Emily Articulated: Lacy and Jan

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

There’s a trope about Millennials: We love it when our plans get canceled. We get to stay home instead of attending the social engagement we agreed to during a period of extroversion we can no longer access.

We’ve flipped the script on our younger selves, trading YOLO (“you only live once”) and FOMO (“fear of missing out”) for ROMO: “relief of missing out.” Maybe we “threw our hands in the air” one too many times, pushing our social batteries until they burst and are now leaking social anxiety and generalized fatigue like lithium. Or maybe this is just what happens when any generation pushes 40.

As someone who regularly identifies with this trope — because damn if I don’t love an early dinner and bedtime — I admire people who embody its opposite. People who remember that participating in life, community and friendship is how we make the most of the one life we get. They say “yes” with enthusiasm, then create things for the rest of us to say “yes” to.

My friends Lacy and Jan are those people. Lacy, who was born and raised in Sandpoint, and her husband Jan, who hails from Czechia, bring enthusiasm to occasions both fun and difficult. I’ve been lucky enough to experience plenty of each alongside them.

This summer, my husband and I were deep in the doldrums of overwhelm, preparing to host 45 people for a straw bale construction workshop at our partially built house. We needed to get the building ready, make room for tents and campers, build temporary showers, rent portable toilets and prepare to feed everyone three meals a day for a week (an admittedly fair trade for all that labor).

As our stress reached a fever pitch, Lacy and Jan showed up as they always do: willing and happy to help. Amid temperatures rivaled in height only by the air quality index, they donned work pants, picked up power tools and launched themselves directly into our chaos.

On another occasion, a heavy snowfall transformed the hill in their backyard into a perfect (if terrifying) luge and they wasted no time gathering friends. We stood at the precipice together, fear mixing with anticipation like it had when we were kids. Our snowsuits offered questionable protection against the ice-hardened ground, especially for bodies no longer quite so unbreakable. Then we pushed off, screaming our way downhill — literally and figuratively — briefly forgetting that we’d ever grown up.

And then there was the time our dog, Bodi, disappeared during a long run. He had a penchant for chasing animals, usually returning to the car once he’d deemed his pursuit a lost cause and lured back by the promise of his warm bed, square meals and more cheese than a wild dog could dream of.

But this time, he wasn’t waiting at the car. Afternoon faded into dusk, then night. Lacy and Jan were with us, flashlights and warm thermoses in hand, helping us call his name into the void. They offered no easy assurances, no promises that he’d turn up. They stayed with us in the uncertainty, taking a little of our burden as their own. Eventually, when he trotted back to us, they were as happy as we were.

Lacy and Jan say “yes” — to birthday parties and themed events, to night skiing and beach volleyball, and to volunteering at the food bank. They create running groups and attend contra dances and improv classes. Through all that participation, they create the community the rest of us are grateful to belong to. Which is why saying goodbye is going to be so hard. They’re moving back to Jan’s hometown in Czechia, and their absence will reach well beyond our circle of friends.

The longer I live, the more familiar I’ve become with the seasonality of things: People and places that once held starring roles become supporting characters, or sometimes extras, often through circumstance rather than choice. A new job, a relationship, a move — good things taking us away from other good things. Some people fade naturally into those roles. Others remain a large presence across the distance through their commitment to staying connected.

This community has said goodbye to so many wonderful people, and hello to just as many. Each departure changes the familiar shape of things: who gathers the group, who extends the invitation, who shows up with a flashlight.

As Lacy and Jan begin their next adventure, I can do the human thing and hold many things at once: excitement for their new jobs, friendships and phases of life, alongside sadness for what we’ll miss. And, tucked among those feelings, a kernel of hope that Sandpoint might someday pull them back.

Maybe the Long Bridge at sunset will do it, or the hum of live music bouncing off the lake; the whoosh of a sled down an icy luge, or the feel of tacky dirt under grippy shoes — memories clinging just enough that one day, they might return.

Until then (and even if that day never arrives), I can wish them bon voyage, full of gratitude for having such wonderful people to miss. And when the next invitation comes, I can remember how much they’ve added to my life by saying “yes,” and say it a little more often myself.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.