A few years ago, I was in Florida visiting family and found that I REALLY wanted to relay the story of my then-just-shy-of-four-year-old kid suddenly calling everyone “bucko,” specifically to my friend Meaghan.  I texted her, “Ruby is calling everyone ‘bucko’ now.  I MISS YOU!”

I had met Meaghan not very long at all before that trip.  In the few months since we were introduced by a mutual friend, we had bonded over our tendency to become misanthropic at about the halfway point of a weekend with friends, our extreme annoyance at the goings-on of a certain group of internet feminists, and our shared love of my precocious daughter.

My being a parent was acting as a roadblock for some people, and my lack of availability had eroded some of my friendships, but Meaghan had accepted and embraced me as a whole human being.  She wasn’t merely tolerant of me as a mom.  She genuinely liked me as a mom.  And so when the kid, who had up until that trip been somewhat-menacingly adding “buddy” to the end of her directives, started calling people “bucko” after my aunt said it once, I could not WAIT to hear Meaghan’s chuckle.

The months that followed found me experiencing something I can’t dissect here, but were full of soaring joys and crushing heartbreak.  Through it all, I reached out for Meaghan, to hear her laugh, to learn whether she shared my outrage (if not, I would have to re-examine to make sure I wasn’t just being an asshole – often, I was, and she would just calmly agree when I figured it out), to be scraped off the floor as needed.

We often jokingly appended “bucko” to the end of our sentences, in the sassy, somewhat-menacing way my kid did.  And I don’t quite remember what specifically was going on the day that changed, but I seem to recall that I was sad.  And as Meaghan was scraping me off the floor, she said, “I’m sorry, bucko,” in a soft, gentle voice that still makes me choke up when I think of it.

We use it like punctuation, still, but not always in that “I’ll kick your ass if you don’t get me a juicebox” tone.  When Meaghan battled an unbelievably persistent and lengthy and life-disrupting allergic reaction, and when I was laid out on her couch after a spinal tap, it was soft and soothing.  When one of us is being totally irrational and ridiculous, it’s more original recipe.  Sometimes it’s just a period at the end of a sentence, dotted there like glue to hold us together.

And so today is August 4, and this someone I love very much is turning 30 years old.  She is wise enough to be 80, silly enough to be 6, and I never know quite what to say about her.  We don’t fight quite enough to be sisters (there is also the matter of having separate parents), we’ve never made out so she’s not my girlfriend, but friend doesn’t even begin to cover it.  She is what no one else has ever been to me, and what no one else ever could be: bucko.  And I am so joyfully glad that she was born.

Tags: bucko

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