Suanne and Lord Byron

My friend, with whom I shared so many girlhood conversations, has died, at the too young age of 59.

We met when we were twelve. Her family had just moved to my neighborhood, and she lived between my house and the all-girls school where she and I were among the "new girls" that year. We became the walking to school friends that I wrote about in my last post. I would stop by her house sometimes after school for awhile before heading home.
Here we are in our school uniforms:




I met her mother and the toddler brother of whom she was so proud. I remember a day when she showed me a tuft of fur she had saved from her dog "Rex", who had died not too long before. Even at that tender age, an age when we are often too wrapped up in out own little worlds to notice to much about others', I could tell how much love she carried in her heart.

We discovered we both had a love for art and music. It was in the world of music and singing that we really came together. I envied her her high clear soprano, I was a lowly alto, but even so, we often competed for the same solos in the various choruses in which we sang. She usually got the Soprano solo, and I would sing the lower harmony.

Our class graduated in 1970. I don't know how it came to be, but around our junior year, we began calling ourselves the "Babes of 1970", and that name has stuck for the last forty-two years.




After graduation, we went our separate ways. We had children, married, divorced, remarried. But we always were "the Babes." I have seen Suanne every ten years at class reunions, but, with the help of the new technologies that keep us all connected, email, and social networking, have been able to enjoy her friendship, and that of most of us "Babes" on a daily basis.

Yesterday I scrolled back through three years of "conversations" with Suanne on Facebook. I saw her comments to others, including other "Babes". All were filled with love. Love for her friends, her husband, her children, of whom she was so proud, and her lovely grandchildren.

It was through this medium that I learned she had written and illustrated a children's book*, and I am proud to be the owner of an autographed copy.

I also learned things about her life I had not known when we were growing up, after I encouraged her to write a "25 things about me" note, which she graciously shared with her friends and family. One of her children asked her to illustrate it on paper, because, "face book will not last forever". I hope she did that.

I have written again and again of the endurance and importance of childhood friendships. When we are children we do not know what we will become, nor how much we love each other. But the experiences we share as children are what bind us. When I met Suanne for the first time after thirty years in 2000, I knew her mostly by the sound of her laughter. Like water flowing over pebbles in a stream. The sweet soprano of her voice so much the same as it had been when we sang together at seventeen.

She seemed to find her joy as an adult. It was in her art, music, and especially her family. As I reread all those posts on Facebook, that joy was always at the surface. She had married her true love, and was living a life surrounded by beauty. Even as she wrote of the trials of her final illness, she was optimistic.

Last Friday after treatment, she wrote one day, one of the techs asked, "do you meditate during treatment?"
Surprised by her query due to my daily struggle for calm, I replied, "no. I sing".

Lord Byron could have been describing Suanne when he wrote this poem, so I'll let him describe my friend.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.




* http://www.kopaldart.com/SKK_Illustrations.html
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Location:Omaha

Walking to School Friends

From the time I was twelve years old until eighteen, I attended a school that had the motto, Non scholae sed Vitae Discimus. (We learn not for school, but for life).

I attended with a small group of young women, about sixty of us, who as we attended school together formed bonds we didn't even realize we were forming. As I have written before, some friendships are stronger than time and space. These are the bonds that were formed in part because some of us walked to school together.

When you walk to school with a girlfriend you talk and talk... And talk. About everything. You visit each other's homes. You meet each other's families.

I had two very special Walking to School Friends. We sang together in the school Chorus, and in the more elite "Ensemble" during our Senior year. We acted in plays together, and sometime we competed for the same solos.

These days we'll go for months without a connection. Far flung, many of us see each other face to face only at ten-year reunions when it is as if we saw each other yesterday. In between the planned meetings, sometimes something happens. An Illness. A parent who died too young. Divorce. Widowhood. A child is hurt, or worse. A natural disaster occurs and one becomes homeless for a time.

When these somethings occur, one of us may make a phone call, or write a letter. Then we women get to work on the business of love and support. We know the value of a handwritten note, a bunch of flowers, or a phone call. There is a sisterhood amongst people who virtually and literally grew up together. And where there are sisters, there is usually love. And sister love is powerful.

One of my Walking-to-School Friends is facing what may be her final illness. This is a woman who is surrounded by love even without her sisters. She has a loving husband, wonderful daughters, delightful grandchildren, a multitude of friends, a cherished pet. But recently a letter was written; an email was sent.

Her husband tells me that they already receive daily notes and flowers from loved ones. Neighbors bring food. Even a gift of labor, for the unfinished tree-house that he promised their grandchildren, a project that was postponed due to the interminable doctors' visits and a focus on something else. But when the women who were once school-mates learned of their sister's illness, something exploded.

I am again reminded of the simple power of love. As I read back over drafts of posts I've written here over the last couple of years it's a recurring theme. I guess I can't say it, or learn it enough. When my Walking-to-School friend wrote to me yesterday she said, "Thank you for your loving kindness all the years of our life." Singular.

So I take a breath. I remember my childhood. I feel the loving kindness.

Location:Omaha, NE

Birthdays and Virgil

Ever since I was born, I have been getting older. Better than the alternative, as the old chestnut goes. I'm going to be a year older on my birthday, one month from today, whether I'm ready for it or not.

I'm walking now, instead of running. I proved to myself that I could, and I have. And I did. I'm walking 2 1/2 - 3 miles about three times a week.

I do not have a sedentary job. Some days I walk my ten thousand steps just in the course of my work. I've keep my weight (mostly) down, although it could still go down a little. Well okay, a lot. But I am a pretty healthy specimen, all things considered.

I'm not a weakling, but my hands aren't as strong as they used to be. My hands, yes, my fingers and wrists are lacking stamina. Not what I have been expecting. I can't open my soft drink bottles as easily as I used to. A gallon of milk? What's up with that? It's irritating, I tell ya.

I am also really smart. But it is obvious to me that I'm not as quick as I used to be. I am learning a new routine at work. It's not hard, you don't have to have a degree to do this stuff (and I have a couple of those), but it just seems to be taking me a little while longer to get the routine down than it might have just a couple of years ago.

And I don't like this, not one little bit.

Okay, now I've vented, and in the spirit of my stated goal with this blog, I need to clarify that I am secretly sort of excited to be turning sixty.

Sixty. Sixty.


I sort of like the sound of it. Sixty is wise. Sixty is seasoned.

Guilt, which used to be my constant companion, has left me for a younger, more attractive woman.
Sixty is the adolescence of old age. Like a teenager, I can't wait to see what's next, I am still deciding what I want to do when I "grow up".





Virgil wrote, Haec olim meminisse iuvabit, which according to Robert Fagles*, translates to, "A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.". Virgil may have only been referring to Aeneas' troublesome journey, but life is full of ups and downs, and at sixty, I look back on it all with joy, or at least I try to.

I'm laughing as I write this, because, really, how many of my younger readers read Virgil, in Latin, in high school? But that's a commentary on the educational system in this country, and the subject of another blog post, on another day.

And there, dear reader, is another wonderful thing about turning sixty. I can now officially call myself a curmudgeon. Tee hee.

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*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fagles

Location:Omaha