Today I want to share something with you that I should have shared a while ago, but since you got one story earlier, why not get another. This piece was written as a submission to a writing competition at the ICLC. I didn't win, but that's okay, it didn't perfectly fit the requirements, but I liked it anyway. Really, instead of being a travel writing piece it became a sort of love letter to my friendship with a one Miss Julia Gibas. So here it is...
A Kind of, Sort of Travel Fairy Tale
I would like to tell you a little fairy tale. And before you ask, yes, it has to do with travel, I’m not daft, in fact it has all sorts of travel (but most importantly the required type of travel for this piece). And sure… it’s not really a fairy tale… at all, cause you know, there’s no magic or fairies or princesses (well… okay no) or all the things you need for a fairy tale, but still, I’m going to tell you a fairy tale, so here we go.
Once upon a time, about 21 years ago, in a land relatively far away (that’s usually extremely cold but at the time of our story was actually kind of hot) there lived two pregnant ladies. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, these were not young ladies, but they were wonderful ladies, and they were friends and good friends at that. They didn’t stay knocked-up for too long though, about in August and October they popped out those babies, and of course they were each (baby in tow) at the other’s side. They had two beautiful, gorgeous, and just absolutely amazing baby girls that they named Julia Grace Gibas-Jones and Amelia Boadicea Lenor Fjerkenstad (yeah, try saying those ten times fast).
Twenty one years later, after countless sleepover, a ton of games, slightly less “adult beverages”, a handful of boys, and a sprinkling of death threats, theses two girls found them selves lying next to each other in a large bed in a rented apartment in Morocco. Their stomachs full of Moroccan Thanksgiving, and their brains fuzzy with a couple of shared cocktails, Julia turned to Amelia.
- Can you believe we’ve been doing this for 21 years? Having sleepovers.
And boy howdy if Julia wasn’t right. There hadn’t been a single year the girls (princesses perhaps, why not, it’s a fairy tale) hadn't a sleepover at least once. From sleeping in leaf piles at Quaker retreats, to lying sun-burnt next to each other in a tiny bed in El Salvador, to snuggling up inebriated in a damp cabin in Wisconsin, these girls had been together for a long time. That night in Morocco the princesses (yes, they’re princesses now, it’s a fairy tale, deal with it) talked until sleep forced them to stop.
That weekend, far from their Midwestern (but urban! Yes, the Midwest is hip, we made Prince for Christ sake) home, the princesses felt just as close as they’d been sleeping in that leaf pile years ago. I mean, sure, there were a few bumps in the weekend, like the fact that Amelia didn’t speak Arabic or remember a word from her four years of French and was abandoned by Julia for 5 hours and left to the mercy of a very aggressive and demanding 8 year old Moroccan girl (no, no one’s bitter about anything, I don’t know where on earth you got that idea). But then there were those magical moments when Julia worked her magic so wonderfully that she was able to drop the price of a necklace from 200durham to 30 (see, it defiantly is a fairy tale, there’s magic right there!). And the nights spent lying under Moroccan blankets, listening to Moroccan rain, and talking about love, the past and the future (then there were the mornings where the princesses were rudely awakened by the 8 year old screaming their names).
On their final day they stood in a hole in the wall of a shop in the Moroccan market streets, the walls covered with pictures of pop stars (sadly, neither of the princesses were included in that collage, and before you ask, you weren’t there either, self centered prick…) Amelia looked out to the crowded ally of a street and back at Julia dancing away to Shakira as a Moroccan man burned her a mix CD, both girls (princesses, ladies, women, chicas, whatever I give up) realized that while this was one of those defining, never to be forgotten sort of moments in their friendship, it was also sort of the start. Who knows where they would find themselves meeting next. Maybe in China, or Los Angeles, Paris or Vancouver. Maybe under a bridge or in a secret garden, maybe in Narnia or through the looking glass (it’s a fairy tale, anything is possible). Really though, all that mattered, all that they knew for sure, was that no matter where they ended up, no matter what they ended up doing, the next 21 years would hold at least as many sleepovers as the first (and hopefully a lot less death threats).
The End … ?
No comments:
Post a Comment