And When You're In Doubt, And When You're In Danger, Take A Look All Around, And I'll Be There

--"The Promise (cover)", New Found Glory

"Turn down here," Jennifer said. "No, this isn't right either."

I shook my head for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Once more I was left holding the wheel with no clue as to where I was supposed to be headed or even if we were headed in the right direction.

"Shut up," I heard her say incredulously.

"I didn't even say anything."

"I'm going to find this place just to prove you wrong, Mr. Smarty-Pants." She continued scanning the buildings in hopes that a familiar sight would jog her memory.

"I should have known better than to put a blond in charge of the navigating. Serves me right," I mumbled under my breath with a smile. Either she didn't hear the comment or chose to ignore it because that's where the conversation died once more.

Before she died, Jennifer was the one individual I could count on to come explore a new restaurant with me. Indeed, she was the one who I credit with instilling a sense of wanderlust when it comes to eateries. It wasn't good enough to have a rolodex worth of good and great restaurants to frequent. She made it her mission to always seek out new and worthy places to experiment with. A lot of our conversations tended to conclude with the words, "there's a place I want us to try." However, even more attractive to her was the prospect of showcasing an eatery she loved that I had never been to. Her face would brighten and her drive would kick into full gear whenever I mentioned that I hadn't been to one of her frequent hangouts. To this day some of my places around the O.C. are places she showed me once upon a time--the soup place, the cafe place, and, yes, even the all-you-can-eat Wienerschnitzel's down by Huntington Beach.

That's where we had been headed that day, to the place where they served the food she had described to me as "like a party in your mouth." The only trouble was she'd neglected to get the exact directions, instead relying on an old-fashioned sense of direction and a stubborn belief in her memory to serve her in good stead. No such luck. We'd spent the better part of an hour scouring the streets of Seal Beach and its environs for the legendary establishment that was guaranteed to put to shame all other legendary establishments.

"We can try some other place, Jennifer... come back when you have directions."

"No, I talked this place up and we will find it today. I'm not giving up yet."

"But it's been an hour."

"You don't understand. This place is amazing. We're pushing through the darkness and that's that."

She usually was never that adamant about any one thing so I decided to indulge her a few more minutes. I figured we'd either chance upon it by sheer dumb luck or she herself would recognize the futility of our quest on that day. She'd relent and I wouldn't end up looking like the jerk who was too impatient (and too hungry) to humor her for another thirty minutes. Actually, it was mostly that, but I was also rather curious about a place that would cause her to go to such lengths to find it. Whenever I had a place I wanted to show someone but couldn't find for the life of me, I usually gave it a real go for about forty-five minutes. After that, though, I always perceived the best course of action was to go home and actually print out the directions rather than blindly skulk around the area. She was different that day. She needed to find it. Driving away from the search before it was finished was not an option.

To me, food is food. There's a lot of great restaurants. While I'm always open for new restaurants, if it isn't meant to be that day I'm more than happy to switch gears to another restaurants which will be just as good.

"But it's not the same thing, Patrick," she suddenly blurt out after we'd driven for almost another half-hour. "It's not nearly the same. With a place like this, there's history there. That's what makes it special."

"History for you, but it's yet to take on that sense of the nostalgic for me."

"Well, of course, you haven't seen it yet," she told me, twisting her body to face me. "Put it this way, you trust my opinion, right?"

"Most of the time."

"And I like it when you put your faith in my opinion. Everyone does. I want to impress you with this place. I want you to like it like I do."

"Why?"

"Because it means something to me and it means something to be able to share it."

I shrugged my shoulders, not quite understanding what the urgency of the matter was. Again, I'd been to places that had impressed me. I'd even shared a few with Jennifer and my other friends and family, but I've never had one place that I went out of my way to make sure that somebody tried it out. I've never felt that strongly about a location to go through so much effort. Boston is perhaps the closest approximation but, as of yet, I've never flown somebody out to that city just because I wanted to share it with them. No place has ever mattered that much to me.

