Derrick Coyle
I’ve come to discover that friendship need not be continuous to be enduring. It can lie dormant for a period of months, years, even decades – as if frozen with a click of life’s pause button – while we attend to other matters. Then, when circumstances and opportunity allows, we return to resume play and pick up the scene just where we left off.
I was born and raised in Toronto’s East End and have warm and lasting memories of childhood, school days and my early employment experiences in that city. I left the nest to move to London, Ontario at age 23, where I built a career, married and raised two daughters, both now married and living in town.
Leaving the family household and my Toronto stomping grounds was a bigger deal than I understood at the time. “Sure, sounds good,” I casually responded when a Personnel Manager first asked me whether I’d be interested in transferring to a new branch office being opened 200 kilometers away. Never having set foot in London, and having yet to discuss the matter with my fiancée and family, the manager shrewdly suggested I take a day or two to think about it before deciding. I did, and I did.
I have no regrets, London has been a wonderful place to live, work, raise a family, and ultimately retire. But distance tends to take its toll on the friendships of our youth, in spite of best efforts to maintain regular contact. Geographic realities and shifting life priorities, on either side, eventually intervene. Tight fraternal bonds are eventually weakened by the practical demands of a career and the frenetic and joyful routine that comes with raising children.
*************************
This summer I had the pleasant experience of hooking up with some longtime friends I’d not seen or even communicated with for, well, decades. These are people who occupied prominent space in my early life. Close friends who would often drift nostalgically into my thoughts over the years, but with whom (short of a couple of funerals) reunions never materialized.
I suspect there is a point in life at which the drag of inertia – for even the greatest of procrastinators – is challenged by new accessibility and undeniable opportunity. Technology and social media make it easy to locate and communicate with friends. Retirement and empty nests effectively remove the obstacles that prevented it.
In a span of a couple of months, my wife and I were able to spend some great catchup time with Dave and Cyndie Osborne, Tom and Donna Smith, and Brian and Marilyn Kay. I chatted by phone and made plans that will soon hook me up with Joe Duffy. I am also thinking a lot about my good friend, Ken Wells, as we approach the twelfth anniversary of his far too early passing, at age 46.
*************************
Dave and I go back to about age five and grew up together on Rhodes Avenue. We built forts, go-carts, played detective, and dug tunnels following viewings of The Great Escape. We slept in backyard tents listening to 1050 Chum top 100 countdowns, talked well into the summer darkness with neighbours Terri and Debbie on the front garden steps, played street hockey, burbee, frizbee, football, basketball, we cycled to Scarborough Bluffs, and rode a 12-hour overnighter from Toronto to a cottage north of Bracebridge. He also got me the job I recently retired from.
Tom and I met at work at the Toronto insurance job in the late 70’s. We played industry hockey and baseball together and became close friends in and outside the office. He provided the art for invitations to a winter getaway I hosted for 10 years. We double-dated and vacationed together. He helped me move my belongings to my apartment to London when I transferred. I was privileged to be part of his wedding party.
Brian and I played hockey together in the Ted Reeve house league and on MTHL teams from about age 10. Our dad’s stood together drinking coffee in the cold winter rinks at practices and games, we went to high school together and played on the school hockey team. In that era’s version of pre-drinking, we primed ourselves with Baby Duck Wine in a local ravine before school dances. He taught me a bit about playing guitar, and we were cavorting together the night he met his wife at the University of Toronto pub, Cheeks. We attended each other’s weddings.
Joe was my principal social accomplice throughout high school and early adulthood. We spent many weekends water-skiing or snowmobiling at his family cottage on Rice Lake. We partied to the sounds of Boz Scaggs and the Doobie Brothers. We paired up for the occasional double-date and high school prom. I visited him at Lake Louise for a couple of weeks, where he was working and residing as part of a Hotel Management program. We arranged to attend the 25th Anniversary High School Reunion together in 1989 and will be doing the same at the 50th, this weekend. He got me a part-time job at The Toronto Sun where he ultimately remained for a long career.
Ken was the social hub for a long list of friends. He likely holds records for numbers of wedding party appearances. We bonded tightly in high school and played several years on the same line for the school hockey team. We shared the same full-time employer for a few years and he was part of the double-date that led to my marriage of 33 years and counting. Ken was ‘all in’ when it came to work and play and rare was a time an opportunity to join him on his enthusiastic adventures would be missed. From winter weekends at the cottage, high-school trips to Bahamas, a week skiing in Vermont, assorted Oktoberfests – memorable moments are vivid and plentiful. I was forever known to him as “Kwaylo.” This came courtesy of a cross-country ski vendor who affixed that phonetic interpretation of Coyle to my new ski purchase. I can still hear Ken’s prolonged and gleeful cackle when we picked up the goods together. What so many of us would give to hoist just one more pint with Wells.
*************************
What struck me most about reuniting with my longtime pals, was how little we actually change over the years. Sure, there is some weathering and the inevitable physical change: a little less hair and notable greying of the stubborn holdouts, a few extra pounds and more practical choices in fashion, merciful abandonment of our Tom Selleck mustaches, evidence of the wear and tear of a lifetime of sports as we extricated ourselves from chairs and moved about. Perhaps it’s a subconscious allowance for the passage of time, but for me, my friends were essentially as I remembered them. Whatever physical seasoning we may have undergone, the unmistakable familiarity of personality, voice, mannerisms, and expressions quickly superseded it, and the reality of the time gap seemed near impossible.
It’s interesting where the conversation takes close friends as they catch up on lost time. In hours of conversation, the talk was much more about people and life experience than it was about careers or achievements. There was lots of talk of our families. Of parents living or lost, our respective siblings, and our own children. We caught up on the whereabouts and well-being of mutual acquaintances, one or the other had recently seen or kept in touch with. We shared stories about travel, vacation, and recreation.
We are stricken by memory sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk
– William Makepeace Thackeray
But mostly, the conversation took us back to stories of our past. Reminiscing about shared adventures and youthful mayhem through a prism of maturity and experience. Exchanging stories from decades ago in precise detail, some remembered by both, and others long forgotten until it was brought back to life by one or the other. There was absolute comfort in sharing stories of victory and defeat, success and disappointment, proud moments and embarrassments. There is no orientation or warm-up required for old friends, we simply picked up as if we had seen each other or spoken last week.
*************************
On the eve of Monarch Park Collegiate’s 50th anniversary celebration, many of us will soon be reconnecting with friends, close or casual, from a different era. A brief intersection of life orbits allowing for an enthusiastic attempt to squeeze in a whole lot of catching up into precious little time. For some, I suspect it will be the first step in the renewal of old friendships.
In spite of the distance and regardless of a prolonged suspension, it seems to me a genuine friendship just has a way of transcending time.
*************************