Under Construction

Sirens, Sawdust, and the Unruly Architecture of Friendship

August 27, 2003

Tami started it. One look at the convertible, one impulsive spark, and suddenly the four of us were off on a madcap adventure.

In what anyone might have thought was an uncharacteristic gesture, my husband put the top down on his Mercedes and let three grown women ride like parade princesses on the back. I sat in the passenger seat, watching my dearest friends—Tami, Ande, and Sandra—howl down the summer streets, their hair whipping in the wind, their faces lit from secret places.

Their husbands were relegated to a sort of “pilot car,” chugging along behind us. Every time the girls turned around with perfect parade waves—elbow-wrist, elbow-wrist, big smile—the men answered with exaggerated grins.

What they saw on those women’s faces was the pure, breathless delight of a child on a roller coaster: absolutely consumed with the moment, the mischief, the fleeting freedom of being totally, wildly alive.

We were unruly, singing sirens who’d escaped from the sea.

Then something happened—something none of us saw coming: My friends took their tops off. As in, off off. Boobs to the wind. This was a first. The men in the pilot car howled with delight. Or horror. I’m not sure which.

Maybe it was the lark of it all. Maybe it was the booze.

From the bar we went to Our New House—the house that Mike and I were building from the ground up. This house was supposed to be the start of everything new and good and right for us.

But first, more supplies. God only knows we needed more wine, plus beer, flashlights, and a small stash of marijuana my husband had confiscated from his teenage son’s dresser four years earlier.

That nobody fell and broke a neck before the night was over, was astonishing.

A house under construction is a skeleton. Walls you can walk through, nails scattered like metal confetti, cords lying in wait, a sheer 20-foot drop from the second-floor French doors to the hard earth below. Pipes, tape, splintered boards. A place held together by progress, sawdust, and dreams stacked haphazardly like lumber.

It’s a shell—until it’s christened with the good love of friends.

Our christening began with peeing. We all had to go, which meant going outside, which meant stumbling down a rickety “ramp” of two narrow 1×6 planks that someone had optimistically slapped in placed between the deck and the dirt.

But there we went, hand-in-hand, and there–beyond tipsy, in what would become the front yard–we took turns peeing.

A proper christening also requires singing. And the telling of stories. This, too, we learned. We realized it in the dark hours of the night, long past the time we should have been in bed. Longer still past the time we should have stopped drinking, we realized that the place we would call home was inside that circle of friends.

It always would be—regardless of the address or the color of paint on the walls.

We will plant a tree in the front yard one day. We’ll call it The Pee Tree. We’ll nurture it and fuss over it when the frost comes early. We’ll dance in our hearts around the first leaves of spring. We’ll watch it grow and measure it against the deepening love of our friends.

We didn’t know then that our marriage would remain unfinished. That ten years later we’d short-sell the place that was supposed to be our home – where we were supposed to raise children, where we were supposed to be happy – and we would go our separate ways.

But The Pee Tree endured; its roots grew where they belonged.

Our night of revelry waning, we drove home—now all four of us women riding like queens on the back of the convertible, our heroes and our champions carrying us home in a breezy chariot. I can see us still in the happiest corners of my mind: This Tami, this Ande, this Sandra, and me. We sang, we hollered, we threw up our hands to the Gods that love us, and we pretended we were flying.

Then, as always, we held onto each other for dear life.

We were sirens in the night, calling to task all things ordinary and sober. We shouted people from their rest, tempting them to end the sleep that comforted them; to join the song of the sirens and be remade.

This was our gift to the night and to each other: to be redeemed by the splendor of friendship. To race together into the night—unruly and unburdened—under a host of applauding stars.

###

P.S. Me in Mike’s convertible … a long time ago.