Steve Nelson

Memories Built For Two: Bicycling with Steve Nelson

Erin5 Comments

The letter waited more than thirty years to be found. Hidden in a shoebox, nestled in the middle of a pile of correspondence, it appeared just when I needed to find it, confirming a memory I’d begun to doubt.

Events had jumbled in the fog that occasionally shrouds my history, and I’d found myself wondering if I’d transposed people and places. The phantom recollection had haunted me, convincing me that I’d willed it into existence, finding comfort in a false memory’s sun-filled days.

But a winter afternoon spent rummaging through ancient cards and letters pushed all doubts away. The proof sat in a typed, two-page letter I’d written to my sister Kelly on August 23, 1982.

“Steve and I rented a bicycle built for two,” the letter read and went on to describe a long weekend that Steve Nelson spent with my family in Sun Valley, Idaho, right around his 16th birthday on August 18th.

The letter recounted a weekend outdoors in which we biked, walked, jogged, shopped, ate (frequently and in large quantities), and saw the movie Tron. A flat tire put an end to the biking, so we rented a paddleboat, allowing our motion-filled days to continue.

There was nothing artful about the writing, which, quite embarrassingly, even included a flatulence joke. The letter lacked substance and description, and none of our conversations were captured in any detail. Yet, I’m sure our chatter was incessant. We laughed and argued, equally annoyed and pleased with each other.

It spoke of a weekend, buried beneath insipid teenage writing, of intense companionship. No one else was mentioned; our friendship was the focus.

“Steven looked great,” I wrote at the end. “He even acquired a tan.”

I put the letter down and dug farther into the box of memories during that chilly afternoon. A few cards from grandparents, aunts, and uncles were set aside to keep. The rest were discarded, the teenage angst in some of the letters so palpable it practically seeped onto the table.

But I kept returning to my weekend with Steve. Had something more than coincidence led me to the box, just a few months before the anniversary of his death?

Fate? Perhaps.

The hand of God? Maybe.

I’m always looking for such signs, something that will show me grace, the presence of God in our everyday lives. And I’m prone to believe in spiritual signals. If nothing else, finding that letter brought Steve back to me, along with a contemplation on the nature of friendship and aging.

Seasons compress as I grow older. A lunch visit more than 25 years ago feels like a handful of months; a phone conversation two years previous seems like yesterday. Misled by time and pushed apart by distance, people scatter and forget, taking for granted that there will be another opportunity for renewal.

But there are some relationships, particularly the ones forged long ago and sharing in a certain recognition and intimacy, in which those factors do not seem to matter. Their tensile strength is beyond measure.

And so I’ve learned that the people we love never truly leave us, whether they are absent because of physical geography or the geography of death. Our relationships alter to allow for that change, but they are near us, always, permanent residents in our hearts and minds. Steve’s vibrancy, idiosyncratic ways, survive in all who loved him.

Paddling last summer on the Pine River, I imagined Steve kayaking behind me, my single boat transformed into a tandem. He chattered in my mind, his paddle resting on the lip of the kayak as he spoke. Then all was quiet, and I pictured us together watching a turtle slip off a log into the river’s current.

He laughed, rubbing his hands together, a mannerism from our childhood, and we argued about politics or a book or something inconsequential before moving on to where we’d eat after the paddle. And then we reminisced about a summer weekend spent in Sun Valley during 1982, and a shoebox of memories that led me back to him.

His presence resonated around me, so real, I turned around in my boat, expecting to see him. The space was empty, but for a clutch of black-and-white dragonflies, chalk-fronted corporals, drawn to the heat reflected off my boat, just as I’m drawn to an invisible presence, who continues to radiate his originality and love to all who knew him.

Hitchhiking Across the Galaxy: Memories of Steve Nelson

Erin25 Comments

In the beginning, Steve was just a boy at the bus stop, befriending me during my first week at a new school district, but after only a short time, his companionship wove its way into the fabric of my life, a colorful thread binding us together. My adventures with Steve grew into an integral part of my youth, vital memories that I carry everywhere, and without them, I think a part of my childhood would unravel altogether, vanishing forever.

He approached me, almost forty years ago, while I was sitting at the curb, waiting for the school bus. A total book nerd, I hid behind a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind, and hoped, yet also dreaded, that someone might talk to me and pull me out of my shyness.

Steve had no such reservations. He launched into a discussion of the movie with opinions about Clark Gable or Vivien Leigh or a combination of both. I quickly learned that Steve had lots of opinions. Some I agreed with–some simply annoyed me–but I always appreciated our conversations. And now, looking back after all these years, I wish I could remember the particulars of our rambling talks, lost forever in the shadows of my memory.

But I do remember an immediate recognition, a feeling that Steve and I shared something beyond our ages and hometown. Perhaps it was an appreciation for the whimsical or an expansive imagination or maybe even a mutual fragility.

Regardless, our friendship transformed from bus-stop conversations to after-school visits to long days spent together during summer vacations. And it’s those latter memories that come to me the most, the specifics somewhat lost to time, but as much a part of me as the feeling of Idaho’s sun baking my arms or grass pricking at my bare feet.

The schedule was simple: swim team for me followed by mornings with Steve, playing Monopoly or “Cheat” Sorry, our own version of the game in which players were allowed to move their game-piece extra spaces if their opponent didn’t notice.

When we tired of board games, we explored the cliffs overlooking the Boise River behind my house or played croquet, adding an occasional “Cheat Sorry” move by nudging the ball along with our feet. We even went through a short, disastrous phase of learning how to bake soufflés and a much more disastrous attempt at brewing our own herbal teas, all efforts equally dreadful.

And with every day, every new activity, Steve brought his own unique brand of enthusiasm and curiosity, firmly cemented in kindness and patience.

HitchhikersGuideNever more so than we initiated a book club of sorts, just the two of us, reading science fiction like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. We consumed the novel; or rather it consumed us, until all we could talk about was our desire to hitchhike across the universe with Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Our imaginings became so vivid, so real, that I could actually see us exploring galaxies with our two fictional heroes.

But my galaxy-traveling friend, the boy from the bus stop, is gone now, murdered almost a week ago. Even as I write these words, my own fingers tapping on the keys, I can’t believe it’s possible. It has to be a macabre fiction, created by a cruel mind, but the evil was real.

I won’t go into the specifics of his death—the details have been covered on various Boise-area media outlets—but I will say that the men responsible must be punished to the full extent of the law.

At the end, my dear friend exhibited a courageous clarity, in evidence even when we were young, by identifying his assailants, which led the police to several arrests and hopefully saved countless others from brutality.

They might have taken away my childhood companion, a man whose huge heart and kindness reached many, but his presence will always reside within me through endless memories. In my mind, I see him befriending a lonely 11-year-old at the bus stop and making that girl laugh with his original comments. But most of all I see him with his thumb out, hitchhiking his way around the galaxy, buzzing past stars, and conquering new planets, fully immersed in the joy of exploration.