Susie Derkins and I were late bloomers. That's how we got along well together. We met relatively late, too. We went to the same college together, but we never became friends then. I was intimidated, because I thought she was one of those stuck up Asian sorority girls. I didn't want any part of of them. She probably doesn't remember me. It was only after college when we happen to meet up with a mutual friend over a plate of frites at the local bistro that we realized what odd dopplegangers we were. I forgot how we first started talking, but through spurts and stops, we had an aha moment, then hastily exchanged blog URLs before departing.
She was from Jersey. I was from Texas. But really, we were both forever twelve year olds - both psychologically from mid-century Britain (when Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and the fantasy genre got started) by way of the Garden State and the Lone Star State.
Forever stuck in a state of awkwardness, it seemed; we both found common ground through little observations of the adult world around us. Even though we were technically a part of that adult world (she became a consultant and I a banker) we somehow retreated into our metaphorical tree house and compared notes on how bizarre growing up can be. For each of our times hanging out together, it seemed like I was at a slumber party that I never really experienced as an introverted kid – and she brought out a fluffed up, sanitized and incandescent version of childhood for me.
(It also helped that we both had a fondness for fantasy and science fiction, that we were both bookworms as kids, on the outside looking in and wondering together "I wonder if I can't be more like them?")
And for all the times we've spent together, one afternoon stood out. Everything about Susie can be collapsed into those few hours. We talked about nothing, we did very little, but just the reality of it, the fact that the day existed and somehow it colored my memories with all of her other quirks and behaviors, has allowed me to grab hold onto those strings of being and not being and defined that page of time as something wholly us.
And so now, when a certain type of song with a certain type of sound and mood comes on, I think of Susie Derkins; the definition of her as bolded by that afternoon makes it easy for me to unconsciously remember - "This song feels like Susie". We both have stepped closer to adulthood: she moved to medicine and I to tech, to New York and San Francisco, building our adult lives with our loved ones, and our 12 year old voices progressively have became lost in the mix. It doesn't decrease my own conception of her, of her definition; even if she's a different person now, I can still relate a song to her - stripped down from pretensions, simple drum tracks, warbly male vocals, a bit of angst, catchy guitar riff.. and so on. These are the songs that Susie can whirl around in her room and sing to, songs that speak to twentysomething angst and a lack of fussiness, songs that somehow ties back to that sun-drenched afternoon.
For me, Susie Derkins embodies all the weird and frantic angst of growing up. More importantly, she carries with her the wonder and amazement of childhood – the curiosity to peek behind the wardrobe, the audacity to see gnomes under toadstools, the imagination to notice faeries racing dragonflies – the breathless freedom of being a child-adult with all the opportunities before her and the stomp-my-feet-nownownow impatience to get some place, always reminding me to ask, "am I there yet"?