibility of losing touch with a good friend but I refuse to take that easy path. I choose to be happy and optimistic. I choose to make an effort to keep our friendship going and then leave the rest up to fate and the universe. Hopefully the many miles don’t put distance between us.
I don’t think enough importance or priority is given to friendships in our modern world, especially male friendships. We men can be stubborn and solitary creatures, after all. We quietly spend a majority of our best years striving towards our goals, planning for our futures, fighting to figure out our own shit, and deciding what our place in this crazy and chaotic world is.
We push our fears down and in the face of obstacles we put on the bravest face we can muster. Many times we pretend challenges are easy and we aren’t worried. We’re buffeted, pulled in this direction and that direction by life, sometimes taken for granted. We don’t always have all the answers. We are willing and capable of tremendous personal sacrifice for those we care about—sometimes to our own detriment. Despite appearances, there are times we are afraid. Despite shifting societal norms, often we’re still looked upon as the providers, the consolers, the steadies, problem solvers, during the best of our days we prevail. A lot of us still maintain that connection with our inner child who just wishes to be the hero.
Perhaps it’s a kind of miracle that, in spite of all this, friendships can take root for us but sometimes they do. I believe those who're lucky enough to experience these friendships have a great advantage. It helps to know we have someone in our lives who truly understands both the depths of our struggles and the importance of our wins. It makes us a little more brave to know there’s someone in the world who really has our back.
Such is life. What matters isn’t as much the peaks and valleys. What we will really remember as our days are winding down is all those memories we make in the spaces in between the crescendos and diminuendos. As I sit here in the ever-more-quiet and settling years of middle age I’m most grateful for what happened in all those spaces in between.
I wish you all the best, Buddy.
Remember, where there’s a will there’s a way. Know that, as long as I’m still here, there’s someone in this world who has your back. I see nothing but happiness and wins on the horizon for you and I can’t wait to hear all about them sometime soon.
If everything goes as planned I’ll see you in Chicago next September. It's a different city from what we remember but by then we’ll have a lot to catch up on. Most importantly, we’ll be making some brand new memories. Between now and then don’t be a stranger, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and for Godsakes watch out for those bran muffins.
All for now. Thanks for reading.
