We’re mature adults of sound mind and body and have warm
relations with a host of imaginary friends. Well, not always warm, because
they’re six brilliant rapscallions with a penchant for getting into difficult
scrapes. Many is the time they’ve had us up past our usual 9 PM bed time, worried
about whether they’d return home safe from their risky adventures around the
world. And, one time, outer space.
It was March, 2020 when our energetic crew first came
to mind, when the pandemic was gaining steam and we, having been termed
medically high risk, began to isolate ourselves at home, venturing out only for
necessities.
We’re a couple of some thirty-nine years and pride
ourselves on being emotionally self-sufficient. For us, it was love at first
sight when we locked eyes over cubicle walls in the communications department
of a Transamerica insurance subsidiary. We became instant soulmates and
eventual business partners, working out of the house after leaving our
fast-paced L.A. corporate jobs for the Smoky Mountain foothills. To some, it
might seem a suffocating existence. For us, it was just right. Working
together, playing together and sleeping in the same bed meant that we were usually
within shouting distance 24/7. We didn’t possess a cell phone, so communication
was face-to-face.
Our home life was all good until Covid-19 arrived in
the U.S., first in nursing homes and then everywhere. By then, we had moved to
a fresh set of hills above Eugene, Oregon, just down the coast from the major
outbreaks among senior citizens in Washington State.
We’d thought we’d lucked into the perfect home for a
self-contained older couple with an intense aversion to dying from a
newly-coined disease. Perched on a steep
hill among tall pines on a private road, it offered a distant view of the
valley below. There, if one was inclined towards magical thinking, the virus
would stop, uninclined to tackle an arduous climb when so many potential
victims were within easy reach on level land.
And there were further protections. Our modest home
was on slight knoll above street level. Passersby couldn’t even see inside, let
alone cough an infection fifteen feet up and through a window.
Plus, our neighbors were similar to us: self-employed,
sans children; friendly, but readers, not revelers.
So, we settled in for the duration, figuring that it
would be measured in weeks. Afterwards, we could go back to our previous
lifestyle, which, frankly, wasn’t much different that our pandemic lifestyle.
But it hadn’t been forced upon us, which, we found out, made all the difference
in the world. There would be no more getaway weekends, no more long drives up
the Oregon Coast. At least, if you stopped. The region of seashell shops and
taffy pulls didn’t want visitors from the Covid-infested inlands. Gas up and
keep goin’, the mantra was.
So we stayed put without surcease. Books were our
panacea, the antidote to sameness. They allowed us to accompany 1930s gumshoes
as they solved heinous crimes, trod the Mexican badlands with Paul Theroux,
find lost civilizations in South America, crash land on Mars, and experience dystopian
futures unlike the one we foresaw as a result of current events.
We read on the couch, at the kitchen table, but mostly
in bed, snuggled under a down comforter, surrounded by three purring cats,
pleased by our inactivity. Only on occasion would the literary orgy be
interrupted, when Crazee or Hannah or Sara, in search of a more obtrusive
position, would curl up against a book, bringing even the most pulse-pounding
page turner to a halt.
Then our bedtime story took an unexpected turn. Smoke
and ash from Oregon’s raging fires invaded our once-impermeable home. Eyes ran.
Dust jackets became indistinct beneath thin films of carbonized Old Growth.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 lurched from unnerving chapter to chapter. Even simple
excursions to buy food or to gas-up become fraught.
Eventually, shopping anxiety became social anxiety,
which turned into generalized anxiety, the mother of them all. Misplacing a
bookmark became an event of major concern. A retching Crazee, probably from
consuming too much crab grass, elicited shrieks.
Melancholia followed. Our closeness, forever a solace,
began to grate. Our social dyad became comically circumscribed. We were like
hostages bound together face-to-face, inhaling the humid stench of each other’s
opprobrium. Personality characteristics that had once delighted became
gratuitous acts of tyranny.
We agreed on only one thing: books were no longer
enough. They were diverting, for sure, but we needed escapism of a more
personal sort, designed to meet our idiosyncratic needs.
It was moments after this epiphany that there was,
figuratively speaking, a knock on the back door. We peered out the kitchen
window. And there, in immaculate blue sweaters and pressed khaki shorts, were
six boyish figures of precisely the same physical stature. Their faces varied,
though, each a pleasing twist on classic boyish traits.
“May we borrow a cup of sugar?” one of them piped up.
He proffered a Pyrex measuring cup. His smile was ingratiating. Yet there was a
touch of mischief, as if this was just a set up for a monumental prank.
“We’re The Flakes,” he added, as if sensing our
unease. “We live right behind you.” He flashed the ingratiating smile again. In
fact, all six of them did.
Disarmed, we allowed them in. And thus, an imaginary
friendship began that has sustained us through over a year of emotionally
difficult times.
The Flakes, as we learned, resided in a compound among
the Doug Firs and blackberry snarls in our back yard. Consisting of a
whitewashed bunk house, one-room school, full gym, professional galley, outdoor
amphitheater and twenty-car garage, it was far too sprawling for the actual
space, but we ignored that.
The Flakes weren’t bound by our own faltering physical
and societal norms. They were the only students at the retro grade school in
the compound, furnished with solid oak desks, inkwells and a squeaky chalk
blackboard. Their instructors were a pair of Irish brothers who smoked clay
pipes, stashed whiskey behind the lectern and challenged the boys with a
curriculum an Oxford don would envy.
The Flakes were also billionaire entrepreneurs,
running a successful business empire when
their homework was done. Called Splat
Inc., after a malleable substance they’d come up with during chemistry
class, the company was multi-pronged. Splat was as tasty as ice cream and as
strong as tank armor, just two of its countless uses.
Which is not say The Flakes ignored athletics. Put
through their paces by a taskmaster known only as Coach, the boys typically
left gym class dead on their feet. A sample workout was three hundred
Marine-style push-ups on the bottom of the swimming pool, followed by a
bruising rugby match in thigh-high mud.
During school break, The Flakes embarked on adventures
so dangerous they included coffins in their luggage. Ever considerate of our
needs, they didn’t want us left with a mess should something go wrong.
They also thrilled us with quarterly sporting
competitions against top teams from across the globe. Sponsored by notorious
figures ranging from Vladimir Putin to Elon Musk the opposing teams employed
every dirty trick in the book. Yet The Flakes always came home with the gold.
All of which kept us distracted from the sputtering
trajectory of our own lives; the fears, both real and, yes, imagined. For one
of the ironic things about the era of the pandemic was the dreadful fantasies
it engendered of traumas even more spectacular than we were currently suffering.
In that way, The Flakes are entertaining, imaginary
friends that help offset the visions of unthinkable woes.
This was never more evident than just after New
Year’s, when our beloved cat Crazee became violently ill and had to be put
down. Suffering from both asthma and diabetes, she been on a medical roller
coaster for eighteen months. We’d nursed her through countless sleepless nights,
until nothing helped anymore.
The house was empty without her. And then, a few days
later, there was another knock at the back door. It was The Flakes back for
another cup of sugar. And there, weaving between their legs was Crazee. Then a
barely visible something attracted
her attention and Crazee scrambled away, batting at something only she could
truly see. We were thrilled to see her alive and thriving in a new world, even
though it was only a comforting illusion, a product of our minds.
Our imaginary friends serve a need and we are grateful
and unembarrassed to have them in our lives. How long they will be with us, we
don’t know. Will they move on to greater things when the pressures on us
decline? Who knows? All we can say about The Flakes is that they and the
open-ended universe they offer are good for us now. They’re an integral part of
our bond with each other, our love.
By:
Anonymous
