Shoreline

Last Friday, I found Kim waiting for me in the baggage claim area at the Cleveland-Hopkins airport just after 9 a.m. with five waking hours already behind me. With relative ease we collected my bag, headed into the glaring clarity of an overcast white morning. The drive back to Euclid was made surreal by the (unfortunately) anomalous fact that we were together in a car, like so many moments from our early friendship, and the startling fact that I was there because Kim was getting married. It could've gone like that - a series of adrenalized moments like a whole weekend of head rushes.

But instead, we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts, grabbed coffee and breakfast, and went to nearby Sims Park behind Henn Mansion and bordering the shores of Lake Eerie. We sat at a picnic table, facing the endless stretch of slate grey lake gently lapping the stone break-walls at its edge. The clouds were thin - the kind you could tell would burn off with the early afternoon sun. We talked quietly - about the wedding, about life in general, about the man who was walking a cat sans leash just by calling it behind him.

After we finished our breakfast, we went down to the shore, and Kim started skipping stones - one of those skills I'd never quiet learned. She patiently showed me how to flick the flat abnormally-shaped stones across the water, the way Ben had taught her to do it. And we rejoiced when one of hers went five or six skips before sinking below the surface. We picked up a few bigger rocks and lobbed them in just to see how far we could throw them, relished the kerplunking splash.

The sand was wet and cool, the air blanketing us in dampness. And then it was time to go. We selected the best stones we could find and counted to three before skimming them across the lake. Mine skipped twice and hers three times before they disappeared. And we laughed for no apparent reason, and the sun started to break apart the clouds, and we walked away from the shoreline with one more reason to remember why we're friends.