A Little Fuzzy: Part Zwei

I tried playing basketball this weekend.  The operative word was 'tried.'  For some reason, and I would guess that all people past the age of thirty would say this, there is a deep sense of loss about not being able to stretch and bend like you used to.  As I played basketball, my brain kept shouting at me, "Yeah!  You can do this!  Just jump a little higher, twist a little faster, run a little quicker," and my soul kept whispering to me, You're gonna pay for this big time.

My soul was right.  Just two days later I feel as if almost every one of my joints has sand in it.  My muscles, especially those in my arms, feel like plastic bags stretched too far.  And my ego has a basketball size bruise on it.  It was nice of them, those twenty-somethings that I played with to shout encouraging things like, "Hey, Pastor Reid, you're everywhere," but behind their kind words, I could feel the pity of watching a forty-one year old male try not break anything on anyone.  Which, in essence made me try harder.  Why is it so hard to accept pity?

It wasn't that long ago that I was a decent basketball player.  Well, that might be stepping out of bounds a little bit.  It's been a long time since I could run, shoot and rebound well; now, I'm kind of like the unyielding block of relaxed muscle that sits in the lane and swipes at anything that gets close.  Think of me as like a basketball spider creating a web on the defensive end of the ball court.  On the other hand, let's not think of spiders at all.

A little over twenty years ago, I joined a basketball team of college 'athletes' to play intramural sports.  There were ten of us, most of whom had played a little basketball before either in high school or junior high.  As we were all in our late teens, we still had some energy, but fitness was very relative.  We lived on Hebron III which was an all male dorm on the north side of campus.  It was connected in a 'U' shape to two female dorms.  Along the path to the gymnasium were various bushes and plants, green in the spring and fall and relatively dead in the winter.  During the basketball season, we'd dress in our t-shirts and shorts, headbands and out of date basketball shoes.  We passed the one ball we had between us bouncing it and fumbling it on our way to the gym.  We didn't expect to win.  We were usually right.

We called our team, "The Warm Fuzzies."

The only other team that we could really beat was the chess club, I think - or, maybe it was the brass section of the band.  I can't remember and I've been accused on this blog of misrepresenting the past.  Hard to imagine.

Either way, we enjoyed the time together - the bonding of being part of a team, living on the same floor and spending most nights playing cards, video games, watching movies, and of course, studying.  My brother and I shared a room on the floor; the other eight lived in various combinations of two and three man suites.  Most weeknights, we would at least do some studying but then on the weekends, the late nights would begin.  Sometimes we played cards until dawn.  In those quick four years of college, we packed in a lifetime of togetherness.

I guess it can't be understated how important friendships are.  Not only do friends support you and keep you sane, but they have a way of knowing exactly what needs to be done at exactly the right time.  The Fuzzies (we have called ourselves that for these twenty years hence) have a way of showing up when showing up is needed and then blending back into the woodwork of the great pictures of the past.  Included in our ranks now, after finishing all sorts of post graduate schooling are four doctors, two accountants, two teachers and two pastors.  There have been tragedies and hard times between us and in the midst of those, somewhere, somehow at least one of the Fuzzies has been at the ready. 

What is also amazing about this group of ten people is that all of us have been married at least twelve years.  That would be a rarity, I think, in this day and age, but each time we get together, the amount of Fuzzies enlarges.  I would think, now that we are all in our forties, that our days of procreating would be done.  Between the ten of us there are twenty-three kids.  Fuzzlings.

We drove into Des Moines, into the parking lot and parked our car.   The hotel in which we were staying had an indoor waterpark, small enough for Fuzzlings, big enough for Fuzzies.  The thought of two days with the other nine had left me in high spirits: I knew that there would be plenty of laughter, plenty of card playing and plenty of memories shared that probably shouldn't have been repeated in front of the Fuzzlings.

As different families straggled in throughout the night, hugs were passed around.  When you hug an old friend, it's like waking a memory, or bringing a picture to life.  As each one passed in and out of my squeezed arms and I held a step back to look at them, I felt a true sense of... relief?... is that the word?  Relief to be able to let down what little hair I have left, no pretense, no putting on airs and faces.  It was fun to watch how, as the night wore on, the Fuzzies settled back into their own roles we had twenty years ago.  Lots of singing (strangely, almost all of us can sing quite well), Dan found a way to be wonderfully loud, Maasen found new and inventive ways to describe his displeasure at losing at cards.  Raber smiled and laughed loudly like no other day.  And it seemed as if there had been no time in between this moment and the last one that we had met.

