Deb left my life with a bang of emotion almost two years ago, the ending fittingly violent and dramatic for a 17-year friendship I could best characterize as big. Big laughs, big adventures, big dramas, big transitions. And big hangovers.

On the day we ended, a void formed, just as I'd known it would. My wild friend was gone.

Other friends and I enjoyed wild times, but Deb was truly wild. Untamable, unstoppable, with no time or patience for the words "can't", "shouldn't" or "won't."

These friends are like sugar. Sweet, addictive, instantly satisfying but not always the most fulfilling. Those most healthy, solid friendships come with intense, riveting conversations, solid advice and unwavering patience in spite of emotional turmoil - vital amenities not always found in those delicious, almost sinful relationships.

Some other friends, particularly men, will not like them. Others will warn you against them. You may even agree. Yet you return, time and again.

So it was with Deb. Hers was a life of hard knocks and an I-will-be-happy-damnit attitude. In the end, that was our undoing.

But Deb's story, though it will be told soon, isn't the focus of this writing.

It's my neighbor, my new wild friend. My new bit of sugar.

She lives four doors down the street from me. She is a tall, lean brunette with a husky voice, a salty vocabulary, a boob job, a four-bedroom house, two dogs and a car she cannot drive. Pam lost her license after an alcohol-related traffic accident that should have killed her but left her alive and in debt to the legal and medical systems.

Yet she celebrates life. Like Deb, she sees above the hurdles that would knock, and keep, most of us down for a very long time. She acknowledges them, then shrugs them off in favor of a beer and a serious session of gossip, tied with throaty, genuine laughter.

These past two weeks, we have spent hours together, and the bond has quickly formed. Suddenly, the missing pieces of my friendship circle are clicking back into place. A cast of unique characters again fills my life. A fellow soccer mom - thoughtful and sweet - and my marketing partner - who knows neither fear or man she cannot charm - have come into focus as central figures in my daily existence. My phone, sometimes silent for an entire weekend during our year at the apartment, sounds again with the achingly beautiful voices of friends.

But either Deb made me more alert, or I am simply a sadder and wiser girl. So soon into this promising adventure, I see red flags.

Two weeks ago, shots and beers appeared as if out of nowhere when a group of us danced into the wee hours at a downtown bar. Later, she admitted it had been her and that she hadn't had the money to do it. "Sometimes," she said, "you've just got to do those things."

A week later, we stoppped in for a single beer on a sunny patio. It was my treat, I said, and watched in shock as she ordered shots. It was $40 I did not have to spend, yet seeing her smile and laugh until her eyes sparkled with tears, I decided it was worthwhile.

She told me yesterday she is 11 days from not having a home, with insufficient money to pay even for groceries. In a sluggish economy, her career as a mortgage broker has all but died. She cleans three houses weekly, and expected $100 cash from one of her employers the next day. It was enough, she said, to buy dog food and a little food. And that was all. Her last mortgage payment was made only because a friend put it on his credit card, she said. She had no idea how she would repay him.

She wept, and I ached for her. My mind began churning with suggestions, ways I might help her, something I could do to ensure my new friend swam to the surface and stayed in our quirky neighborhood.

She would not, I reassured her, be homeless. She and her dogs could stay with us, if worse came to worse.

I begged her to leave the house and come with me to a meeting of a group called the Barstool Philosphers - a monthly gathering in which people far smarter than I meet to talk about current events. A small fix for a a former journalist who once heard such conversations daily; I find this gathering almost a lifeline. Even though I doubted she'd find it truly engaging, it would get her out of the house, I reasoned, and give her something else to think about.

With her seeming ability to adapt and enjoy any situation, she did just that.

She tossed out trivia that stumped all of them and laughed at their befuddlement. She charmed them. I saw it in their faces. My admiration and affection for her grew. She stepped out of the car last night with a smile and a quip.

This evening, she called.

"I'm at a bar," she said. "Come play with me!"

But my house, with its bare walls and a few dirty surfaces, had my attention for the evening. When I refused, she insisted.

"I got paid today! I'll buy! I owe you," she said.

My heart sank.

"But honey, you don't have the money to do that."

"No, I'm OK," she said. "I picked up a couple extra cleaning jobs for next week. I've got money!"

I turned her down again, and finally, she relented.

I thought of her yesterday tears. I thought of the friend whose credit card held her mortgage. I thought of the angst I felt for her.

When our troubles get too ridiculously large for us to see daylight, we escape in any way we can. Some of us to exercise, some to work, others to laughter and the company of others. I understood why she was at the bar, instead of home counting pennies.

