Was it on our summer bike rides to Glen Oak Park? When we would ride down Prospect, past tennis courts, to swings where we would spend a morning or an afternoon laughing and singing. Friends play together.

Was it at the concerts – concerts for which she had slept outside to buy tickets – where she stayed with me at the port-a-potty while I got sick and, then, got better. Where she smiled and cheered and sang the songs along with me? Friends go to concerts together.

Was it on those days when I dreaded the lunch bell? The days when I would come with my chocolate shake and French fries and find her? Someone to eat with me when I didn’t have a friend? Good friends like you when no one else does.

Was it when she, back at home, sent packages and notes and emails and all her love during my first days away at college? Friends think about you when you’re not there.

Was it when she believed in me, in a dream? When she would watch me play my guitar, sing my words, and then applaud? Was it when, after one dream faded into another, she applauded still? Friends cheer you on, in all your dreaming and yielding and dreaming again.

Was it when I cried? Cried so many tears over when and how and if he would ever find me. When she prayed with me and cried, too; cried even when I didn’t know? Friends cry secret tears for you and hard tears with you.

Was it the day she sat in the front row and gave me away, witnessing the fulfillment of all the aching and waiting and praying? Friends set you free, love your new friends, and smile at you in your white dress.

Was it when she moved away? When phone calls and emails and trans-Atlantic packages became a lifeline? When so many things changed in so many ways? Friends grow together when miles divide, thriving in distance and new territory and grace.

Or was it when I began to understand more? More about life, about the world, about her? Friends try to understand each other and, when they can’t, (because some caverns of the soul will always be a mystery), they love anyway.

I don’t know. I can’t name the place or time when my mom became my friend. I only know she did, and she is; and I have an inkling that maybe she has always been. Friend. And Mom, too.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Happy birthday, dear friend.

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I have to leave. The man, with several large tumors protruding from his face has been wandering the bookstore, reading in the café, and, after several hours at a comfortable distance, has found the table next to mine.

I want to vomit as I look – the way you look at a wreck, not wanting to, but not able to evade instinct – but my stomach only lurches and brings on several under-the-breath burps.

It makes me sad. Sad for this otherwise “normal” man who has to endure this absolute grotesqueness. It makes me wonder: has he ever considered surgery, or do the doctors know there is no repair for these bizarre growths.

Mostly, it makes me question what I would do if someone I loved looked like that. What if my child was born with these bumps? Would I be able to look at her and not be sick? What if some equally gut-wrenching tumor took over my husband’s face? What if I had to look in the mirror every day at bulbous bulges speckling my own face? What if God is calling me to love by simply looking this man in the eyes and smiling?

I wish I could. I wish this man’s face didn’t make me nauseas. I wish these sorts of things didn’t exist. I wish I wasn’t scared. I wish I could stomach all the ugly things. But I have to leave. Before I throw up.

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“Got to stay sharp,” I overheard her tell someone who asked about the computer graphics book she was reading one afternoon.

The lady, old enough to be my grandma, maybe great-grandma, wears a loose bun in her colored brown hair, an orange blazer, and a tropical skirt that brushes her ankles today. She’s in here every Sunday. We get to the bookstore about the same time on these afternoons and I find her, hobbling, hunch-backed as she is, through the racks of books.

I passed her in the business section on this sweltering Tennessee day, picking out books on HTML code and marketing strategies. In the past, I’ve seen her scanning everything from books about alternatives to oil, to Bono’s biography, to the latest novels by famous authors.

Once she has as many books as she can carry in her weak arms, she finds a table in the café, orders something sweet (today, carrot cake) along with a cup of tea, and dives into the words and worlds stacked before her.

Though the room around her buzzes, decibels rising and falling with the coming and going patrons and their laughable ring tones, she focuses intently on the pages, never once looking up until she has finished what she set out to read. When she rises to leave, she moves slowly, says something kind to the café workers, and smiles at each person she passes.

I admire this woman so far down the road from me. You’d think at this point in her journey she’d say, “I know all I need to know. I can live without learning how to write code. I can survive without understanding the ins and outs of the electric car. I think I’ll make it if I don’t read Purple Cow” (which, by the way, is genius).

Many of the things she reads about will not even come to fruition in her lifetime. But she reads anyway; ravenously reads. She carries her stooped frame with dignity. And she isn’t afraid to explore the world from a strip mall in Nashville. She’s got to stay sharp, after all.

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