Cyd and I Were Young Together

cyd

cydandcynarizona

Cydnie and I were young together. We met in Chicago in the fall of 1971, a pair of low ranking clerical assistants in a shiny office building on Wacker Drive. Cyd was taking the semester off from college to help her mother, who was going through some stuff. I was newly married, having stood alongside my boyfriend in the Cook County Courthouse a couple of days earlier and repeated a few words spoken by a cantankerous judge, which I didn't feel right about even then. Cyd and I recognized each other instantly, two earnest girls who were feeling derailed.

We both had long hair and wore long wool navy blue coats -- midi-length was the term, skimming just beneath the tops of our brown leather boots. It was purely accidental that we dressed like bookends in the cold. We joked  about the similarity of our names too, Cyd and Cyn, twiddle-dee and twiddle-dum. We talked about our crazy families, our insecurities, a sense of absurdity we both possessed. We walked side by side along Michigan Avenue to the Art Institute during our lunch breaks and stood in front of the Renoirs to be warmed by their sunlight. We laughed, even about things that hurt us, because it was such a relief to talk about them and be so thoroughly understood.

When Cyd moved to Madison to finish school, I missed her terribly, and when I decided to run away from the married life that had snagged me prematurely, it was to Madison I fled. Cyd helped me find a furnished room in the home of an elderly couple on Breese Terrace whose idea of decor was mostly knick-knacks and Christmas lights. Whenever you opened the front door, a music box clicked on, and Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago began to play. My room was downstairs in the basement just a short creep past the utility sink and ironing board, but Cyd brought me a little hanging plant of baby's tears to add a bit of green.  I looked for a job, borrowed a bike, and pedaled sometimes through the cold dark streets from Breese Terrace to Cyd's house. I cried constantly and finally called my poor husband, who drove up from Chicago in his VW Bug to rescue me.  "You treat her right this time," said the elderly couple. My husband was suitably bewildered.

Many escapes, mistakes, and peregrinations were yet to come, and Cyd was always there. Once we traveled by Greyhound bus to Oregon to visit her father, then hitched rides along the coast, fancying ourselves free spirits, but so trusting and stupid it chills me even now to think about it. When I did my miserable years in upstate New York, Cyd wrote and visited me often. When I was depressed and scared at 4 in the morning in Washington D.C., it was Cyd's number I dialed, and she never mentioned the hour. It was Cyd I called when my father died.

Cyd  moved to Arizona for a master's program in social work, so it's no surprise that when I left New York for good, Arizona was my first stop. She was married them, but I was welcomed unconditionally, and I entered like a storm of chaos. I only stayed a month, but it must have been a long one. The picture to the left is us in Arizona.It's been said that a friend is someone who really knows you...and loves you anyway. Cyd loved me through all the rough times and was happy for me when the good parts began, and she's been a constant in my life.  I saw her most recently in 2011, and I'm thinking about her now because her birthday is coming up. Cyd's not much of a computer person and probably won't ever even see this, but since I'm here in the cloud I want to sky-write her name, give her a star on my blog walk of fame, and digitally document my gratitude for our long friendship.I'll call her, though.