But life is a series of choices, a maze of intersections in which we constantly choose directions. Hopefully, we pick the right ones more often than not, the ones that lead us on a jagged but upward course. Like pennies, the wrong choices add up.

I care about her now perhaps even more than I did. The caretaker in me, the one that often seduces me down my own overgrown paths, is awake and on alert for this woman who has already brought so much light to my life.

But a tiny roadblock went up inside me when our conversation ended. A bit of me closed off to her.

It's an effort - no doubt - at self protection. For the insight I may not have had just two or three years ago, I am grateful. For the dented faith it took to gain it, and for the bit of air it releases from the hopeful balloon of this new friendship, a small part of me mourns.

Robby and the neighbor kids at the new house

My father is a curmudgeon. I've written this before, but in case you've forgotten, and lest you think I'm cruel, here are a couple of incidents that should serve to reinforce that statement.

When I went home for my class reunion, my mother - so frightened of my dad's rigid behavior and the impact it could have on not only us but herself - paid for us to stay in a hotel room in "downtown" Bloomington. Bloomington is population 702, down from 747 when I was a wee girl there. The "hotel room" has had several previous incarnations - once as a medical clinic (which perhaps explained the florescent lights that exposed our every enlarged pore) and more recently as an apartment. The accommodations were comfortable, and really, who needs TV or phone, or cell reception for that matter.

My sister, her two kids, me and Robby stayed there two nights, on Mom. There was no talking her out of it, or reimbursing her.

But my final night in Bloomington, my sister and her children having left for their home, Robby and I stayed with our folks.

I knew the routine. Lights out at 9:40. No talking beyond that point. No sitting in the glider, which is Dad's chair, right down to the stain from his greasy head. I knew what to do, and more importantly, what not to do.

I pissed him off anyway.

My first mistake was in putting a bag of cheese into the refrigerator. I'd picked up several to take home to Colorado. Rather thoughtlessly, I suppose, I found a spot for them on a middle shelf and tucked the bag behind the milk.

My dad called out from his glider seat around the corner. "Helene!" he shouted to my mom. "She didn't put that cheese on that middle shelf, did she?"

My mom grimaced. "No, Carl, I'm sure she didn't."

"She sure as hell better not have," he grumbled.

Asking Mom, apparently, was easier than addressing me directly.

"Mom," I whispered, "I did put it on the middle shelf."

Her grimace turned into a frown. I saw mild panic flit across her 81-year-old face. These were expressions of which she no doubt was unaware; she'd been making them for the entire 50 years of their marriage.

She opened the refrigerator door.

"I'll do it," I said, moving toward her.

"No," she said, waving me off. "Let me."

I watched as she shoved, stacked and otherwise renegotiated items within the refrigerator to make room for the large brown cheese-filled bag on a lower shelf.

As she completed her task, we heard the sound of Dad's boots hitting the kitchen's linoleum floor. These were the same style of boots he'd worn for years on the farm. Leather, above-the-calf lace-ups, far sturdier than needed for a man whose most difficult daily activity was walking loops round his basement - my dad's version of exercise.

He yanked open the refrigerator door to inspect it for himself. I heard him exhale through his nose, a sound of unwarranted disgust. "Sure as hell better not put that on that middle shelf. It can't take it."

With the commission of this grevious error, I became an object of suspicion.

Scarcely 10 minutes later, Dad was up again.

"Jane," he beckoned me with his index finger. "Come 'ere."

My dad has been bent with age for many years, yet his stride is nearly as long and purposeful as ever. Unfortunately, this lends him a comedic posture, particularly at a time like this - when he strode down the hallway, boots clomping, on a mission I was certain was bizarre by any one but my dad's standards.

I followed into the bedroom in which Robby and I would sleep that night. The small room held a double bed, matching dresser and a chair. There was room for no more. My suitcase yawned open on the bed.

He leaned over and pointed under the bed. "Look here," he said. "You see that?"

I followed his finger and saw the edge of a package of white toilet paper peeking out from underneath the bed.

"Now bend over further and look over here," he said, bending to point further under the bed.

I ducked lower and realized there were a multitude of packages underneath the bed. The local grocer must have had a sale. Dad had stockpiled at least 15 packages of toilet paper.

"Don't you god-damn throw anything heavy under there," he growled. "I don't want that toilet paper getting squished."

He was serious as a heart attack - as serious about his toilet paper's viriginal condition as he is about his bread - and I didn't even consider laughing.

"Sure, Dad," I said.