Now that I think about it, however, she wasn't talking about trying to find the place to share it with me per se. Her motivation ran deeper than that. Her rationale was on a more instinctual level. You see, what I didn't know was that time period was when she had first been coming to grips that something was wrong with her. That's the first time she had started experiencing the headaches, the nausea, the momentary blackouts, &c... I don't know if she knew it was as serious as it became, but it was enough to make her feel down and wanting to be comforted. When an individual reaches such a stressful state it's natural for it to seek out a place that made it happy when it was younger. It's human nature. This place, this security blanket was where her family had taken her and her brother when they were younger. If I'd taken the time to mine the issue, I would have ascertained that she often visited there when she wasn't feeling her best or even when she was merely having a bad day. It was a safe zone to her.

The fact she couldn't find it after visiting it dozens of times since she'd been driving meant her problems were a lot worse than she thought. On some level she might have thought it had actually been taken away from her. It unnerved her in the same way losing one's favorite stuffed animal or one's lucky charm might have. She wasn't going to fall to pieces over it, but it would be enough to prompt a mission of discovery in order to gain full confirmation it was gone.

Had I known all that, I don't think I would have broached the entire subject as insensitively as I had.

"It's no good. I can't remember how to get there. I'm sorry," she said after we'd reached the two hour mark.

I should've been pissed. I should've told her that it was two hours of my life that I was never going to get back. I should've employed my usual passive-aggressive tactics ("It's alright, Jennifer. I wasn't that hungry. I'm not too mad at you."), but there was a disappointment in her face that made it impossible to raise my ire. Again, I didn't realize it at the time, but the Jennifer I knew was at the precipice of slowly beginning to fade away.

"It's alright. I'm sure it's still out there somewhere. We'll find it again, don't worry," I assured her.

We ended up driving over to the soup place and managed to salvage a decent afternoon after all. Sure, I was disappointed that I'd missed out on all the delicious fare she'd been promising me all week, but you can't really miss what you never knew in the first place so my disappointment was tempered with ignorance. For Jennifer it was worse. She knew what she was missing and it only made her miss it all the more. That's the trouble with building fond memories. Often the picture as it is in the memory sloughs away--places change, people change, it no longer resembles what it was to you back then. Yet the memory stays with you, what it means to you stays with you; those never change.

Like Jennifer herself.

I can write all these great words about her. I can tell every single story I have about her a thousand times, but it doesn't change the fact she's no longer here. It doesn't change the fact that no matter how hard I may want to go looking for her, she will never be found. Yet the reminiscing, the stirring of old anecdotes, only makes it doubly important to me that I share her with as many people as possible.

Like she said, when you find a good thing the best thing you can do is share it with as many people as possible. It works with restaurants and it works with people's legacy. She never could quite understand the concept of keeping a place to yourself, keeping it hidden so that it never loses its quiet charm. To her, a place and, indeed, any experience only became the more charming and elegant the more people you know are there to surround you.

There are nights when I wonder how many of the stories I've already forgotten about her. I fear that I'm losing the complete picture of who she was and what she represented. I chalk it up to the canonization effect; maybe I make her memory out to be better than the actual person was. I fear that I'm painting an impossibly rosy picture of her and covering up the quiet portrait she really was. I'm afraid I'm going to forget her completely one day.


I'm gonna always be there.

Then I remember that day. I remember how important it was for her to find that place. For me.

And I start to ponder. Perhaps it's the notion of always seeking her out that's important. Perhaps it's the process of trying to always get back to her that matters. So what if I forget some of the small details, paraphrase a line or two, or even out-and-out lose whole chunks of what actually happened. The vital part, the part I can't ever lose, is the keeping of the memory close to my heart.

Whenever I feel my memories of her start to slip away, when I feel like I'm losing my friend one more time, I can almost hear her reassuring me like I reassured her.

"It's alright. I'm sure it's still out there somewhere. We'll find it again, don't worry."

And I don't. I really don't."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers