Browsed by
Category: friends

Instead of a Card

Instead of a Card

Comments 0 Comment

We met when we were just out of college working at our first “grownup” jobs in Chicago. We’d joined our church choir, which was planning a concert of Handel’s Messiah later that year, and Cathy and I bonded over long rehearsals in the ornate sanctuary of St. Clement’s. 

It was the springtime of our lives, and the possibilities seemed limitless. Would we stay in Chicago?  Would we marry and have children? Would we stay in touch?  No, yes and absolutely. We never missed Christmas or a birthday. Until this year. 

When May 31 arrived and there was no card from Cathy, I was worried. I learned a few weeks later that she passed away in April from the breast cancer she’d been fighting for several years. 

Cathy was loving and cheerful to the end: a devoted wife, mother, daughter, colleague and friend who is missed and mourned by all who knew her. Today, August 31, is Cathy’s birthday. I can’t send her a card — but I can write her this post. Happy Birthday, Cathy! I will never forget you!

The Big Picture

The Big Picture

Comments 0 Comment

As the sky slowly lightens on this Valentine’s Day, I think of all the ones who are dear to me.

The little ones and the big ones, the old ones and the young ones (including a great niece born on Saturday!), the human ones and the furred and feathered ones, the ones who are no longer with us, too.

Happy is the day set aside for love and chocolate, so today I resolve to keep the big picture in mind. 

And that is, and always will be, love.

New Normal

New Normal

Comments 0 Comment

Over the weekend, a taste of normalcy: dinner out — in a restaurant — with friends who are also vaccinated.  The restaurant was empty save for one table of three seated 20 feet away. The server was properly masked. In that sense, it was not business as usual. 

But what a thrill to see actual human faces, not squares on a screen; to enjoy full human expressions, not the crinkle of eyes above an oblong of cloth. There were appetizers and stir-fries and shrimp with vermicelli. There was much catching up. And afterward, there was a stroll through the narrow streets of a small, quaint downtown.

It was not the kind of dining experience I might have sought 14 months ago, folks crammed together talking and laughing, the clink of glasses, the buzz of alcohol and laughter. It was the new normal. And it was absolutely wonderful. 

Celebrating Neighbors

Celebrating Neighbors

Comments 0 Comment

Research has proven that our moods may be lifted higher by a random conversation than by all the cajoling of a close loved one. If this is true — and I have anecdotal evidence that it is — neighbors are likely some of its greatest practitioners.

Neighbors are the ones we bump into while picking up the newspaper at the mailbox (regrettably, while wearing a bathrobe some mornings). The ones we grumble with during the fall raking season. And they are the ones whose banter may unwittingly set our day on a upward course. 
We were lucky enough to fall into a group of neighbors all relatively new to the neighborhood when we moved in. Most had young children, many had chosen this neighborhood for the big backyards and nearby woods. In a region I always thought would be transient, this neighborhood has been remarkably stable. It’s a place where people notice, where people care.

Last night we said farewell to some of our oldest, dearest neighbors. Though I’m sad to lose them, the send-off was such a celebration of neighborliness that I’m left not with sadness, but with joy.

(A Virginia neighborhood from the air.)
The News

The News

Comments 0 Comment

For most of the year I grab the Washington Post from the driveway and read it on the way to work. Now I’m reading a different kind of news.

Friends from Groton, Massachusetts, have downsized to Bonita Beach, Florida. Family from South Carolina has met family from Sweden. There have been travels to Italy and Kenya and North Carolina. Children have grown, dogs have been photographed in Santa hats and people I love have lived another year.

Time is always passing, but this is when and how we mark it. Not with rue or agitation. But with joy and gratitude.

Continuity and Change

Continuity and Change

Comments 0 Comment

It was a weekend of reconnecting, revisiting and reminding myself why I do what I do.

