Red Ribbons
April 21, 1999
The Chinese say there’s a red ribbon that connects us to the hearts that we’re supposed to find when we come to earth.
We find them by a process of elimination when we look around—a gleam of recognition in an eye—chance meetings—scrubbed friendships, scuttled ships that suddenly resurface when we least expect it. Memories we can’t shake—people who love helplessly and in unexplainable ways: the red ribbon theory explains them as well as any other.
The third grade friend who won’t go away. My husband’s friend Max who showed up fifteen years ago with a wife we liked and a common sense of things that just seemed to fit ours.
I call Susan from ’62 and find we’ve led the same life together, apart during all these years—we say yes to our common friendship.
Sometimes I’ve tried to deliberately pick friends based on appearances. When I moved to Springville, I sat in our congregation one bright and sunny Sunday and decided who I thought I’d have something in common with based on age, kids, clothes, number of times they swacked their husbands or kids. Six months later, feeling alone and friendless and in bed with a cold, I realized I was going to die if I didn’t have a 2-liter bottle of 7-Up for comfort. I called Joan, a person I’d hardly noticed on that first day, because I knew she’d go to the 7-11 for me. We became “call everyday and talk for an hour” friends while our kids were little.
From the newspaper today, a Kosovar Albanian man looked out the window of a train that was pulling into a refugee camp. That man was so, I don’t know, he was worried that he was not going to be able to take care of his son. I could see in his eyes his confusion, he was so tired, he wanted this to be over, He was…so sad. I didn’t know what to say to this man—I had no idea where he was either, or what he should do. I wanted to be there with him, to know him.
Bill Clinton, that cartoon character that’s my president, was walking around Park City in his wind breaker and blue jeans, in a book store with an expired credit card trying to tug at my red ribbon. His wife, well, what girl hasn’t been her—dumped by the cute guy for the bimbo. I sympathize, I see her all the time on TV, but she has never looked out at me from the window of a refugee train. My ribbon doesn’t lead me to her. It goes to people I know less well—its path indescribable.
The person who stole my great camera from my car last year? Is he connected to me by some weird wiring of red ribbons?
And does my mom call to me down the red ribbon connecting our hearts—does she still worry that I’m going to go out in the snow barefoot in winter?
The Chinese say there’s a red ribbon that connects us to the hearts that we’re supposed to find when we come to earth.
We find them by a process of elimination when we look around—a gleam of recognition in an eye—chance meetings—scrubbed friendships, scuttled ships that suddenly resurface when we least expect it. Memories we can’t shake—people who love helplessly and in unexplainable ways: the red ribbon theory explains them as well as any other.
The third grade friend who won’t go away. My husband’s friend Max who showed up fifteen years ago with a wife we liked and a common sense of things that just seemed to fit ours.
I call Susan from ’62 and find we’ve led the same life together, apart during all these years—we say yes to our common friendship.
Sometimes I’ve tried to deliberately pick friends based on appearances. When I moved to Springville, I sat in our congregation one bright and sunny Sunday and decided who I thought I’d have something in common with based on age, kids, clothes, number of times they swacked their husbands or kids. Six months later, feeling alone and friendless and in bed with a cold, I realized I was going to die if I didn’t have a 2-liter bottle of 7-Up for comfort. I called Joan, a person I’d hardly noticed on that first day, because I knew she’d go to the 7-11 for me. We became “call everyday and talk for an hour” friends while our kids were little.
From the newspaper today, a Kosovar Albanian man looked out the window of a train that was pulling into a refugee camp. That man was so, I don’t know, he was worried that he was not going to be able to take care of his son. I could see in his eyes his confusion, he was so tired, he wanted this to be over, He was…so sad. I didn’t know what to say to this man—I had no idea where he was either, or what he should do. I wanted to be there with him, to know him.
Bill Clinton, that cartoon character that’s my president, was walking around Park City in his wind breaker and blue jeans, in a book store with an expired credit card trying to tug at my red ribbon. His wife, well, what girl hasn’t been her—dumped by the cute guy for the bimbo. I sympathize, I see her all the time on TV, but she has never looked out at me from the window of a refugee train. My ribbon doesn’t lead me to her. It goes to people I know less well—its path indescribable.
The person who stole my great camera from my car last year? Is he connected to me by some weird wiring of red ribbons?
And does my mom call to me down the red ribbon connecting our hearts—does she still worry that I’m going to go out in the snow barefoot in winter?
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