It may be impossible to escape the sadness sometimes, but we must fight back with the strongest weapons we have in our arsenal: laughter and love. This week has been hard for me. January was hard for me. I don't know if we are really made to go through so much tragedy in such a short amount of time, because I feel myself fraying a little and coming apart at the seams. However, I have found that laughter truly heals all wounds, and I hope that if you have wandered over to this corner of the internet because you too are feeling the wear and tear of sadness, that these memories of these wonderful people might ease the pain in the slightest.
Tamar used to invent all these crazy games. We spent so much of our childhood in our backyards running around coming up with rules and throwing various balls at each other. We played real games too, but it was more fun when we came up with the rules ourselves because then we could make them as ridiculous as we wanted.
In freshman year of high school I met Henry at a Moulin Rouge themed party where he was wearing bagels on a string hung around his neck as a costume. We established that our siblings were the same age and thus concluded that they should get married so that we could be related. I added him to my phone as "Henry My Future Bro," which he remains today.
At one Heyman/Kaplan dinner party, we decided that we should film our own version of "The Chronicles of Narnia." Sophie played Lucy, Liat played Edmund, and I played Peter and Susan simultaneously. Tamar stole the show as Mr. Tumnus, rolling around on a wheelie chair and speaking in a goofy high-pitched voice to convey the character. It goes without saying that the result was a cinematic gem of the highest caliber.
After Anna, Abby, and I had advisory with Henry, we made the decision that we were going to be best friends. We practically forced him to hang out with us all the time until he realized that we were the best friends he had always been looking for. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for him, he was simply too nice to ever turn us down, so he was roped into spending most of high school with us.
At Isle O' Dreams one year, Tamar and I choreographed an incredible dance to "Bet On It" from High School Musical 2. We practiced it for ages with the idea that we would eventually film a sweet music video all over the peninsula and put it on youtube and be famous. Unfortunately we were evidently too funny, as all of the video footage is barely watchable due to how hard our cinematographers were laughing.
After one of many "Friends" marathons in my basement, Henry and I discussed the circumstances under which you might be able to pee on someone and remain their friend. (This was prompted by a particular episode, not just our own minds in case you were wondering) We agreed that should the time present itself in which such action is necessary, we would gladly take that step in the name of friendship.
Tamar and I found a bunch of romance novels in the little book collection up at Isle o' Dreams. Needless to say we stole them and read them aloud to each other, laughing at the ridiculous plots and even more ridiculous language. "Manroot" became a frequently used word in our vocabularies.
After I got a GPS for the first time, Henry and I decided to take it for a test drive. Our plan was to hop in the car and drive out as deep into the suburbs as we could get before we turned the GPS on and had it direct us home. We drove and drove, stopping to explore the creepiest suburban development either of us had ever seen, and marvel at an alien-looking power plant that glowed brightly in the surrounding darkness. Unfortunately my navigation skills were too good and we ended up not needing the GPS at all.
As long as I can remember, Thanksgiving has been a Heyman/Kaplan event. One year as we went around the table and said thanks, Tamar listed off a number of things that she was thankful for, the first of these being Barbie bras.
Henry, Anna, and I all sat together in Environmental Science senior year. I would often find myself in the midst of vicious doodle wars between the two of them, my notes serving as the battleground between their cats and crazy men and artistic poop doodles. It goes without saying that not a lot of learning went on at these times, but Ms. Houdek thought that we, Henry especially, were hilarious, and usually overlooked our blatant lack of attention.
Tamar and I always had wild plans for our summers up north. We would pack the most bizarre materials in anticipation of all the crazy antics we were going to get up to, but once we got there those antics would be quickly forgotten in favor of others. We were convinced that there was a dead body hidden under our bed in the Eagle Cabin (there was some very suspicious blood looking stuff on the curtain, definitely signs of a dead body), so one year we hauled up all of the things necessary for a seance. However, we weren't really sure how to have a seance, so our kit included candles, a corn husk doll, incense, and all of the "sort of supernatural" things we could find in our rooms (cool looking rocks, beads, chalk...). Fortunately for our friend The Body Under The Bed, we never actually tried to get in touch.