There was the “World Room” with its stained glass window, the stairs that were always quicker than the tiny elevator, especially if you were racing to turn in a story by a 5 p.m. deadline.

There was Broadway, with its jumble of stores and restaurants and Cafe Milano where Mama Joys’ used to be. There was the campus quad, with libraries on either end and a new coffee shop in the journalism building. In other words, there was both continuity and change, as there should be.
Way Back When

Way Back When

Comments 0 Comment

The message went out last night after 9, and by early this morning the replies were pouring in. Would we, the members of Henry Clay High School, class of 19__ (that’s the only part of my graduating class year I’m revealing), like to meet at a classmate’s farm some late September Saturday?

It’s a five-year rather than a 10-year mark for us. But we’ve lost a couple of people since last time and, as the organizer said, “We’re not getting any younger, folks. And there’s something important about being with people we knew way back when.”

There is. Surprisingly so.

What I mostly felt in high school was how much I wanted to get out of it. But the memories now are clearer than most: The way the light came in through the tall windows of Baldy Gelb’s math classroom. (He was Coach Gelb — which may have accounted for the prime real estate.) Or the day Mrs. Ahrens’ student teacher suggested we start keeping a journal. (I’ve never stopped.)

In other words, these were years that mattered. And people who matter still.

A New Chapter

A New Chapter

Comments 0 Comment

My book group met night before last, only four of us this time out of a dwindling number of eight. It was our annual book picking — but we decided to add new members, too.

We did not come to this decision lightly. We’ve taken in no new members for eight years. But what’s eight years when you’ve been together 25?

The children we were birthing when the group formed are now marrying and settling down. It won’t be long before there’s a grandchild or two. But what time and busyness couldn’t derail, major life changes have. Two of us left and came back years later. But the recent departures will be permanent. People are retiring and moving away. We want to keep a quorum of sorts. We want to keep gathering on the first Wednesday of the month (more or less) to chat about Lila, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and anything else that crosses our minds.

So in January we add a new chapter. We become a slightly altered group — but this time altered by addition rather than subtraction. 

The Art of Eating Crabs

The Art of Eating Crabs

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday there was a graduation in Maryland, so after the congratulations and the photographs and the appetizers it was time for the main culinary attraction — that would be the Maryland blue crabs.

They start off blue but by the time you eat them they are red from the steaming and the seasoning. And eating them is an art. First you pull off the legs, then you find a little tab on the underside of the shell that opens up the critter — almost like a can with a pop top. Then you scrape off the gills and eat the meat inside. You save the claws for last, cracking them with a nutcracker or pounding them with a mallet. The meat is delicious!

Yesterday I sat next to some accomplished crab pickers who made the difficult look easy and left a pile of picked-clean shells. “Eating crabs is not just about eating,” said one of the experts. “It’s about sitting around and talking, the whole experience.”

And this was true. Because it takes so long to eat a crab — and because you have to eat so many of them to fill up — the meal is long and the stories fly. We talked about history and the Bible and Willie Nelson and the singer Meat Loaf, the stories unspooling, the crab shells flying and the perfect May day winding down into dusk.

Collegiality

Collegiality

Comments 0 Comment

A hard day yesterday, one of several. There was too much work and not enough time. There were the typical absurdities. But there were also revelations, shared laughter, plans for drinks after work. There was gallows humor.  In short, there was collegiality.

Every group of people creates its own force field. As we interview candidates for openings in the department I think a lot about the ineffable qualities that make for a trusted colleague. It’s a similar approach, a complementary attitude, a sense of humor. Sometimes you get it right; sometimes you don’t.

People who write have a tendency to get caught in webs of their own thinking. It was in part to avoid this trap that I entered the office world again. I can’t say I haven’t second-guessed my decision hundreds of times. But I didn’t yesterday.

Collegiality is often a haphazard affair, a
byproduct, the luck of the draw. But once you’ve known the joy and purpose of working together toward a common goal it’s difficult to go back.