A week after my wrist surgery, I hopped on a plane and flew to Denver to visit two of my closest friends, Dave and Melissa.

“What are you planning on doing out there?” my surgeon asked, when I inquired as to whether I could still take the trip. “Hiking?”

“No, no,” I said. “We’re not going to be doing anything. I’m visiting a friend who’s eight months pregnant. We’re just going to be sitting around. We’ll probably play cards. We really like canasta. And pinochle.”

It all sounded so totally boring, no doubt my surgeon was wondering why I wanted to go on the trip in the first place. The funny thing is, when Dave and Melissa pitched it to me, it was as some sort of last hurrah, a final get together before a child entered their lives, and, by extension, mine. It had sounded very exciting, like one final party before the dawn of parenthood.

“You should come out and visit before we have this baby and never see you again!” Dave had yelled.
“Dave!” Melissa yelled. “Of course we’ll see her again! Don’t say things like that!”

The miles that part us

I’ve known Dave and Melissa since my freshman year of college — Melissa was my roommate, and Dave was in my medieval history and introductory psychology courses — and we’ve remained an important part of each other’s lives. Still, distance changes things, and when close friends live 1,800 miles away, it makes it tough to do the sorts of things you do with close friends, such as celebrate life’s milestones together.

Although, all things considered, we’ve done pretty well.

We gathered in Denver several years ago to celebrate our 30th birthdays, and traveled to Ohio for our college reunion two years ago, and I served as the maid of honor at their wedding in 2004.

In some ways, these events were last hurrahs, too, although of course they also represented new beginnings, opportunities to celebrate relationships that remain strong and vital, even as they shift and change and evolve. A baby seemed like a pretty significant milestone, and since I’d been considering traveling to Denver anyway — Dave and Melissa visited me last summer at my parents’ house in Maine, so technically it was my year to travel — I booked the flight.

Needless to say, this last hurrah was a lot different than previous last hurrahs. Not just because of the pregnancy, but also because of my busted hand.

Board games and TV

“Do you mind if I take a nap?” Melissa asked on Saturday afternoon. “Walking around at the farmer’s market really wore me out.”

While Melissa was sleeping, Dave and I went totally wild and played Scrabble. When she woke up, they taught me a complex German board game I’d never heard of before called The Settlers of Catan. In The Settlers of Catan, the goal is to build more roads, settlements and cities than your competitors.

“Are you even going to be able to hold your cards?” Melissa asked me, while Dave was setting up the board.

“I have one functioning hand,” I said.

I liked Settlers of Catan a lot, and so we kept playing it. When we weren’t playing Settlers of Catan, we watched cooking shows.

“Rick Bayless is on!” Dave yelled. “My green salsa recipe comes from Rick Bayless!”

“Dave has a man crush on Rick Bayless,” Melissa informed me.

We gathered around the TV and watched the Chicago-based chef make paella in a three-foot pan in a firepit in his yard. Then we watched French chef Hubert Keller make smoked trout. “Let’s just watch cooking shows all day,” Dave said.

Happily, my trip to Denver coincided with my shift off of heavy-duty painkillers to over-the-counter stuff, and I was able to enjoy the occasional beer. But it hardly matched the excess of our 30th birthday party, held at a brewery in downtown Denver, or the non-stop jubilation of Dave and Melissa’s wedding weekend. Melissa, being pregnant, wasn’t drinking at all. Although she did order a Shirley Temple, which made me laugh.

When I was getting ready to leave, Melissa apologized for not being more fun. “I’m sorry we didn’t do anything exciting,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can’t do anything exciting anyway.”

Dave drove me to the airport. “I guess we’ll see you sometime in 2010,” he said.

“Yes, we’ll have to figure something out,” I said. “I’d kind of like to meet your kid.”

“So would I,” Dave said.

And that was how we left it. At some point in 2010, we’ll get together. We don’t know where or when, but it will happen.

In the meantime, I’ll just be thankful that Dave and Melissa were there to help me recover from surgery. It’s not quite as exciting as a wedding, or a baby, but it is the sort of thing where it helps to have your close friends around, at least for a little while.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.