"Huh?"

"I said 'sure'."

Dad met my eyes briefly, no doubt to see if I understood the gravity of the situation.

Then he left me, and the 60-plus rolls of toilet paper, alone.

Could it possibly be true that we all become our parents someday?

I consider this as I change a roll of toilet paper. Do I feel any special affinity toward it, any motherly protectiveness? I have searched my soul and thankfully can say this is not so.

When I buy a loaf of bread, I am strangely happy if I forget that it's in the cart and accidentally squish it with a heavier item. Even if the clerk offers to replace it for a virgin loaf, I refuse. Instead, I eat misshapen sandwiches for a week.

I like it squished, daddy dearest. I like it squished just fine.

The only thing is - and it's a very small thing - I prefer it when it's squished on the right third of the slice - not the precise middle, definitely not the left. It makes for a more interesting-looking loaf of bread that way, and I know exactly how to curve the peanut butter so it precisely fills that little defect.

There's nothing wrong with that ... is there?

What do any of us seek from a class reunion? For some - perhaps most of us - it's simply the chance to reconnect with old friends. For others, the reassurance that you are not changing, maturing or, goddamnit let's just say it -- growing older -- alone, that even the most popular among our former classmates is losing hair, gaining weight, been buffeted by and weathered similar storms life. Others return because some part of them is still stuck in the past, mired by some teenaged trauma, and hoping for resolution that allows them, finally, to let go and be free of it.

Perhaps the latter is me, although I like to think I went back mostly for affirmation of what has come since, not before. Could be I'm just splitting hairs.

Yes, I was excited to see a few classmates with whom I stayed in intermittent touch, those once best friends whose ties have been frayed by distance, time and separate experiences. And yes, I was curious to see how my other classmates had fared with life in general and with time.

But mostly, I sought the acknowledgement that I was no longer the skinny, pale, uncoordinated, underconfident child I'd been. Back then, I had a bad perm, braces on my teeth and my back, glasses and a decided lack of style. One especially memorable day, a group of boys howled at me as I walked down the hall. These were among the least popular boys in the class above me. Their howls were not of admiration, but of the jeering, cruel variety that few but children and teenagers can project.

By senior year, I think I had outgrown much of this. But that's not how my memory has it.

Twenty-five years later, I wanted to be told I was different. Remarkably different. Overall better. Even perhaps beautiful.

I admit this with a sense of shame. My life, the mirror and my sense of self already affirms these things. We all know by now that it comes from within, or it does not come at all. Why did I still feel the need to find it elsewhere, and from such a long-ago source?

It was not that I resented anyone from the Class of '82. I resented my old, beaten image.

What I took away from the reunion was, like almost all in life, not quite what I expected.

Two or three people expressed exactly what I wanted to hear. Wonderful! Beautiful! I didn't recognize you!

But most said this: You look exactly the same!

What??!

I had good hair. Hell, I had red hair! I had a figure. Fashionable clothes, contacts, and decent posture. Damnit, I had a pierced belly button! I was no longer a virgin, or Catholic. I was not the same!

"Either I wasn't as bad as I thought I was then, or I don't look as good as I think I do now," I speculated later with my sister.

She did not directly respond. "All I know is, you're high maintenance," she said, annoyed with the length and attention to detail it had required for me to make my public appearance. She was right. I annoyed myself.

But the strange thing was, most of my classmates did look the same. The men had aged less gracefully than the women; several had gained weight and/or lost hair. A couple women also had gained a few pounds, but their faces were no more than slightly lined, their hairstyle generally identical, their personalities as they were with a mellower, kinder tint. Divorces, losses and victories had both scarred and formed us all.

The class beauty was still beautiful outside and had grown even more so inside.

The class ho was married, but still walked the walk, smoking incessantly, drinking heavily and cursing at a rate equal to both her habits. She looked the same, only harder, her lines more markedly and deeply drawn.

The cliques were gone, yet strangely, I found myself falling back into my old role of my friend Mary's sidekick, the two of us among the class funny girls. I rolled off jokes I didn't know were inside me, and a small circle soon formed around Mary and me. Our group laughter soon attracted more. No one could have warned me that within such a short time, I'd feel so at ease, so oddly removed and at home in one moment.

I liked these people, and most of them far more than when we had last met.

Perhaps this is what we all really seek in reunions: Not just reconnections but new discoveries of the people we thought we had labeled so neatly and precisely.

And just perhaps, no one had ever labeled me the way I'd once believed. Maybe, just maybe, I'd applied it all by myself.