A Walk in the Park

Lisa, my college roommate, had a childlike affection for Halloween. She always wore a costume and insisted on carving a pumpkin, which left the pungent smell of rotting squash seeping into the walls of our dorm room for days on end.

By Junior year we had finally graduated to a one-bedroom apartment on Folsom, right across the street from the football stadium. One crisp fall day I slouched home from class and entered our apartment to find fake spider webs stretched across the kitchen cabinets and a jack-o-lantern flickering on the dining room table. Fish sticks were sizzling in the oven and Wheel of Fortune was on TV, but Lisa was no where to be found.

I figured she probably went to the neighbors’ to borrow some ketchup, so I dumped my coat and books on my desk and flopped on the couch. About 20 minutes later I heard a peculiar knock coming from inside the coat closet. “Oh my goodness,” I said (trying to sound frightened). “I hope that’s not a psychotic killer waiting for me to put my coat away so that he or she can slit my throat. I had better go check it out.”

I opened the closet to find Lisa shining a flashlight on her face. She was dressed completely in black and her hair was sticking up all over her head. A stream of fake blood started at the base of her plastic vampire teeth and trailed down the left side of her chin.
“Rarrrr,” she growled.
“Eeek,” I said plainly.
“Aw, screw you. You never hang up your coat.” She flicked off the flashlight and stepped out into the kitchen to finish cooking dinner.

Lisa was clearly disappointed because she had been attempting to exact her revenge ever since the previous Halloween, when I stayed awake until 3:00 A.M. so that I could rig up a rubber chicken in her dorm closet. The next morning she went to retrieve her bath robe and the chicken came swinging down from the ceiling with glorious alarm. She practically soiled herself.

But apart from Halloween Lisa and I were rarely malicious. We were a team, and we were always searching for new (totally risk-free) ways to entertain ourselves. In the dorm days we pulled chairs up to our window in Baker Hall and watched the marching band practice on the quad. Lisa even fashioned little paper trumpets for us (using push pins for valves) so that we could play along.

I adored Lisa. She was a gifted storyteller and would often have me rolling on the carpet, gripping my sides with laughter. Also, when I stupidly took Biopsychology and Russian History in the same semester, I made up little songs to help myself memorize insignificant facts like, “the Lithuanians were a Balkan people” and “chronic insanity is caused by a neurotoxin.” Lisa sang along repeatedly without protest.

We were never invited to Frat parties, nor did we frequent the many bars on Pearl Street. Instead we made midnight malts and paper snowflakes and generally had a great deal of innocent fun with our close-knit group of friends. No one would have guessed that we were attending C.U. Boulder, then known as the “greatest party school in the nation.” (A few years after we graduated, Lisa told me that some of the younger nurses at her work were pressuring her to go bar hopping. She politely refused, telling them she had already gone to college and had “already done the party thing.” I had to laugh. “When you said ‘party thing,’ were you referring to the night we made newspaper hats in our dorm room?” I asked.)

After we got the apartment, we went grocery shopping in Lisa’s gigantic, gold Oldsmobile. The car was as old as we were and it had a broken fan that screamed loudly and at random – usually whenever we were stopped at a curb scattered with hot guys. Once we got the groceries home, Lisa and I took turns cooking dinner. One evening I decided to challenge myself by making rice pudding for dessert. Some of the milk singed to the bottom of the pot, and when I stirred it a piece of brown, scaly skin bubbled to the surface, which totally startled me. “Lisa!” I screamed, “A snake!” I quickly dropped the spoon and ran to her for protection. “What are you talking about?” she asked. I soon came to my senses and realized that it was just burnt pudding, so I let go of her arm and explained myself. Lisa simply shrugged and went back to her homework.

And that was the beautiful thing about Lisa: Instead of belittling me for thinking that a snake had somehow gotten past the security door, up two flights of stairs, through our apartment door, up the side of the stove, and into my pot of rice pudding, she simply accepted my neurosis without judgment.

Shortly after the rice pudding incident, my parents called one evening and told me that my Grandmom Giovannitti had died unexpectedly. After they hung up I sat at the dining room table staring at the wall. I was clutching the phone, trying to fight off the tears in a Spartan manner (much like Grandmom would have done).
“Do you want a hug?” Lisa asked.
“No. Not right now,” I told her.
I stepped quickly into the bedroom and sobbed into my pillow for half an hour. Then I blew my nose, splashed some water on my face, and came out into the living room. “I’m ready for my hug now,” I said. I sat on the couch next to Lisa and she put her arm around me. We stared out the window at the gray sky and it started to snow. That was the really beautiful thing about Lisa. She had the perfect balance of compassion and strength.

During our last two weeks of college I was so preoccupied with finding a car, a job, and an apartment in Denver that I hardly noticed Lisa and I were separating. All the things I was haphazardly throwing into boxes were part of the wonderful times we had spent together, and everything from that point forward was going to be different.

Over the next eight years we saw each other less and less – sporadically meeting for lunch on our birthdays or when old friends were home for the holidays. Lisa graduated nursing school and worked her way up to the head of her division. I got my master’s degree and started teaching. Last summer I found myself standing next to her at her wedding, so honored to be included but at the same time feeling awkward because I barely knew the bride.

Sometimes I get in a gloomy, pensive state when old friends come to mind and I realize that I hardly know them anymore, or I simply don’t know them at all. But it’s pointless to nostalgically paint our memories with sighs or waste our time counting the friends who have come and gone. As the greatest philosopher of our time, Kermit the Frog, once said, “life is full of meetings and partings.”

But sometimes, if we’re very lucky, we get a re-meeting. Such was the case last week when, instead of entering into my gloomy state, I decided to call Lisa. We met for dinner and a walk around Washington Park. While I barely recognized the woman who hid in the closet to scare me all those years ago, I truly enjoyed this new Lisa. She was like someone I just met in a coffee shop or at a cocktail party, and I was completely fascinated by everything she had to say about married life and train travel and what she had heard on the Today Show.

Before long it was dark outside. A work night. Time to go home. I reluctantly said good-bye and when I got into my car a cold, lonely chill ran up my forearms. Yet, as I drove home, I was comforted by our walk around the park. In my mind’s eye I saw the way our feet padded along the trail in unison, and I realized that whenever we talked about the past a remnant of the old Lisa rose to the surface like the dust against our shoes. And I knew that – should I ever be stricken with an impulse to make newspaper hats – I could call up this new Lisa, invite her over, and she would totally be game.