More friend stories

On Facebook I have found more old friends. Facebook can be so much fun, and it can drive me crazy. I love finding an old friend, going through the honeymoon period of madly catching up on the last 40 years of their lives, seeing where they live and if we can meet up sometime. A gal I thought I'd lost forever just popped up on Facebook. She and I were roommates in a dorm run by Mexican nuns in Northern Spain in 1970, but we went our separate ways only a year or two later, and now here she is again. How fun!

I have also made a new friend on Facebook; I joined a group called Plane Crash Survivors, and lo and behold, a woman who was a passenger on the same plane crash as I was in 1973 also joined the group. We avidly wrote for a few months, becoming good friends, and we met during my last trip east. I plan on being friends with her forever.

Another internet "meeting" -- in 1998, I believe, I received an email that was sent to me by mistake. It had arrival times and a request to be picked up at the airport from an international flight, so I replied to the sender that she had accidentally gotten a middle-aged mom in Littleton, Colorado and not the "Hector" she'd written to. I just didn't want her to be stranded at an airport with no Hector there to pick her up. Hector himself wrote back to thank me for helping them avoid an inconvenient mix-up, and we have been writing ever since. (I have permission to use his full name here) Hector McDonnell is an artist whose paintings, thankfully, I adore. Google him to see his work. He is kind and funny and, according to my daughter who actually stayed in his house in N. Ireland, has a great and wondrously infectious laugh. He and I have not yet met in person, but he, like my plane crash friend, will hopefully be in my life forever.

Then there's the story of my favorite teacher, Mr. S. He taught Spanish at Marblehead High School, and he was funny and fun and inspiring. I saw him once or twice in my very early 20s, when I came home from Spain and looked him up at MHS. I remember visiting his classroom once and speaking to his class in Spanish -- those kids were quite fluent, of course, because Mr. S was a great teacher. Then I lost him for more than 35 years, finally finding him through emails and internet searches, the year of my 40th class reunion. He is still a firecracker! We visited him on Cape Cod last summer, and he is coming to Colorado in a couple of weeks. Crazy, this life!

In my latest college life, around 2004, I met a fabulous woman. She was the second-oldest in our Women in Art class (ten years younger than me, the oldest!) and we became fast friends. J is so much fun, so enthusiastic about life! She has a husband who adores her and three amazing daughters! We used to talk about going to New York City to actually the Brooklyn Art Museum to see Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party. Once when we were discussing NY she mentioned a crazy button shop she wanted to take me to. We are both sewers and crafters. As she described the button shop, I remembered a painting Hector had done of that exact button shop that was reprinted in a calendar he'd sent me. I gave the print to J and she immediately framed it, loving the painting and the story of how Hector and I "met." Now J is very sick, fighting for her life, and selfishly, I miss her terribly. Her wonderful family has circled the wagons, so her legions of friends and fans wait to hear, once again through the miracle that is the internet, of how she is feeling and how they are coping. She is constantly in my thoughts.

Friends. My life is so enriched by them; I would be adrift without them. Old friends, new friends, internet friends and friends I haven't met yet -- you are all so very valuable to me! Thank you for being there, you are all so dear.

Old Friends

Last month we went on a cruise to Nassau. "We" are a gang of women who have been friends since we were 1 year old, more or less. One was a late-comer, showing up in our lives around first grade. This cruise was a celebration of our 60th birthdays, which we will all celebrate in 2011. The photo is out of focus, thankfully -- an old Hollywood trick to disguise wrinkles! The waitress who took the photo probably didn't know that, tho.

Two of the gals in the photo are sisters whom we were thrilled to have along. Left front: Jill, Sherrylou, Holly, Sherry (June's sister) and the back row is Kimberly, Leigh (mine) and June. the Magnificent Seven. I don't think we have laughed so hard in forty years. Old friends -- we know each other's mother's maiden names! We can close our eyes and walk all the way through each other's houses, through the attics even! We know exactly what the others' Christmas mornings consisted of. We know our fears and our strengths, and we know exactly where each came from. We can walk through our yards, we can describe the climbing trees. We can see the huge granite rocks we played on by the water, each crevass we jumped, the "horse" rock. We knew all the parents' sleeping styles, from separate bedrooms to double beds to two twins pushed together, to a king. We never really knew what the Dads did, but we knew the moms like they were our own. All but one of the moms is gone now. When we turned 50, we went to visit one of them, rang her bell and then yelled "TRICK OR TREAT!!!" and she said "Oh for god's sake, when are you girls gonna GROW UP!!??" Man it was funny!

Sherrylou was the first to turn 60, which happened on the ship. We had a great party at the table, with party favors and wonderful little gifts for everyone. Remember the toy that was a cardboard guy and you used a magnet to move iron filings around to make a beard, or hair? We had masks and whistles and those blower thingies...we probably looked like fools, but we preferred to believe everyone was envious. There was chocolate from Stowaway Sweets in Marblehead; there were ornaments and bags full of penny candy like when we were little. There was a fabulous journal, each one containing photos and mementos from childhood.

The Magnificent Seven have endured so much in our lives. Divorces, infant death, murder and a disappearance. We have held each other and cried until our hearts would break, and we have laughed until our sides hurt so bad. We all carry baggage, and we all know where that baggage came from. How lucky are we, to have a whole team who knows us and loves us through tragedy and joy. It don' get no bettah.