I don’t think it’s very common for someone to sit you down and tell you, as a child, what love looks like. I think that’s okay–usually and hopefully, someone will show you.
I remember watching some show with my mom when I was in my early teens. A man and woman on screen were driving home–he was holding her hand with his right, while he steered with his left. When they pulled into their driveway, he reached over awkwardly, and shifted the car into park with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to keep holding hers.
My mom turned to me and asked, “Did you see that?”
I’d missed it completely. After explaining what happened, she said, “That was really something special.”
This tiny, insignificant, choreographed moment was what love looked like. I held onto that.
Have you seen the movie Aquamarine? It fucking slaps, and I’m deadly serious. When I say that movie was foundational to my understanding of love as a kid, I’m saying it with my chest.
The premise is this: A mermaid (Aquamarine) is granted her land-legs for three days. If someone does not confess their love to her within those three days, she’ll have to return to the ocean, FOREVER. Two lifelong best friends (human) find Aqua, and decide they have to help her.
We watch the two best friends help Aqua get glammed up and flirt with boys, hoping one might fall for her in time. What’s more interesting, though, is the connection between these two best friends. They are unconditional supporters of each other–they love each other, and it’s clear, and it’s simple.
I don’t feel good about using Toni Morrison to analyze a 2008 teeny bopper flic, but oh boy here I go. What comes to mind now, looking back at Aquamarine, is a famous phrase from Sula, “We was girls together.”
Earlier this week, I saw on social media that my best friend through the bulk of my teenage years got her doctoral degree. We haven’t thought about each other in years, assuredly, but still. I was choked up when I saw her post.
We used to sit on the carpet in her room, talking about what we wanted and what we didn’t want and what we maybe wanted, for hours. She wanted to be a doctor, and now she is.
I don’t believe in the word “admiration”. I think it’s a cop out–a word used to distance ourselves from anything appearing childish or emotionally naive. It’s also a word used out of fear that our feelings will be perceived as romantic when they’re something else entirely. It’s that something else that I feel exists between two people when they were girls together.
When we ask, what is friendship between women when unmediated by men–the answer isn’t admiration. It’s love. We were girls together, and expressing love was uncomplicated. There was no agenda, there was nothing we needed to do or say. It was simple.
At the end of Aquamarine, Aqua is rejected by the boy she wanted to love, and she runs out of time. Her legs turn into a tail, and the ocean is whisking her away. Our two human heroines swim out through typhoon-grade stormy seas to pull her back in, risking their lives in the process. When they get to Aqua, she asks them, “Why on Earth would you do that for me?” They answer, “Because we love you, Aqua.”
Suddenly, the ocean is still.
Girl Seeking Peanut Butter 