Henry and I would always plan our Heyman/Mackaman family reunions that would happen after our siblings got married. We agreed that they would be big and southern and with tons of food and music. We imagined ourselves as crazy old people, sitting on the porch, him smoking a pipe, me with my cat. We hung out one summer night on his porch, looking out on the thunderstorm happening around us while he smoked a pipe and we laughed because we were already doing what we thought we'd be doing 40 years later.
After our exciting foray into the world of late night skinny-dipping, Tamar and I decided that we had to up the risk. We planned all year to sneak out in the middle of the night and roast marshmallows in the sauna before skinny dipping in the pool. Unfortunately we discovered that the sauna gets locked after it is closed (surprise surprise) and we realized that not only was the pool completely lit, but someone was staying in the cabin directly overlooking it. Instead we returned to our room and ate plain marshmallows, Tootie Fruities (knock off Fruit Loops), and chocolate frosting straight from the can.
Henry, Abby, Anna, and I committed three days of our lives to watching all of the Back to the Future movies. From then on out they acted as the base substance of our relationship, and no matter what was going on in our lives we could always reconnect with a Back to the Future reference of some kind. One of the first times that we skyped after both getting to college, we proudly showed each other our Back to The Future posters in our respective bedrooms, and it eased the blow of being so far away from each other.
Tamar, Ananda, and I loved to get together and play board games. Among many others, a favorite of ours was Lord of the Rings Risk, a game which involved conquering each other, battles, a map of Middle Earth, and Spiffy Eagles. The trash talk that went down when one of us was trying to invade someone else's territory was legendary, and much of it centered around making fun of Ananda's imaginary prosthetic limbs. We also managed to play a game of Monopoly from start to finish (which Ananda won of course), something that I have never even attempted since them.
One of the ways that Henry and I stayed in touch throughout college, but especially that first semester was through music. We would send each other albums over Skype and then discuss them amongst everything else. However this was a little one sided because it was so difficult for me to find music that Henry didn't already have. One of my victories was The Avett Brothers's album "Emotionalism," one of my favorites. Soon after that Henry played a song off of it on his radio show, although whether he played it for me or because he liked it so much remains a mystery.
Tamar, Ananda, and I (plus the 'little kids' as we referred to them) decided to take out the paddle boats and have a pirate battle in the middle of the lake. This was an absolute thrill, we threw water filled sponge toys at each other and took turns abandoning our own ships to attack the enemy. However we were completely unaware of the fact that during this epic battle our paddle boats were slowly drifting to the other side of the lake. Suddenly we looked up and realized that we were practically beached at the boyscout camp on the farside of the lake and panicked ever so slightly. We started paddling furiously, but it was clear that the journey ahead of us was much greater than anything we were prepared for. One of the other families came out on their motor boat and tossed us a line, towing us back to shore.
One night I dragged Henry out on errands with me because I wanted to hang out with him but I had also been left in charge of my younger siblings for the evening. We had to go pick up Sophie from a play rehearsal, and decided on the way to stop and get a movie or two at Blockbuster for later on. We parked and were about to go in when Joe announced to the car that he had no shoes on because for whatever reason he had thought it perfectly dandy to walk out of the house without them. While I puzzled over how to negotiate the situation, as clearly Blockbuster was anti-barefoot children, Henry laughed and picked Joe up onto his back and proceeded to carry him into the store. To this day Joe has laid down the law: any future boyfriend of mine first has to prove himself by carrying him around Blockbuster sans shoes. (A task that gets increasingly difficult as Joe gets increasingly tall)
Tamar told us that there was legitimately someone named Laverne Fleshacker (spelling most likely very different) working at her school. We laughed uproariously at the name and promptly made her a character in all of our games, skits, and films. She was everything from a crazy old lady to a sexy spy. To this day I plan on using the name in a story of mine.
In senior year, our music department took a trip down to New Orleans for a few days where we immersed ourselves in the jazz and culture that saturates the city. On our last night we took a river cruise down the Mississippi as the sun set and the city lit up around us. There was a band playing live jazz on the boat, and Henry and I tried to swing dance, although considering our limited knowledge of the actual steps it was mostly made up of us laughing and creating steps of our own.
