When your first friend from first grade gets married, how you could be anywhere but there?

The kid on the right got married last week. The one in the middle was his best man. 

Lee Hanig (whom I have long thought of as my son) and Charlie (who really is) have been friends since first grade at St. Mark's School of Texas. Charlie's last name starts with a G and Lee's with an H, so there ya' go. 

The boys remained close through lower school and middle school, playing on the same or opposing sports teams; going on birthday campouts at my parents' farm (where the picture above was taken with my other all-but-son, Luke Smith); laughing and whispering and being total goofballs.

Then after Lee performed at the ninth-grade orchestra recital, he told Charlie he was leaving St. Mark's to attend Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts. Charlie, who did not inherit even a sliver of his mother's crying gene, cried and cried. 

"It shattered my world," he says.

The next few years, the two played a little club volleyball together and both worked at The Purple Cow restaurant. Keeping up a friendship while in different high schools and having different interests, though, is challenging. Their college choices were thousands of miles apart; their experiences about as spread out, too.

Still, friends are friends; brothers (which is what Charlie considers Lee to be) brothers. And months without communication, they discovered, can be finger-snapped away by sharing a cabin in Colorado.

The first time Lee went with us to the YMCA of the Rockies, he and Charlie were a month away from third grade. The most recent was two summers ago.

As a hiking kid, Lee amused us with his lollygagging, all the while licking on giant lollipop for sustenance. As a hiking adult, he sped up a little, switching to one giant baguette to sustain him for miles- and hours-long hikes. Charlie's backpack, on the other hand, was crammed with thick meat-and-cheese sandwiches, fruit, protein bars.

My family has always adored Lee. He is so...Lee. 

I can't remember him calling me, my sisters, brothers-in-law or my mom by anything other than our first names. While in Colorado with us, he immerses himself in the general hilarity of game nights; does jigsaw puzzles by the hour to the delight of my mother. He plays his guitar and sings with no prodding, also to the delight of my mother.

Lee played the guitar at my niece Julie's wedding, which was held at the Y of the Rockies. Lee is the one who told my mother that yes, we could stop at a dispensary ("I'm curious," Mom said) to just look around. But he put his foot down at her buying a lollipop and most certainly at trying to take a plant on the plane home ("I just want to see if I could grow it.")

Charlie last saw Lee almost two years ago. Charlie had stopped in Boston, where Lee and his then-girlfriend Fran lived, on the way to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Maine. 

When Lee and Fran got engaged earlier this year, he asked Charlie to be one of his groomsmen.

Charlie initially said a resounding yes. But this year has been kind of tough for us financially. Charlie's part-time job doesn't leave much for extras, and a month ago, he had to pay $700 for his car's air conditioning to be fixed. I was laid off in January and couldn't be much help. 

So Charlie called Lee to tell him he wouldn't be able to swing a trip to Boston. I knew Charlie was disappointed, but he assured me it was OK. He'd record a toast; Lee's mom Deb said she'd make sure it was shown at the rehearsal dinner.

Then around noon on Saturday, 18 hours before the wedding, I read the toast Charlie had sent me. It made me cry. I called my sister Susan and read it to her. And maybe one of us said it first; maybe we said it in unison. But the crux was this: "Charlie has to go to Lee's wedding."

So he did. We found a fare that wasn't outlandish and Deb said Charlie could share a hotel room with her brother. Charlie and I dashed out and found a suit on sale; alterations were completed by 7 p.m. Charlie boarded his flight 12 hours later and arrived in Boston four hours before the wedding to be Lee's best man.

Deb and Fran knew Charlie was coming, but Lee didn't. In true Lee fashion, he didn't seem all that surprised. But during the ceremony, Charlie told me, Lee turned to him and quietly said, "I'm so glad you're here."

And in a Facebook note the next day, Fran wrote: "Lee was so happy Charlie was there."

So there you have it. No moral here, unless it's that elbow to your ribs reminder: No one knows you as well as your childhood friends. I started to say "other than family," but maybe they know you even better...and maybe that's because they are family.

What else can you do but make sure those mountains and miles and laughter and tears and teams and games and sandwiches and baguettes -- that they all count for something. Something strong, something beautiful, something everlasting. 

And you go ahead and spend money you don't have; you say thank you to a couple of loved ones for being so generous. Because this is one of those times when you just have to be there. For friendship. For brotherhood. For love. 

