Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes! (5 page)

N
oelle drove about a mile with the playful expression still clinging to her lips. Suddenly she blurted out, “I almost forgot! I have another surprise for you.”

I rolled my eyes in an exaggerated attempt to look put out. “And exactly how long are you going to make me wait for this surprise?”

“You don’t have to wait. I’m going to give it to you now.” She reached forward and pressed a button. “Ready?”

“My surprise is that your car has air conditioning?”

“No, wait for it. You certainly are impatient in person, you
oenie!
”

“‘Oenie’? What is that?” It sounded as if Noelle was saying “moonie” without the
m
. Before Noelle could answer, I caught myself and said, “No, don’t answer that. You’re tricking me. I’m a Dutch language school dropout, remember?”

“I’m going to answer you anyway. An oenie is my own softened version of an oen.”

Before I could offer a playful rebuttal, a song came on. Noelle turned up the volume. I burst out laughing, and so did she. The song included her longstanding nickname for me since junior high: Summer Breeze.

“Makes me feel fine!” Noelle’s voice was off pitch and higher than the song on the CD.

I laughed and called her my longstanding nickname from our high school years of letter writing. “Nicely done, Noelle-o Mell-o.”

“Wait!” She pushed another button. “Wait for it.”

The tune that had inspired her nickname came on in all its “quite right” funk, and both of us broke into a fit of giggles.

“I burned this CD for us. Do you like it?”

“Love it! Can you make a copy for me?”

“Sure. At least I think I can. This was my first attempt. My daughters do this sort of thing all the time. I’m just figuring out the technology. Wait. You have to hear the next song.”

Noelle pushed a button and nothing came on. We kept driving and listening, but no happy sounds came from the CD player. Noelle pressed another button and turned up the volume until right in the middle of the song, John Denver’s voice filled the car with a Rocky Mountain high that nearly blew out our eardrums.

We laughed, and Noelle quickly tried to adjust the sound. She pushed the Start button again, and a Rocky-Mountain-high note that seemed capable of rattling the windows blasted us. The volume seemed ineffective with John Denver’s vocals, so Noelle turned off the CD, mumbling, “Okay, so my technology skills are a little questionable.”

“However, your choices for travel music were superb, Noelle-o Mell-o.”

“Thanks for trying to put a nice coat of varnish on my mess.” Noelle pulled back into the flow of traffic and didn’t try the CD again. She said it was too dangerous when we were on the road.

While we were still rosy from the afterglow of the gigglefest, Noelle said, “Not only are you the sole woman in the world who can get away with calling me an oen in front of my neighbor, but you are also the lone woman in the world who has ever called me Noelle-o Mell-o!”

“Really? Noelle-o Mell-o is such a great nickname.”

“That may be true for you and me, but believe me, you are the only one who can call me that. And until this moment, that nickname had only appeared in writing in your letters. I still have the letter where you drew the picture of what was supposed to be me with a very mellow expression.”

“You do? I remember drawing that picture. I was in my room listening to my brand-new transistor radio. Remember those? I was stretched out on my bed writing the letter to you, and that song came on. I drew the little sketch and wrote ‘Noelle-o Mell-o.’”

“Quite right,” Noelle echoed in a low voice.

I chuckled. “Crazy, isn’t it, the random moments in life you can remember decades later?”

“I’m simply glad your inspiration was that particular song. I shudder to think what my nickname might have been if you heard something else on the radio at that moment. Something like… ‘Rocky Raccoon or ‘Yellow Submarine’ or…”

“‘La Bamba,’” I offered.

We laughed again, both smiling and settling into the comfort of being together.

“You can call me Noelle-o Mell-o all you want. I don’t think anyone else in my life would ever call me that because I’m not known for my mellowness.”

“I’m surprised by that. I did picture you as more…”

“Quiet?”

“
Subdued
might be a better word.”

“Try
repressed
? Noelle shook her head slightly. “At least that’s the word I would use to describe myself while I was under my parents’ roof.”

“Was your childhood pretty awful?” I kept finding myself caught off guard whenever Noelle mentioned her parents or childhood with a bitter edge.

Noelle shifted in her seat and made a right turn before answering. “I’m sure my childhood was much better than most people’s.”

“Your letters never hinted at a lot of angst.” I was still fishing for details. But I didn’t know if I had the right bait on my line of thought or if I would be able to haul in the truth if she did bite.

After a thoughtful moment Noelle said, “I think whenever I wrote to you over the years it was always a downshifting time for me. I would stop all the running around, breathe deeply, and take inventory. I’m sure a lot of my letters were like American Christmas letters. We still get a few of those every year. They are always a tidy, upbeat summary of the highlights for that family, along with a photo of everyone smiling. I think for a while most of my letters to you were like that.”

“Not all of them. You and I both have opened up a lot to each other over the years. I know I’ve written things to you that I wasn’t ready to talk about with anyone else.”

“It’s been the same for me. Especially in my early married years. I think I’ve always wanted to give you a good impression of me, but at the same time I needed to open up my heart to another woman who understood what I was feeling. Especially an American woman. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it makes a lot of sense. I felt that sisterly sort of sharing in our letters. I always have. Our correspondence over the years has probably been better for us than we realized.”

“You mean as an outlet?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of therapy.”

Noelle chuckled. We were heading down a long stretch of flat road with rows of houses on either side.

“You wrote such fun letters, Summer. I saved almost all of them in a big cookie tin. Someone gave my mom a big tin of shortbread cookies for Christmas one year, and I loved the red plaid on the side of the tin. When I went back to Wyoming for my mom’s funeral, I found the cookie tin in the attic, and I brought it back with me.”

