Tomorrow, one of my closest friends ever will be here in Washington, and we will be having dinner ~ with her daughter, who was found, abandoned, along the side of a road in China some 14 years ago. I will never forget my friend’s excitement when the adoption papers came through in 1996 and she was off to China to hold her.
That was fifteen years into our friendship. We’ve known each other now for 30 years. Where did all this time go?
As if it were yesterday, I can picture the day I met her.
It was November 1978. I had wheedled my way into a copygirl position at a newspaper. I had been there only a few days, was still getting lost, knew hardly anyone’s name.
And I looked up to see a young woman running into the newsroom, her long auburn hair drenched, wearing a full-suit of foul weather gear. Not exactly your Midtown Manhattan outfit of choice. By then, she was already a news clerk, which meant that, rather than filling paste pots, clearing off blotters, taking the subway to deliver early run copies to editors, etc., she was, instead, compiling the list of stories for the next day’s paper, breaking down the books of copy (five-copy carbons), answering the phone. She had a desk. What was even more impressive: she already had written stories that had been published by the paper.
We were both, at the time, desperately determined. We wanted to write; we wanted to be serious writers. We also wanted to have a good time.
We did all of this. We pulled all-nighters at the newspaper. We pulled all-nighters gallivanting around New York. You could do that then; well, we could do this then. And we did.
We worked both ends of the candle. How wonderful it was to be 20-something and having the time of our lives and also writing serious things. We had cramped apartments and no money ~ but it mattered not at all. We both knew how lucky we were.
In the early 1980s, I moved to Dallas and she became a free-lancer. In 1985, I finagled a trip to Paris to see her ~ out of an assignment to cover an international conference on teen suicide (which was, unfortunately, the focus of my writing then).
She was there because the dollar was yielding 11 or more French francs and she had a terrific boyfriend who was working there and, well, it was Paris, and there you have it. She was living in a 15th-century stone walk-up with a view of Notre Dame from its narrow casement windows.
We spent 10 days picking at souffles, drinking wine by the gallon. We wore sunglasses to cathedrals and museums. We visited a French hairdresser and cut off our hair. And we shopped. Constantly.
That summer she bought a perfect pair of black suede pumps with tiny buttons on a strap near the toe. Only loyalty to my friend ~ and a greatly diminished bank account ~ kept me from buying a pair for myself.
But I never forgot them.
After I took the Bar Exam in 1988 ~ one of the hottest summers on record in Charlottesville, where I was living in an unairconditioned rental and spending my days with my feet submerged in an ice bucket, dressed in a bathing suit, studying ~ I retreated to her home in the Adirondacks. It was a gigantic camp she had bought with her inheritance and she was living there full-time. It was cool enough at night to have a fire.
She wrote; I cooked and slept. We canoed.
We took up fishing and became the laughing stock of the lake. Seriously. People brought their deck chairs down to the ends of their docks at sunset to watch the two hapless young women paddling out with their gear and returning, in the darkness, empty creeled. We never had a reason to crack the Mess o’Fish Cookbook that had been her father’s. I look at pictures of us then and I see the joy in our faces at the fun we were having; I also see the remnants of stress from law school, carved out in my vertebrae, which are spiny and visible in a photo she took from the stern, because there was a rainbow breaking in front of us over the mountains surrounding the lake.
A couple of months later, my phone rang at 2 a.m. "I have met the man I am going to marry," she said. "He plays the ukelele."
The following summer, I preceded her down the aisle in a country church and watched her marry that man -- a warm newspaperman with tangled eyebrows and a melodious voice. I read from Edna St. Vincent Millay and signed her marriage certificate; she handed her bouquet to me.
Four years later, on her birthday, I called to tell her I would be coming for a visit for Memorial Day. I was, by then, living in Florida, and that call was one of dozens since she had married: late-night hushed calls about her failed pregnancies and my broken romance; happy daylight conversations about a new job, a new novel; a hushed heart-to-heart when her mother died after a terrifically long bout with Alzheimer's disease.
I still remember that call; I still remember how excited I was about seeing her.
The first night was a blizzard of catching up near the woodstove in her glass-walled house on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains. So many of our mid-20s "what ifs?" had turned out to have surprising answers ~ neither one of us was leading the money-crazed round-the-clock New York City lives we had pictured then.
The next day, she said, I would meet her neighbors.
Three neighborhood families held a yard sale every Memorial Day weekend, she said. "We'll talk and sell things."
At 7 a.m., when we got up, it was misty and not quite 50 degrees. I had forgotten the chill of northern springs and had to borrow a rust-colored sweater; it was one she had knitted.
It took hours to sort the boxes for the sale. So many things were attached to the silliness we had practiced so seriously when we had lived in New York so many years before: veiled hats for nights out at the club-of-the-week, portable manual typewriters for our futures as foreign correspondents. We giggled and put stickers on them: 25 cents and up.
It was then that I saw them: Those old shoes from Paris.
Her mostly rural life left her with little use for them, she said.
I didn’t really have much use for them, either. But I bought them just the same.
I have kept those shoes in the too many closets of my life that have come and gone since that good weekend. They were there when I moved back to Washington, D.C. from Florida on the spur of a moment to take a really fun job that I ended up loving. They were there in the closet of the beautiful Victorian house in which I got married to the abusive husband I was so thankful to escape from years later. They were there in the tiny and clean apartment I escaped to when I left him.
