My dinner with Daphne
Who am I to argue with a cement mixer of randomness?
Dear Writer,
I tend to waffle between a world view that understands that the universe is just a wild county fair ride tossing us around in a cosmic cement mixer of randomness, and a belief powered by my own experience that the universe has some things in mind, and will wait patiently until I finally take the hint.
I met Daphne after moving to a small town in upstate New York at the age of 13. My father had just died, I had left all of my friends, and I was alone with my mother and brother, neither of whom were particularly kind to me. I walked into the middle school building, desperate and alone, and hungry for any possibility of friendship.
Immediately, there was Daphne, this tall, lanky, red-headed girl with a crackling voice, an infectious laugh, and a wild sense of mischief. You know that feeling you get, when you meet one of your people, and you feel the frequencies of your souls just harmonize, and your can hear the universe say, Here you go, kid?
Daphne was the first time I ever experienced that.
As thirteen-year-old girls are wont to do, Daphne and I developed celebrity crushes. The Outsiders was big about that time, and we went to her house every day after school and watched the movie while eating Lender’s onion bagels and cream cheese. I fell in love with C. Thomas Howell, the lead who played Ponyboy, and Daphne chose Ralph Macchio, the actor playing Johnny. We had a notebook we would pass back and forth between classes, writing notes to each other and co-writing a very dramatic soap opera called “Love Story,” which had elaborate fantasies about our relationships with Ralph and Tommy, how much they loved us, and how tragedy and drama followed us wherever we went.
It also appeared that we wanted, at one point, to be actors.
What’s funny is that we would both grow up not to be actors, but authors.
Mr. Hamm was… to be kind… a garbage human. I have quite a few stories to tell about Mr. Hamm through the years as he was the art teacher for both the middle and high school, but this was the first clash I had with him, and it was over an art assignment.
He assigned us all to go outside, pick up a bug, stick it alive and wriggling on a pin, and draw it.
Daphne, of course, was the first to raise her hand. “I can’t do that.”
Mr. Hamm glared at her over his glasses. “You can. And you will.”
“No, I can’t,” Daphne said. “I’m a Quaker. We don’t harm living things. So is Lani.”
Daphne and I were the only Quakers in the school; it was one of the first things we’d bonded over.
“Is that right?” Mr. Hamm said to me.
I looked at Daphne, her back straight and tall with the perfect posture of the righteous.
Then I looked at Mr. Hamm, the weaselly art teacher who had just ordered a class full of kids to torture a living thing.
“Yeah,” I said. “We can’t do this assignment.”
Mr. Hamm told us that we needed letters documenting that this was a religious objection, signed by our parents. Honestly, I probably would have given in right there, but Daphne was absolutely not going to be cowed by this weasel of a human.
“No,” she said, “We’re gonna fight this thing.”
Fight this thing wasn’t a concept I was familiar with. Shut up, do what you’re told, and try not to get anyone’s attention was more my speed. But as we went home to Daphne’s house and her mom, who was a professor at the local liberal arts college, gave us both her full-throated support, I felt suddenly like something I cared about mattered. We crafted the letters, got our parents to sign, and brought them in.
Mr. Hamm was forced to give in… a little. His response was to go out and find a bug, kill it in front of us, put it on a pin, and make us draw that. But it was still a victory, and for a short while that year, the entire school was talking about us and our moral crusade against Mr. Hamm.
It was the first time I’d ever been notable in my young life, and I have to admit… I kind of liked it.
The notebook we wrote together in junior high is currently under my care. It is filled with not just our highly dramatic flights of fancy, but our daily junior high worries and concerns. Daphne was in a fight with our friend Kevin over… something. I had a fight with our friend Laura—although, honestly, I can’t tell if it was Laura C. or Laura S. Probably Laura C. She was moving to Florida about that time, and nothing creates internal angst among young girls more than separation anxiety. But the big worry was that this was Daphne’s last year in our school; she would soon be leaving to attend 8th grade in private school.
“Daph, we’ll always be close friends, you’ll see,” I wrote. “You’re not long distance, so we can call just as often as always. And we can visit, too.”
We didn’t. I went to visit her once in her private school, but by the end of 8th grade, we had fallen out of touch.
Life went on, but I never forgot about Daphne. Then, about 25 years later, I walked into my local library and saw this promoted on the corkboard.
It can’t be, I remember thinking. What are the chances that Daphne and I both grew up to write books?
