City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love

I haven't been to Philadelphia since the spring of 1976, when I had thought I was going to college there. That was before I changed my mind -- or, more accurately, my mind was changed for me -- and I ended up, somehow, in the wilds of upstate New York. I've always thought the decision was a bad one, but one I would never change. Everything about my life would have been different, and there are certain things -- three living breathing things in particular -- I could never pass up. Not for all the brotherly love in the world. 

More than forty years later, here I am, somewhere along the fabled Main Line, sleeping in a room filled with the vestiges of young girlhood while its permanent inhabitant finds her wings in New York City. I feel as if I have gotten to know her better, from the collage of pictures on her walls, the lotions and such in her bathroom, the bundles of hair ties hanging from a hook on the wall. I moved her well worn stuffed animals off the bed, but the Siberian cat has sought me out, draping herself over me for two nights in a row. Her purring is a comfort. Suddenly, I think I like cats. 

I am here mostly on the way to somewhere else. My friend's sister hosted a fundraiser in honor of my friend's son, now gone almost three years. I was surprised at how much at home I felt here, among all these people from another place, people I had never met. Many of them had heard stories about me -- the friend's sister's friend -- though I could not imagine why. The friends of my friend's sister are warm and boisterous and generous. I tried my best to remember all the names, knowing full well they all had a slight advantage, having only to remember one. I flubbed several, but nobody cared. 

My friend had to speak, and she was nervous. Not just because she had to speak in front of so many people, but because she had to speak about why she was there, about why they were donating money and, hopefully, time, for a cause in her son's name. Just talk about Adam, I told her. The rest will come. 

It was mesmerizing, not just for me, but for all of us. It's not easy listening to somebody who has suffered the unimaginable, who inhabits a place nobody should have to inhabit. My friend will mention Adam, in passing sometimes, or when we reminisce about something funny. But here she was, explaining who Adam was, to this group of people who never knew him, to me, to her sister, to her brother-in-law, to Adam's own grandmother. To herself. She brought him to life, again. 

In Philly, this week, more than four decades since my last visit, when I had no idea who I was or where I'd be or how three children, one day, would teach me how to love in a way I had never known, I was re-introduced to a place. To a young girl who grew up here. To cats. To my friend's family. To my friend, who lit up in a way I'd never seen her light up, and who lit up a room full of strangers who are no longer strangers. And I was re-introduced to Adam, who still has many secrets to reveal.