Some of us are lucky to have human lifelines in our lives, and my friend has always provided one to me. During the terrible summer when I was first separated from my husband, she invited me to spend two weeks with her in upstate New York -- verdant, fertile country. The drive was more than eight hours -- and when I got there, I joined her and her wonderful husband and their daughter and friends at a dinner out, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We swam and walked and talked and cooked -- and I spent time in a hammock with her lovely daughter. Those weeks renewed my strength.
Those weeks were nine years ago. She will be here tomorrow. We will have dinner with her daughter, who is a young woman now, with a penchant for chess and basketball. My friend is a splendidly good mother.
I wonder if she will ever know how much she means, and has meant, to me all these years? How fortunate I have been to have had the grace and beauty of her friendship ~ and shoes to match.
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And now, with a grateful heart, tonight’s Top Comments!
From darthstar:
LarryinNYC had a great zinger
concerning the reason for Senator Ensign’s decision to resign from the GOP leadership.
From Drewid:
This simple request from droogie6655321.
From LaughingPlanet:
Gooserock serves up his usual parsimony in response to my comment about a planned diary.
From Miss Blue:
The best description of Michele Bachmann I’ve ever read, by Front Toward Enemy.
From rserven:
Ms Bluezone speaks of equal rights and respect.
From Land of Enchantment:
In LaughingPlanet's Belief diary, Friend of the Court had a most excellent (and funny) response to DawnG, who was being all cosmic and serious (and shared in the subsequent laughter).
Tonight’s Top Mojo from brillig (in whose general direction I curtsey):
Top 30 (plus ties) Comments excluding search-identifiable tip jars, first comments and C&J:
1) From your lips to God's ear by Kitty — 168
2) Students vs Basij right wing militia by FishOutofWater — 146
3) I am absolutely not receptive to a by andgarden — 144
4) Iranian Twitter Comment by omgitsparishilton — 134
5) Often, the simple answer is the best by Dallasdoc — 117
6) Just wanted to say, although I posted below by Mother of Zeus — 111
7) Supporting him does not mean by andgarden — 98
8) More than that by craigkg — 96
9) Or in the words of Republicans: by Joe B — 94
10) Thanks for diarying this, I think it's important by Muzikal203 — 93
11) Alice Walker writes: by Fe Bongolan — 91
12) Bush was more interested by Puddytat — 91
13) Final prediction is exactly what I was thinking by damned if you do — 85
14) Lots of health care action diaries today by Chris Bowers — 83
15) No one is saying that and I'm sick by Muzikal203 — 81
16) This is nonsense. by CJnyc — 80
17) Obama's the kind of guy who needs pushing by Joe Buck — 79
18) "The World Is What We Make It" by AaronBa — 76
19) Live Long and Prosper - It's Logical by JekyllnHyde — 76
20) The Iranians have showed us by elliott — 69
21) And if the GLBT community had STFU by inclusiveheart — 68
22) is he a bigot? I don't know. by Dem Beans — 67
23) You're a good soul and a funny man... by JeffLieber — 67
24) NO! by Muskegon Critic — 66
25) I don't think anyone thought he suddendly by Muzikal203 — 65
26) Would it matter? by andgarden — 64
27) We are all fighting to survive. by FishOutofWater — 64
28) Captured and tried is ideal by droogie6655321 — 62
29) good idea! by Al Rodgers — 60
30) markos=fierce advocate by scooter in brooklyn — 59
31) And to Republicans by Dallasdoc — 59
Top 30 Comments with no exclusions:
1) Tip Jar by Cenk Uygur — 737
2) Tip Jar by thereisnospoon — 591
3) TJ by FrankCornish — 409
4) Tip Jar by WineRev — 388
5) Alms (tips) by Muskegon Critic — 349
6) Tip Jar by polar bear — 342
7) Tip Jar by thereisnospoon — 339
8) Tip Jar by nyceve — 327
9) Tips for the next step in GLBT rights by craigkg — 302
10) Tip Jar by electronicmaji — 257
11) 1 by Al Rodgers — 254
12) Tips for the troops by droogie6655321 — 247
13) Tip Jar by Winter Rabbit — 245
14) Tip Jar by Chris Bowers — 242
15) Tip Jar by slinkerwink — 168
16) From your lips to God's ear by Kitty — 168
17) Tip Jar by Drdemocrat — 163
18) Tip Jar by I T — 161
19) Tip Jar by Congressman Frank Pallone — 149
20) Students vs Basij right wing militia by FishOutofWater — 146
21) I am absolutely not receptive to a by andgarden — 144
22) Tip Jar by indiemcemopants — 144
23) Iranian Twitter Comment by omgitsparishilton — 134
24) Often, the simple answer is the best by Dallasdoc — 117
25) Just wanted to say, although I posted below by Mother of Zeus — 111
26) Relocation assistance means. . . by LarryInNYC — 98
27) Supporting him does not mean by andgarden — 98
28) More than that by craigkg — 96
29) Or in the words of Republicans: by Joe B — 94
30) Thanks for diarying this, I think it's important by Muzikal203 — 93
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