In a wild and random cement mixer universe, probably not great. But in a universe where occasionally things are meant to be… there was probably no way we were ever not going to find each other again.
I reached out. We had a phone call, emailed a bit. Friended on Facebook. She sent me the old junior high notebook she’d been keeping all these years; it was my turn to hold onto it. And for another ten years, I did. It moved with me in a box containing a scarce few precious momentos; I tend to travel light through life. But when we reconnected back then, I was about to go through the most harrowing ten years of my life, and I lost touch with a lot of people during that time.
Daphne included
It was different in the 80s. Some teachers were not in the school to teach; they were there to get access to and power over young girls. Our shop teacher was one of those men. There had been rumors about him, but in junior high, you never knew what was actually true and what was just chatter.
Until the day Daphne and I watched him force our friend Kristen to sit on his lap. We watched Kristen—who was thirteen years old—struggle to get away from him. Later, she told us she could feel his erection against her leg.
Daphne and I were just kids. By the age of thirteen, I had already been sexually assaulted twice, although I wouldn’t classify what had happened to me as assault until much later, because everyone acted like it wasn’t that big a deal. So when this happened to Kristen, I was like, “Gross, but… okay, I guess?”
Daphne, however, was not having it. We staged another protest, this one involving throwing sawdust at Mr. B in class, who immediately sent us to the principal. I was terrified. I never got in trouble. I never got sent to the principal’s office. I was freaked out about what my mother would say; my entire life was centered around being the good kid who didn’t cause trouble. But Daphne’s certainty that we were right was as infectious as her laugh, and when we got to the principal’s office, we told him what had happened with Kristen.
And he let us go.
I had no idea at the time that this was not the first time that teacher had touched a child. I had no idea that it was not the first time the principal had heard about it and covered it up. I had no idea that it was possible that we were right, that I was right. When we were sent away without so much as detention, I couldn’t believe it.
Two years later, Daphne would be away in private school, I would be in the high school down the road, and Mr. B would be fired and in court to answer to criminal charges of sexual misconduct with a minor.
We were right.
And if it hadn’t been for Daphne, I never would have said a word about what happened to Kristen to anyone.
I don’t go on Facebook much anymore. Social media is generally a quagmire, but Facebook is probably the space I enjoy the least. But one day a few months ago, I happened to click on the site and the first thing in my feed was Daphne’s announcement that after almost 25 years in Manhattan, she was moving.
To Boulder.
I couldn’t believe it. I reached out, we started texting again, and last week, we had dinner. After almost forty years, we were finally in the same place, at the same time. We talked for three hours. It was like we’d never been apart.
During dinner, we caught up on everything, and she told me that at one of her book events—she writes middle grade and young adult books—one of the kids asked her what the first thing she ever wrote was.
“It was our notebook,” she said.
“Oh my god,” I said. “Me, too!”
We walked to our cars and promised to see each other again soon, and I think we will. I think we will always see each other again, whether we plan it or not.
People come into, and fade out of, your life for a myriad of reasons, not all of them bad. What I have learned through the years is that forever is not a meaningful measure of the value of a relationship. Maybe Daphne and I are meant to be passing ships, just here to remind each other on occasion that someone else is with you even when they’re not with you.
Daphne was the first person to know who I was; she knew me well before I ever did. She was the first person to acknowledge my value as though it was an unquestionable thing. She was the first person I ever wrote with. She is the lighthouse that I return to, feeling scarred and unrecognizable from my time on the rough waters, but every time I approach her shores, she smiles and says, “Hey, I know you. Welcome back.”
I am grateful that this random cement mixer of a universe has not forgotten what she means, and will not allow me to forget, either.
Everything,
L
Oh, this post makes my heart full and brings back two extremely vivid and precious memories. First is that day you came into Home Ec as a new student- as soon as you smiled that sweet, beautiful smile I knew you were there for me. I flagged you right down so you'd know I was there, waiting for you. Second was that day we threw sawdust on Mr. B. I don't remember actually throwing my handful on him, just the moment after where I suddenly worried I'd gone too far and that you would realize it was a terrible idea and sit down back down. But I turned and there you were, charging towards him, flinging the sawdust in his face and running right over to where I stood. You had Kristen's back and you had mine too. You always have and I am confident you always will. And buckle up because you are stuck with me in your life from here on out!
What a beautiful post. I loved every word.
And so impressed that you still have that notebook! I thoroughly (glued the pages together, taped the book closed, buried it deep in the *outside* bin) disposed of all my teen writing (which was often about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley fighting over me).