My friend Remy Nakamura and I had coffee the other day. It was a sudden thing, like the best moments are.
We had a lot to catch up on, filling in and taking turns. He ran an epic trail race. I hit the Nebula stage. He dove into a critique workshop. I celebrated my 45th birthday.
Being friends as adults is funny. There’s never enough time, is there?
We spend more time working than living. Clicking buttons on computers and tapping on screens takes up minutes, hours, and brain cells. We work to live.
And the people we want to share space with us — to settle into our own personal gravity — shoot us texts and like our posts (reminders on tiny screens instead of sinking into couch cushions and sharing pastry crusts). We see only the right angles and learn to tell our stories in the golden light…which isn’t always the stories we need to narrate, to remember, to share. They aren’t always the truest ones.
I’m hungry. I’m sassy. I’m—
I don’t have the words because I didn’t work through them with you.
That’s the thing about sharing gravity. It isn’t just exchanging information. It isn’t the highlight reel or the polished version or the caption underneath the photo. It’s letting someone sit close enough to witness the unfinished thought. The complaint before it becomes a joke. The fear before it becomes a lesson. The dream before it becomes.
We spend so much of our lives reporting from a distance. But over coffee, the distance disappears.
Remy told me about the race and I told him about turning forty-five, but I also talked about the parts I wasn’t sure how to name yet. The little bits that might get big. Between sips and stories, the rough edges showed up.
Nothing extraordinary happened. We drank coffee. We talked. We lingered a little longer than we planned.
And somehow that’s what I needed.
Not another notification. Not another update.
Just a friend, a cup of coffee, and an hour spent sharing gravity.
Me, Remy and Phoenix sharing gravity at a fundraiser for Stone Soup PDX!