My Bestie Bonne
The other day I heard “Red Ragtop” by Tim McGraw, a song where he sees a girl in a red convertible at a stoplight, and he remembers his high school girlfriend that he knocked up. That song totally reminds me of my friend Bonne because this one time we saw Tim McGraw in concert right after he released one of his best frickin’ albums, “Tim McGraw + the Dancehall Doctors”, and it was AWESOME.
Speaking of knocked up, I remember Bonne the night she was pregnant with her third child Hanna, and she dropped me off at my apartment in Big Sandy, and as we sat talking in the dark, her truck idling, she said, “Blah blah blah, and you’re my best friend, and blah blah blah” and my black heart grew at least three sizes when she said that, because I don’t think I’d ever been anybody’s best friend before.
I met Bonne in 1997 when her husband Thomas, who I worked with, said, “You need to meet Bonne,” so – with reservations – I schlepped over to their trailer for beer and cards one night and there she was, all blonde hair and blue eyes and beautiful, with her two small grade-school kids (who I’ve now seen married off), and I fell in sister love right then and there.
I brought Daisy to East Texas for the first time a few years later: she piddled all over their house and crawled all over their furniture, and Bonne didn’t say a word. There was that time a few years before that, after a night of cards, Bonne called me the next day and said, “Thomas gave me a foot rub last night. I think I’m pregnant,” and I was like, “Nooooo, really? From a foot rub?” and she was like, “Oh yeah,” and she was! Then there was that time that she gave me Trevor and Savanna to keep while she and Thomas went to the hospital to have Hanna, and my black heart grew another three sizes because she trusted me with her two kids while she went off to have another one.
There’re a million other memories over 25 years, most of them out in East Texas: oddly enough, most of them involve some kind of bon- or cooking fire since we’re all a bunch of pyros. Some of the memories are in Dallas at my house or in Austin at Savanna’s house or in Minnesota at camp or in Arkansas in God’s house camping and swimming and giggling over glasses of her “special” homemade lemonade. But most of my memories are at her house in Big Sandy, which is as familiar to me as my own. I know where the old towels are kept, you see.
Running through all those memories is Bonne giving, because that’s her trademark: she gives. If you are fortunate enough to know her, you’d better expect to be given to generously: flowers, food, coffee, hugs, wine, giggles, corn salad and best of all, her friendship.
Today, it’s all about you, Bonne. Love you. Happy birthday!!! I’m still planning to one day buy some land in East Texas where we can retire and sit on our porches and listen to Thomas play his guitar until we get super old, and then if you need me to comb your hair and feed you oatmeal because you’ve lost all your teeth, I will, assuming I even still have my own marbles at that point.
