TO JEN AND JENNIFER ON HER 40TH BIRTHDAY

(But sometimes titled)

For My Friend of Whom I Have No Pictures

(Occasionally titled)

Elm Street or Route 9, Which Runs Out From 

Downtown Northampton toward Florence

(Rarely titled)

The Problems with  Font Choices and Intestinal Woe

(Never titled)

Chlamydia

(Toyed with being titled)

Litoris-Cay  (encrypted)

(Probably should not be titled) 

English Accents and Intestinal Woe

(could have been titled)

It’s Just a Two-Hour Ride or the Other End of the Phone

I have no tangible pictures of you, my dear friend Jen (or my dear friend Jennifer, if I am speaking to you on your cell phone). But I do have countless images of you.  I picture you lying on your bed in your Cambridge house, your lovely linens immaculate.  You’re on your back (fully clothed in something chic and athletic), phone is in hand, and you’re chatting about your kids-- how wonderful they are; how tired you are. You’re strolling to your favorite ice cream place in Cambridge, after playing in your favorite playground; you’ve just returned from the library next door, talking with your beloved librarians; you’re in your kitchen in Northampton, making granola or hot pretzels or tea; you’re pushing a stroller up Elm Street, also known as route 9; you’re driving to Trader Joe’s; you’re rushing out to the gym; you’re waiting for Seth to come home from the “office”. All the time, phone is in hand, chatting and chatting, and just as often, listening and listening. 

I have vague images of you (the vagueness, a reflection on my memory, not on your significance):  Journalism 11, Feature Writing, Pro-Sem; Playwriting, acting, bantering with you outside the U.C.—the side parking lot between it and that little building behind Linderman. And then, I have vivid yet wholly specious images:  You at my wedding; I at yours. You jogging through Georgetown; you and I hanging out in my childhood home—our early-adolescent selves prattling on and on and on while sitting on my bedroom’s pink shag, eating popcorn.  Here, the list goes on. 

Yours, Jen or Jennifer, is a friendship that has not only created pictures far more tangible than the ones taken by a camera, but has transcended reality: Like my Andrew, you’ve been superimposed on memories that you were not a part of; like the dear friend you are, you are painted in my mind doing things I’ve only heard about, not actually seen.   I wish I could be parading with you up Elm or teaing with you in your screened-in porch; gyming with you or playgrounding with you.  But, the only-two-hour-trip is also a two-hour trip, and forces me to rely on those lovely mental images, ones that, in my book  (and now in yours!), are less tangible but in many ways more tangible, more poignant and more lasting. I am so fortunate to have you cluttering up my mind, and I am so grateful to be the one the other end of that ubiquitous phone-in-hand.

So, here’s to you my dear friend Jen and Jennifer (of Whom I Have Countless Pictures) on her 40th Birthday.  Enjoy, Enjoy, Enjoy. And let’s look forward to looking back in ten years’ time and saying, “Wow, 40 feels sooooooo long ago.”

All my love,

Wendy Fried

(Sam and Emma’s mom….  

From Lehigh…. 

we were in J-11 together…)

(In the space below, draw a picture of yourself doing one of the activities mentioned in this letter)