It's All Good

I guess because I am in a new state and working towards making new friends, I am thinking a lot about the first friend I made the last time I moved to a new state.  I was much younger then and working my first full-time job at a Harvey Hotel in Dallas.  I am not sure if I had a title other than Office Helper and I gathered faxes, filed, made copies, sent things UPS for guests and answered phones.  I do know that I did not have a desk and spent most of my day standing in the small copy room in my JCPenney dress and hose and heels.  Most people who came in would give me a smile and make their copies and go but one person from Accounting always talked to me.  I remember Mark wearing a brown suit and peach shirt and tie a lot and I remember him always commenting that maybe one day I could also have a desk.  It was never mean-spirited, just a pleasant way to remind me that I didn’t have a desk and it soon moved us onto other things to talk about.  Three months later, I was promoted to Accounting (despite claiming in the interview that I was not good at math) and sat next to Mark for the next eighteen months and that was it; first new friend made.

We were young and dumb and poor and working hard to prove we were real adults.  We talked about everything and nothing and I proved I was indeed bad at math as Mark proved he was really good and started to climb the management ladder.  We soon grew from work friends to meeting out.  We drank and danced and Blue Oyster Cult raged in the background.  The thing I quickly realized with Mark is that if you were his friend, his circle of friends became yours as well.  He would talk to me about his other friends like I knew them and by the time I met them, it was like I had always known them.  He was welcoming, caring, and constantly upbeat.  He created this world of interesting, funny, caring people and if he knew you, you got added to this world.

Mark is a giver.  Like the most generous person I know.  I really know this because at loose ends, he let me live with him in a one-bedroom apartment for eight months.  We had both moved onto different jobs and he traveled all week and home on the weekends.  I slept on the couch when he was home and when I did finally get my own apartment, I declared I would never sleep on a couch again.  Mark taught me not to be sad on a Friday night with nothing to do.  It was a night for a party of one.  We would go to Eatzi’s and buy a healthy dinner, a bottle of wine, and either ice cream or cookie dough and eat/drink it all while watching a movie and talking through most of it.  (The party of one came in when I realized I could do this on my own as well).  We lived together and still went out together and the only time I remember Mark being mad at me was when I couldn’t lift an entertainment center up three flights of stairs with him and we had to flip it end over end to get it up there.  

Mark is gracious.  He has sat in lawn chairs at a table to eat lasagna I made and didn’t tease me about it until years later. He brought me to Easter at his Nonna’s house with his entire family, who, like Mark, took me right in.  Except for Nonna.  She did not like the look of me and any time I asked anything, she would reply that “there was more sweet tea” in the kitchen.  I drank a lot of sweet tea that day.  Mark went trick-or-treating with me and my kids when Will was very tiny and cried the entire time we were out and it was not much fun at all.  He went and stayed and said it was “all good.”  Because he loved me, he loved my kids and they loved him and Uncle Mark has been their friend too.

Mark is funny.  We did couple-dinners once a month for years with other friends and our table would drink a lot of wine and laugh and laugh.  Laughter until you can’t breathe.  Laughter where tears pour out of your eyes and you look around with blurry vision and think ‘this is life.” Laughter where other tables close by either hate you tremendously or wish that they knew you and were laughing too.  Mark’s humor is a lot of self-deprecation, saying things you wouldn't think would come out of his mouth, making the best out of the worst, and just his delivery.  There is only one time I think his humor failed and maybe the only time I remember being mad at him.  We ate a lot of free cake at the hotel we worked at and after a year of it, I looked like I ate a lot of free cake.  I was describing the bathing suit I had just bought and said it showed my stomach.  Mark, a forkful of cake an inch from his mouth, wrinkled his nose, sneered, and said “Girl, I have seen your stomach.”  As I write that, I realize I might still be mad at him for that.

Feeling cute, might drink some beer, high-kick a bee....

For thirty years, Mark Miller has been my first friend and my always-friend in Texas.  He has been there in all of my good, bad, dramatic and I know he always will be.  He will call me and talk about this or that or anything and I will laugh and do the same.  Recently, he texted to ask if I had a few minutes to talk. I was instantly nervous.  I thought it must have something to do with his parents.  (Side note: no matter how many times I move, his mom sends me a Christmas card and handmade peanut butter eggs at Easter and I love that woman).  I guess I forget how old we are and that bad news can be about us now too.  I called and listened to Mark tell me he had cancer.  Probably renal cancer with a tumor and nodes and other gross cancer words.  And I froze thinking about how this wonderful, beautiful person could be filled with this.  Alternating between tears and laughing, he explained what had happened, what would happen, and when.  He is, of course, upbeat.  He will have his kidney removed on Monday and more treatments after that.  “It is what it is,” he says.  I want to instantly fix it for him.  I tell him maybe being down a kidney will equate to a good 5 pound weight loss.  I ask if he needs me to come down to Texas and he tells me he has all the good-intentioned, overbearing women he needs right now.  

So all I have is my words to tell Mark, and everyone, what a joy he is in my life.  What a difference his friendship made to an out-spoken, brash young girl from Buffalo.  I hope that everyone has a Mark in their life and if you don’t, I will share mine, because if anything, Mark has shown me there is always room for one more friend.  And if you do have a friend like Mark, you remember how special that is and how good this world has been to you.  I told Mark I would call him every few days and tell him weird things that happen teaching middle school during his recovery.  This week alone, a student told me he was allergic to my talking and I tucked my dress into my underwear and didn’t notice until I was out in the hallway.  I really hope that when I do tell him that story that he sneers and says “Girl, I have seen your legs.”  I won’t be mad this time; I will laugh and be thankful that he is there to listen and keep me humble.