“I remember your writing an e-mail and telling me that.”

“I did tell you, didn’t I? You know, sometimes, especially since everything is done so quickly now with e-mail, I forget what I write. I compose e-mails in my head, and then I’m never sure if I sent them. Do you do that?”

“All the time. I don’t think I forgot that often with letters. Maybe it has something to do with the tactile act of touching the
paper and holding a pen. I don’t know, but I agree with you. I’m forever telling my kids that they never answered my e-mails, and they say, ‘What e-mail?’”

“I don’t know how you keep it all straight with six kids. I don’t know how you did it when they were all at home and in school. I have great admiration for you, Summer. Here I was, giving a round of applause to Wayne; you deserve the praise as well.”

“I feel as if all you’ve done since I arrived is affirm me. Thanks, Noelle.”

“It could be I’m trying to make up for a few times when I slipped up in being supportive in our friendship over the years.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never told you this, but I felt guilty when I wrote to tell you I was expecting Tara. You had been trying so hard to have children and had gone through those terrible miscarriages, and here we weren’t even trying, and we were pregnant. I think I was five months along before I finally wrote you.”

“I was happy for you. I really was.”

“I know you were. You were so sweet about sending gifts for both the girls. I did a horrible job of remembering your children’s birthdays and—”

“Hey, don’t do that. Don’t compare. I never felt slighted by you. You expressed genuine interest and love for all our children every time you asked about them. That meant just as much to me as if you had sent cards to them on their birthdays. We show our love in different ways. That’s okay.”

Noelle glanced at me. “You’re right. It is okay, isn’t it?”

I smiled back. “Yes, it is.”

The ease of our give-and-take conversation felt as natural as if we had spent many hours together like this, side by side, over the years. Even though I had fluffed up the notion early that morning that I could have gone home before breakfast and felt satisfied with the visit, I was glad I was still here.

I knew in my heart that if I opened up to Noelle about the biopsy and my encroaching fears, she would lovingly process all my thoughts with me. But I didn’t want to process them. I wanted to push them back into the basement of my emotions and simply live. I wanted to celebrate and enjoy life the way we had last night at dinner. I was determined to gather as many rich and meaningful experiences as I could this week. I planned to save them in the scrapbook of my memory so I could return to view them fondly in the days ahead. I would look at this time with Noelle and say to myself,
Well, at least once in my life I did something I wanted to do
.

Noelle turned the car into the large parking area at the tulip gardens. The lot was filled with cars as well as tour buses. We weren’t the only ones who had decided to visit the tulips that morning, and I soon saw why.

The attention to detail in the opening to the park was breathtaking, with a path leading us into a garden area with blossom-filled trees. Carefully laid-out groupings of brilliant yellow daffodils were circled by stalwart grape hyacinth. Bunches of red tulips stood together like a squirming elementary school choir ready to break into song as soon as the first note of spring was
struck. A sea of thick green grass surrounded all the flowers and trees.

I stopped and pulled out my camera.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking pictures.”

“Already? This is only the entrance,” Noelle said, “not the flower fields.”

“But it’s so beautiful.”

She looked around at what I was admiring. Behind her flowed a steady stream of visitors moving on toward whatever it was that lay past the end of this carefully designed path.

“You’re right. It is beautiful. Do you want me to take a picture of you with the tulips in the background?”

“No, I just want the tulips.” I snapped shots and was grateful we had entered the digital age. I would have gone broke on all the rolls of film I would have needed to snap pictures to my heart’s content.

“Here, stand right where you are. Look this way.” She had pulled out her camera and was taking a picture of me anyway. With her face still behind the camera, she said, “This is so I will keep my promise.”

“What promise?”

“I promised that one day, when you came to the Netherlands, I would take your picture so your smile could end up on someone’s refrigerator. Do you remember?”

I smiled broadly. Yes, I remembered. And so did she. That was what made our friendship golden.

“Come.” Noelle motioned for me to join her in the flow of people moving toward whatever tributary lay at the end of this garden path. We stayed on the walkway, taking our time to view the meticulously groomed flower beds that lined the lane. Photo ops were presented to us at every turn.

At the end of the trail, we came into an open view of a flat field alive with color. Rows of flawless bright tulips filled the space as if they were a lake reflecting a sunset with ribbons of red, yellow, pink, orange, and white. All the rows were perfectly lined up. The eager-to-please tulips stretched toward the powder blue sky, strong and brave on their vivid pogo-stick stems.

I never had seen anything like it. I never had felt such speechless appreciation for something as simple as flowers. I wanted to cry but had no tears. Only a tightening in my throat.

“What do you think?” Noelle took off her sunglasses and looked at me as if trying to read my expression.

“It’s…beautiful.”

“Wait until you see them up close. Come.” Noelle led the way with her camera in hand.

The tulips grew in mounds of rich, dark earth. Between the straight rows of tulip mounds were well-trampled “gutters” in which visitors were permitted to walk through the muddied earth to get up close and personal with the upturned beauties. Hundreds of visitors strolled up and down the designated narrow pathways between the blooms. The groupings of people seemed to bob along in the lake of beauty like sailboats and rowboats set adrift on a calm day.

The first row we traversed bore white tulips. I stopped to stare. At a distance they looked like simple ivory tulips. Up close the delicate flowers became more intricate. They had what looked like ruffles along the top edges. Inside the cuplike petals were faint streaks of pale pink you wouldn’t notice unless you stared straight down into them to discover their hidden beauty.