Get Lost

It was a drizzly September morning when Ken and I crossed the state line from Pennsylvania to West Virginia. We had packed up the furniture and sold our house in Philly. In another ten hours we would arrive at our new life in Illinois.

It would be my third visit to the Mid-west. The first time was for my job interview. The second time was to search for a new house shortly after I had been hired. Other than my boss who had hired me and who I had only met once, I didn’t know anyone west of Pittsburgh.

As we drove through West Virginia I could feel a knot in my stomach. What the hell had I done? I’d left my family. I’d left my friends. I’d left everything familiar behind.

For a few seconds I thought about shouting “Ken, stop the car! We need to go back!”

But it was already too late. We were almost in Ohio.

One of my biggest concerns about moving to a strange new town was whether I’d be able to make any friends. Most people are surprised to learn that I am painfully shy. That’s probably because most shy people are quiet. I’m shy. But I’m also loud. It’s a bit of an odd combination.

My particular brand of shyness comes out when I have to meet new people. There's a pretty good chance that I'm going to say or do the wrong thing. So I usually try and keep my mouth shut for as long as possible. That’s why when we moved to Illinois, I spent the first week at my new job eating lunch by myself in the back of the cafeteria.

A couple of weeks after Ken and I arrived in Illinois a co-worked mentioned that another gal had also moved out to Illinois from Philly a few weeks before me.

“You two should get together.” My well meaning colleague suggested. “You probably have a lot in common.”

I smiled. “Sure.”

Deep down inside, I knew I’d never seek out the other Philly gal. I’m not good at making friends, I told myself. Besides, I’m sure we wouldn’t have anything in common.

Lucky for me, the other Philly gal didn’t take “get lost” for an answer. She bugged me and badgered me until I finally agreed to have lunch with her. She literally forced her friendship on me. And I’m eternally grateful for that.

Erin and I have been friends since I moved to Illinois almost twelve years ago and it turns out we did have a lot in common. We both grew up in financially strapped families in Central Pennsylvania towns about thirty miles apart. We both attended Catholic primary school and a Jesuit University. We both attended the same law school; but our school had two campuses so we never met. More surprising, our mothers attended the same nursing school and we had several mutual friends.

Since then, Erin and I have spent more than a decade commiserating over the lack of a decent cheese steak anywhere more than 50 miles away from South Street. She’s the only person in my neighborhood who understands the excitement of going “down the shore” and who knows how important it is to "Send Your Pictures to Dear Old Captain Noah." And when she visits her family back east, Erin always brings me back a box of Tastykakes.

A few weeks before Christmas Ken woke up at 4 a.m. with intense stomach pains. I was pretty sure he had kidney stones (or the biggest case of gas in the history of the world). After an hour of listening to him roar in pain, I decided to take him the ER. I needed someone to watch the kids. Unfortunately, my nearest relative was over 700 miles away and I was reluctant to wake the neighbors at such a wee hour.

“I’m going to call Erin.” I said.

“It’s not even morning yet.” Ken moaned. “You can’t get her out of bed to come over here.”

“Yes. I can.”

Erin walked in our front door less than ten minutes later. She fed Emily and Beth breakfast. She got Eric to school on time. She took care of all the little things that Ken and I normally did every morning.

Three weeks later, my phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Erin. The smoke alarms were blaring in her house. There was no fire but the alarms would not shut off. Her four year old son was frantic from the noise. As I hung up the phone, Ken was pulling on his jeans and shoes and heading out the door.

Not long after that, Erin and Jack were at our house for dinner. As she was getting ready to leave, Emily and Beth bounced up and down shouting “Goodbye Aunt Erin.”

That’s when I overheard Eric’s friend Evan, who had come over to play, say “It’s so cool that your Aunt lives in our neighborhood.”

I smiled. I turns out we did have family in Illinois after all.