Seizure-ing the day

For a few weeks, perhaps a month or so, after my son Charlie had a seizure and spent three days in the ICU, I kept a keen, not always subtle, eye on him. That wasn't hard, because he wasn't allowed drive for three months and thus, was in my passenger seat a lot.

His neurologist -- whom we adored anyway, but even more so because he gave us good news -- was all but certain Charlie wouldn't have another seizure. But in the hospital last year, those days and nights, heart-lifting though they turned out to be, also had plenty of scary moments. Plus, being a worrier in general, I sometimes had to bite my tongue to keep from asking, "Are you OK?" too many times within a day.

There was no telling what had caused everything to go a little haywire in Charlie's brain. Maybe it was stress. Maybe exhaustion. Or, as Dr. Ronald Bell, his neurologist, said, "sometimes it feels like an act of God."

We non-medical types stopped trying to figure it out, stopped starting our sentences with, "I wonder if it could've been..." We just stepped back and let time pass. Charlie was given the OK to drive. He moved back to Colorado, where he immersed himself in working and in hiking as he had for the two previous summers.   

I loosened my grip on those remembrances and worries I had grasped so tightly, gently wrapping each in a box labeled "yesterday." I knew where they were, but unless something jolted my memory -- brushing up against the shirt I was wearing the morning Charlie had his seizure, perhaps -- they simply stayed in their little cocoon.

They began rustling just a little when Charlie moved home from Colorado in January. He was taking classes at TWU, studying to become a personal trainer, working about 30 hours a week at a German delicatessen. He was going to the gym after work, getting home around 10, eating late, and getting less sleep than I wanted to know about.

The week of July 4, Charlie was scheduled to work seven days in a row, and I could all but hear the jostles of that wrapped-up box of remembrances and worries. Charlie was exhausted; too tired even to exercise, which was so unlike him. July 3, he started work at 6 a.m., had barely 20 minutes to eat his lunch, and got home around 4:30. 

A couple of hours later, while I was having dinner with Mom and my sisters, he called.

"Did I work today?" he asked. And then, "Do I work tomorrow?" And then, "I don't remember driving home."

I left the table and rushed home. At first Charlie said he felt better, then complained of a headache and threw up. I called his internist, who said, "Something's not right." 

A wiped-out Charlie awaits test results while camped out in the rather chilly ER.

Charlie, his dad and I spent five hours in the emergency room, where Charlie had a CT scan and a huge IV dripped its contents into his body. We came home well after midnight and, I confess, Charlie slept in my bed and I slept on the floor next to it.

Five days later, we went for a follow-up appointment with his neurologist. Dr. Bell told us stories of his trip to Ukraine, and gave us a primer on European and Russian economics. We were held rapt, as we had been every time he came to Charlie's hospital room -- never in a hurry to leave; always a wealth of brain talk and fascinating stories. 

All this to finally say that Charlie is fine. Dr. Bell attributed Charlie's symptoms to heat stroke and to dehydration. Take breaks at work, he told Charlie. Sleep more. Make sure you drink plenty of water.

Charlie and Dr. Ronald Bell, his neurologist, sharing good news.

On the way home, Charlie -- who has been a bit in flux about what he wants his future to hold -- told me he has decided to return to Colorado. I am, quite honestly, thrilled. 

His decision, I believe, is a thank you of sorts -- to God, or perhaps to fate. To the stars. To the universe and, of course, to our beloved voice of calm and bearer of good news, Dr. Bell. 

What each or all of them bestowed upon Charlie is way more than an all-clear. Instead, it is a nudge, a wink, an admonition: To go where your heart is. To pursue what moves your soul. To revel in what quenches your spirit. 

So what better way to express utmost gratitude than to do just that?

Charlie, delighted to be 13,560 feet above sea level.

My carefully wrapped and stowed-away collection of worries has been silent since Charlie's follow-up appointment. And as tempted as I am to lug to the dumpster this box that only I can see, I'm instead going to let it stay where it is. 

Those three days in ICU were wrenching. Without a doubt, I have never, ever, ever been as scared in my entire life as when I found Charlie unresponsive after he had his seizure. I pray we never have to go through that again.

But you know what? It happened. And we came through. So I'm keeping that box, which holds more love and grace, more caring and smarts that I will never quite grasp. For that, I am beyond grateful. 

Which is why you couldn't begin to pry that crazy box from my soul, and certainly not from my heart.