It was a Hanukkah tradition that every year Tamar and I (and Mary and everyone else) would write down our predictions about what was going to happen in the coming year and then hide them away until the next Hanukkah. It was one of our very favorite parts of the celebration, especially the point when we finally deemed it time to dig through Tamar's room and find the sheets of paper from last year. Reading through our predictions was hilarious, because it, more than anything else, showed us how much we had grown and matured over the course of the year. What had seemed perfectly normal or relevant at that point last year was almost always silly and absurd by the next year. Some of the best were the predictions we made about other people - who would date who, who would do what. We never disappointed ourselves with our wit.
Henry happened to live near one of our high school teachers (I won't specify because ya know... the internet) and one day we decided to stalk said teacher on the way to breaking into the playground of a private school nearby. We found their house and realized that there was a window that looked into the basement. Carefully, we crept through the garden and peered into the window - and behold! There was said teacher. It was so bizarre to see them out of the Central High element, that we ran for it.
Tamar is the reason that anyone at central ever even heard the word "cat." Tamar was super into lolcats and speaking in catspeak and general cat things, and after spending a week with her at Isle O Dreams I was sucked in as well. It always seemed so much more natural for her, and I felt like a copycat (harharhar pun somewhat intended), but she never minded. In fact she was absolutely thrilled that I was carrying the catz phenomenon across the city. People came to know me as "the lolcat girl," but the real lolcat girl was always Tamar.
One of the last times I ever hung out with Henry was over Thanksgiving break. We made plans to meet at Anna's house and all catch up since it had been a while since we all spent time together. However, not long before we were supposed to meet, Henry sent me a text informing me that in a rather hilarious turn of events he had in fact been drinking with his mom and was no longer fit to drive. I swung by and picked him up and the three of us sat by the fire and drank wine (although mostly Henry entertained Anna and me with his tipsy ramblings and fart jokes).
Tamar read more than anyone I had ever met. I tried so hard to keep up with her, but there was just no way. She could breeze through a book in absolutely no time whatsoever, and then pick up the next one and keep going. Every year she would bring a huge bag of books from the library up to the lake. I would always wonder how she would possibly get through all of them, and yet she always did. Some of the best times were the times that both of us were reading. Every few minutes we would shift positions, adopting the craziest reading poses - upside down, buried in blankets, on the floor, every way you could possibly think to sit in a chair, we tried them all.
One time Abby and I made plans to hang out with Henry, but when we got to his house, he was nowhere to be found. We texted him and looked around, but it was clear that he was not at the door like he promised he would be. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he sprung out of a tree at us. We were absolutely terrified, but did not hesitate to make fun of him for being a crazy brooding man that hides in trees and watches young girls. Henry was, of course, happy to adopt this persona.
Tamar and I would put on performances at all of the holidays. I took them much more seriously than she did so, given that they were all completely improvised, they always took dramatic turns for the ridiculous. One year I recall that I played the pilgrims and Tamar played the turkey that was going to be served for the first Thanksgiving. Our play consisted of me hunting Tamar, and then doing a long and very creative victory dance once she was served.
Henry and I had a knack for inventing activities with the strange assortment of toys that had been abandoned in the depths of my basement. One time when we were meant to be studying math we decided instead to build towers with the cardboard blocks that were lying around and take turns shooting stuffed animals off the top of them with my brother's wooden bow and arrow. A couple years later, we found ourselves in the basement once again and discovered a basket full of marble maze pieces. We vowed to use every piece in the basket and succeeded.
These barely begin to encapsulate all of the amazing things that we did together and the memories that we made, but I had to start somewhere! I am back in Ireland now, and I feel close to them here. There is music everywhere, life everywhere, and yet deep down there is an understanding of great sadness. In studying traditional Irish songs, I have come across a fair few that are about loved ones dying. They are sad, of course, but it is the sadness that makes them so beautiful. Traditionally, Irish singers will sing a cappella so that your focus is entirely on the voice and the words. The best singers are not the ones with the sweetest voices, but instead the ones that convey the emotions of the music best. If there is a place to mourn, it is Ireland.
I may add to these as I think of further memories to share. If you are reading this and you think of something that should be added, write it in a comment or something! I think sharing stories is one of the very best ways to find happiness even in the darkest of times. (Does that almost sounds like a Harry Potter quote? That almost sounds like a Harry Potter quote).
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| We became friends because we are both so unphotogenic clearly. |
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| This almost captures the insane happy mess that was our existence each summer. |
