  If your life was a fabric, what would you be? I didnt expect to be able to attend my neighbors going-away party that was to be held at the pool area of my childhood home. Our kick-ass neighbors, Susan and Bob, are about to move from the country to begin anew in New Zealand.
Ive known these folks since I was a 4th grader, already the pre-pubescent troublemaker on my way to becoming a fully fledged terror. I believe their oldest was in diapers back then, now a handsome teenager with a younger sister who I remember being carried home by an excited couple one October day. Bob is a sweetheart. Memories of babysitting for the two and him coming home in the late hours with horrific tales of crazy patients in the ER. Hes a surgeon at Tri-City, plucked by the foreign government for this talent, so I gather. Most men creep me out at best. Bob is and has always been fantastic. Intelligent, kind, dark, and incredibly cool to both the child and adult me. He came in to visit me in my nightmarish moments immediately following my back surgery. A friend on the inside. It meant so much to me. He told me stories of kinky sex gone amiss at a teenager. And much more that I still find myself rolling around in my mouth, unable to decide whether to spit or savor.
Tales told as I sat rapt with attention, over a stiff drink he poured for himself as we two awaited Susans return home. Being the babysitter for an on-call doctor allowed for some well-thought-of moments with my neighbor. These I hold as my most personalized, the most meaningful. And Susan. Ive a kinship with her that remains highly specialized, even among the friends I have today.
Our shared penchant for writing, our dramatic tales of travel, those long nights at parties and our sharing of secrets involving shared cabs and the resolutions brought out by an empty bottle. I remember the night I came out to her. That purging of anguish that did little to help ease my transition into an uncertain future as a lesbian but that helped me gain insight into the possibility of the people in my life becoming understanding allies. Id just come out to my mom, if I remember correctly, and the reception over there wasnt too encouraging.
Susan, however, listened to me, engaged me. Theyre leaving, and I wanted so much to be there tonight to see them off. So I was able to make it after all, if only for an hour. Enough time to be there for the toast, a glass of champagne held high to the couple among a neighborhood of friends they had made in the past two decades. Enough time to get to say my private goodbyes to the both of them. And when I said my goodbye to Susan right as I was walking out, I wanted to cry.
I would now, but the boys Part of me wants to believe that our talents with the written word could actually facilitate a better connection over the distance than weve had all along, especially after I grew up and moved out. It makes me feel better this evening to pretend as much. Circumstances shift, and all these stories remain. Its this knitting together of disparate moments that constitutes the specific texture of our realities. Driving away, I realized how I would structure the Bolzano story. Thought about how getting published could help to strengthen that fragile bond of connection thats so hard to keep threaded and so hard to let go of. 
