"Time gives life meaning"
White Lotus and Labor Day in Lytton Springs
Laurie, one of three aging “cougars” in the third season of White Lotus, gives a moving monologue in the last episode. The beautiful, wealthy upper class girlfriends all grew up together and have just gone on to have had one hell of a week at a wellness resort in Thailand. If you watch the rest of the season, you’ll know the words are delivered with a grain of salt, but nevertheless, she made me cry as my plane approached the shores of LA. I binge watched the entire season on the ride over from Sydney. I love White Lotus so hard.
”I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning,” she said to her friends, among other beautiful words.
Day four in America, day three in Bastrop County Texas with Ivey Lynn, my oldest bestie, that specific line from Laurie’s speech came to me.
Last night on her couch we scrolled through photos and tried to semi organize our memories together, a much harder task than we realized as we continued to come up with moment after moment from our shared histories.
”Where was that photo taken?”
”What year was that? Was this in DC?”
”The dates can’t be right here; I posted this much later than it happened.”
So much of a timeline to comb through, one of the rare benfits of Facebook. There were the many times she came to visit me when I worked at the cave in Kentucky; I was able to take her on her first caving trip. There was the time when, while still in high school, I went with her and her mom to visit her Aunt in New Jersey. We drove up and broke down on the way back and climbed a mountain in between.
Ivey and I both grew up in South Carolina. I became close with her when I was in 10th grade and she was in 9th at White Knoll High School. We first met each other when I noticed her walking during break wearing a pair of fairy wings she’d made herself out of coat hanger wire and pantyhose. I asked her if she would make me some too. She agreed. I probably paid her something like $10 and a friendship bloomed that is now approaching a quarter of a century.
She came to visit me when I was studying abroad in Northern Ireland, she came for a mere week to visit me in Australia, with four days put aside for air travel alone, the longest holiday she’s ever had. I have stopped in many times to see her on the way to see my family. We have danced across Austin and we have hiked, camped and rock climbed across Western North Carolina. I could go on and we did last night.
“Remember when Couchsurfing first got started, and we decided to try it out on a random trip to Charlotte?”
”Oh my god, I had forgotten, but yes! Remember how much fun it was?!”
”We requested to couchsurf the night they were having a party. A person dressed as a banana opened the door to us and shouted ‘COUCHSURFERS’ to which the entire crowd within the house joyfully replied ‘COUCHSURFERS’!”
Once she was at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee, and I was up the road in Kentucky. She called me one night, and she was not having a great time. I left Bowling Green the next morning to go get her. I called my Aunt Janet who lived in the nearby town of Christiana to see if we could come hang out with her and my cousin Amanda.
Before I had even finished explaining the situation, Janet had interrupted me,
”Come on!” she said.
And so we went and stayed with them and left the chaos of Bonnaroo behind. More strange and sensational memories occurred from there including Ivey, myself and two of our friends driving around for hours in my 3-seater Ford Ranger, (yes four of us) trying and failing to find the Jack Daniels Distillery and Museum. This was clearly before Google Maps.
As soon as Covid laws lifted in Australia, Ivey was one of the first people I went to see, after my immediate family. My brother and I drove from Kentucky to Austin to see her. She was in her last week of pregnancy, about to become a mom, and I was feeling such relief to be able to travel again after two years of not seeing my family. It was a rare, quiet and beautiful time. Early January and freezing cold, between masks, Covid tests and French Press coffee, I maintain that that week in Texas with Ivey was the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life.
Two years later I came back for another visit. She had covid, and I tested positive the next day (we’re certain I caught it before I got to her.) Not that sick, we just hung out and laid low, but once I knew I had it too, it wasn’t so bad because I could finally hug her.
Ivey is a mom to a darling daughter now, and has been for a while. Yesterday I went to brunch at the lovely Comfort Cafe with Ivey, her mom and her daughter and afterwards I watched daughter and Grandma play on the playground. When Ivey and I were growing up, her Mom made us grilled cheese sandwiches in little red baskets, when I would sleepover, like we were eating at a diner. I remember Ivey’s chubby kitty cat that we affectionately called William Howard Taft (he also had a thing for bathtubs). I remember how Ivey came to Hilton Head Island with my family one summer and it rained the entire time. We wanted to sneak off and get tattoos to do something exciting in the midst of our rainy day blues, but alas we were probably like 16, and it did not happen. A few years later I was there to watch Ivey get her lip pierced in Asheville. It was through Ivey I learned about Unitarian Universalism. She came with me to do peanut butter and jelly days at New Hope Christian Fellowship, where the adults drove the kids through downtown handing out PB&Js to anyone who wanted them. It was with Ivey I took my first yoga class, and 20 years later I would do hours of yoga on her porch, under the guiding eye of her many wonderful pets.
It’s labor day today in USA. Ivey had the day off and we went out for tacos in Lytton Springs and had a little picnic. We looked at beautiful old live oak trees. Then the three of us came back and watched movies on the couch. Tonight we’ll go out for one more night in town before I fly to Atlanta in the morning.
Nostalgia and sentimental-ness runs strong in the Morris family. Probably does in all families. Every time another year goes by, I’m closer to death and more aware that life is precious. Like Laurie said, jaded as she may be, the longer we live, the more we understand that time gives things meaning.
This Substack started out as a story about the history of Lytton Springs, but clearly I had other things on my mind. Until next time, my sweet Ives, whenever that may be!
You are lucky to have each other. And we're lucky to have you!