That's what real friendship is like.

My brother arrived after a short while.  It was the first time I'd seen him in a year and a half.  I was shocked at his appearance - amazedly surprised at how well he looked.  He's lost so much weight and bulked up in strength, he looked like a new man.  And it showed in his demeanor too.  I watched him throughout the night, turning on my own video camera inside my head, memorizing him because I miss him.  He was loud and brash and fun.  Just like twenty years ago.  Just like the time we went cliff jumping.

There is a picture in one of my albums of the Fuzzies standing in the shade of a tree, swimming trunks on, wet towels draped over our shoulders.  It seems like that photo is taken out of one of those old movies that you expect that the picture will start moving, that somewhere deep inside the fading colors of that photograph, the happiness of that memory will spring out.

We left early morning, probably a Saturday but more likely a Friday afternoon.  I had found a spot at a rock quarry where I had done some cliff jumping earlier that summer and I decided that we'd go there as a Fuzzy get away.  We piled into the cars: Raber had a Ford LTD which seated eight comfortably, four in the front and back (no seatbelts required in those days) and then Curtis' car, I think.  Across backroads about twenty miles we traveled to the quarry at Iona.  After parking the vehicles, we popped out to see the cliffs on the other side of the pond.  They weren't small either.  Because it was hot, it was not hard to get into the water, but we did notice that it wasn't all that deep.  The summer sun had evaporated a layer of the water.  It's watermark could be seen in the rock.  When Raber asked where we were going, I pointed up onto the sandstone rock wall.  They all shaded their eyes to look up. 

We reached the other side and we began to scale the wall.  One hand hold and foot step at a time.  There was a ledge about twenty feet up that we should have stopped at, but this was a group of males who, at this time, had every sense that they were immortal.  Nothing could hurt us at this time in our life.  I looked around at those guys, all the cajoling and calling of names.  No one was going to wimp out first.  How dumb we can be in our youth.

Ryan led us to the top and it was there that we took a pause.  Before we had climbed, I made sure that where we would be jumping there would not be any submerged rocks and that it would be deep enough.  I pushed myself down to the bottom and was dismayed to feel that the water was only about eight feet deep.  As we were on the ledge, it was just about fifty feet up and eight feet probably wasn't deep enough. 

We stood in a circle, hands on our hips, enjoying the drying moment in the warm setting sun.  I suggested that we probably should just head back down and was called a few choice words for verbalizing my hesitation.  So, I asked who was going to go first.  They looked around, quiet, hoping that someone else would be the first one to jump.  Always, there was someone to jump first, to leap, to make it all right for everyone else.  Just like Dettmer, the first to get married, or us, the first one to have kids, or Raber the first one to have survived cancer, or Curtis, the first one to have moved away.

Ryan said it.  Always the toughest.  I'll do it.  I tried to stop him, to hold him back.  He's much more valuable alive, but he didn't even hesitate when his mind was made up.  He walked back five steps and threw himself into the air, into the void, into the fearful whistling drop.  He screamed, I think, or he should have and as we peered over the edge, hearts in our throats watching the splash and roiling water below, we waited for the eternal seconds before he came spluttering to the top, fist raised and wondering from fifty feet down who was coming next.

Did you hit the bottom? I asked from my lofty position. 

It doesn't matter, he replied from his posture of treading water.  It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter.  I can't remember who went next, but I didn't want to be last - second to last is still not last.  And after all of us had shared the same scream, shared the same explosion of water at the base, hit the murky bottom of the quarry, we felt a different sense of brotherhood or, as I think of it now - Fuzziness.

I wish that I had more time with them, to get together and revert to my post-adolescent, immortal stage.  To hear the laughter and the carefreeness would heal all sorts of present day worries and cares.  To receive a hug and a kind word each and every time, a hand shake and most importantly the password to my deepest friendships, to be called...

Fuzzy.

It was a great weekend to be back together.