Young Bucks

To my dear friend,

What does it mean to be young to those of us with some lens of age, I find myself wondering. 

We are not old, by any stretch of the word. But, you and I always shared some innate, or tragic, sense of age that made us feel old. “Old souls”, the old-timers might declare from the back of a dimly lit miners bar decades before our time. Fittingly, our rights of passage passed in some Capitol Hill bar in a bygone logging town. The town of your birth. Though our drink choices probably did not merit the milestone that just passed, our freshly minted driver’s licenses did in some fitting sort of way. Cheers, I say. To be young in those times, I say. 

But still, this gnawing thought: what does it mean to be young?  

I took a drive the other day down our old dirt road. You know the one. The one that led us past the manicured lawns that are now some New Yorkers 3rd property. The road that led us from one world of spoiled mountain town kids to the land of the ranchers and working poor. The economy of a people who we only saw on the fringes. Or basketball games in Coalville or Heber. On that road, we grew up. Sneaking on to the private property for the chance at fish we probably had no idea how to catch. Camping near Mormon Flats on the occasion our parents would allow it. And later, as young adults, smoked out so high we couldn’t touch the ground. Ahh, I sit back and imagine a hit. To be young. Those damn snakes weren’t going to save themselves, ol’ Pony Boy! 

Those are probably better memories than Dear Valley and missing girls that our hearts were not meant to belong to. Jesus, we were young. I blush at the memories and energy we spent being sad about things young people were never meant to be sad about. Unsettled and restless, we were. But nostalgia is a heavy hand. Comes with a scent so memorable… memorable as those Christmas Eve cookies we delivered to friends. Hope those bastards appreciated the gesture all these years later! They probably don’t. 

But, I also remember the warming feeling of a two-egg omelet, Denver-style, precisely one biscuit (not more not less), a side (not a serving, we mustn’t be greedy, of course) of sausage gravy, crisped hashbrowns (not fucking “breakfast potatoes” like some God damn savage), OJ, coffee, and a drive down south. Warms the soul. I can still feel it. I still feel some of those meals on my aging ribs.

In many ways, there are too many memories of being young. Basketball games. Books. Hills and stickshifts. We thought we were male models. Ruber duck and all. Head-butts and a blown radiator. Remote Idaho. I’m still pretty sure, to this day, you tried to steal any girl I was interested in during our college days. Goldschläger in parking lots. Neglectful and wreckless nights in Jackson, Wyoming. Silver dorm walls and dark spaces. Bob Dylan and Dave Matthews played slowly in the background. The tapestry of a life-long friendship unfolding before our unknowing eyes. Too young to realize.

___

Something happens when responsibility sets in. When you are no longer “young” but the world around you feels younger and more plentiful than the best of nights of your youth. The world around you shows you an open oyster that could be plundered. But, we pause to consider the implication instead. We consider new things. Settling down. There is new life in the encounter of a new pursuit. Late-night calls to divulge your new-found love interest. Ohhh, the excitement that carried in your voice that evening. Lept. Bounded over the buildings that night in San Francisco so many years ago. A heart so large bursting with what if’s and what next’s. A night I will always fondly remember. A friend, now a grown man, falling in love. His burly presence rendered to gell. “Young love”, the ol’ timers might say. 

Let’s pour a glass to celebrate those times, eh, buddy? The time spent in a Calistoga pool prying for your intentions with your object of affection. I slept well that night with a belly full of good wine, good food, and the good fortune knowing my best friend would be a wed man. I slept well that night. On the hard floor of that hotel room. Dreaming of the day “Suburban 1” and “Suburban 2” would actualize. 

I was slightly less fortunate during those days with, well, let’s call them “affairs of the womanly sort”, but we never pissed away opportunities for revelry. Fine steaks. Walla Walla wines in the White House. Eating and drinking our way through the finest cities in the country. New York. Portland. Seattle. San Francisco. Miami. Nights I never wanted to end and mornings when I prayed they would. The pain always disarmed with a good laugh over morning coffee. There were days spent crabbing, Sierra Nevadas down the hatch, and methed-out, toothless groupies wanting to follow us to the nearest bar. She was lucky I never liked meth. And of course, there were those lonely Portland nights that I shudder to think how you spent them alone. A dastardly price to pay for setting a life-long plan in motion. For we were no longer that young. Prices, sometimes, need to be paid.

You were not wrong, of course. A trip down the coast. A proposal. A wedding and festivities that will live long, vibrant, and sometimes heavy, in our hearts. It can’t always be good times, as we have learned. Now that we are no longer young. But the bad helps us appreciate the good. There was my new wife, LA, our rendezvous as we built “homes” together, more cooking and more wine. The Father’s Office. Sailing. There was Alaska with its Utah jerky and uncanny Chinese food. It was nice to share a city again, eh, buddy? Boy, but it was not meant, as we both know now.  

As I sit here perched back in the city of our youth, and you headed to the city of our wife’s youth, I reflect back to my earlier question: what does it mean to be young?

___

There’s something to be said for having the privilege to look back at what’s been. Like being a plant watching itself sprout, grow, bloom, and then pause for reflection. Looking at the colors of your own glorious pedals. Friendships and relationships weaving their roots deep into the ground. Hoping that the seeds of life will mature. That the young will prosper. A gift our parents knew all too well back when we were young. An emotion that I am certain is beginning its infancy in your own heart with your own kin. We are no longer young, but our friendship is one of the proudest aspects of my life. I look back at it like that flower looking at its own beautiful pedal. And if I ever need a reminder, I will reflect back on the life we have had. The bearhug in Yosemite, the speeches at your wedding, the introduction to my wife. The holding of your children. 

Our young is no longer young. We are individually something entirely different, something more rooted. Grounded. Loved and loving. And sometimes in life, it’s nice to look back on everything that made that something what it is.   

Happy 40th to my best friend and big brother.

Love, B