Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 24

July 24, 2020 ~ oneletterup ~ 17 Comments

Inspired by Fandango’s Friday Flashback: July 24

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year….Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year?

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The following post was originally posted on July 24, 2018

(my blog, still a baby, was a mere 5 months old)

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Diaries Revisited – 2018

diaries line up

My writing life started with diaries – the kind with the tiny keys. Keys implying a privacy that wasn’t actually possible. But which gave a 9 year old a sense of importance. Tucking away private thoughts in a safe space. A comforting fantasy. Trusting that the key really worked.

As I got older, diaries (keys long gone) were followed by small spiral lined notebooks (written with an orange Flair pen – this was, after all, the ’70’s). Next… black hardcover “blank books.” And then back to small spiral notebooks and thick journals. I actually preferred the printed lines to guide my sometimes erratic handwriting; angled in anger or loopy with emotion. I went through a calligraphy stage in college and carefully inked my thoughts with spaced precision. An art form! And since I was the sister who was NOT the artist, I felt mighty proud about that.

My good friend Debbie gave me a new 8 1/2″ x 11″ black blank book when we were both 20 and about to start sharing an apartment – a first for both of us. We would finish up our last 1 & 1/2 years of college together.

She filled the first page:

Here is the book you wanted. It means so much to have a book like this…to write down thoughts, feelings….watch how you grow, how your feelings change and how much more aware you become when you read back through it…

The second and third pages contained Pink Floyd lyrics from “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Breathe, breathe, in the air…Don’t be afraid to care…Leave, but don’t leave me…Look around and choose your own ground….

I followed Debbie’s directions and kept filling that journal off and on for almost 18 years. (It didn’t come with a key. I wonder if it should have.) I was as open with my written words at 20 and 25 and 30 as I was at 9 and 10. Kind of shocking really. And now sometimes embarrassing – and painful – to see my heart splayed open on the page over and over, year after year.

Entries became sporadic and eventually just covered major life events – or the night before major life events – as I pondered their significance. Marriage. Career. Parenthood. Family dramas. Joy. Grief. Loss. I started and stopped various notebooks, journals and blank books. A brand new one always a hard-to-resist invitation to begin again. Maybe it was the fresh, smooth paper & its possibilities…like getting new notebook paper, pens and pencils for the start of school each September.

At the ripe old age of 27 – about 2 weeks before the birth of my first child I wrote…

It seems that the older I get, the faster life goes by…We Are Going To Be Parents!!…It will probably be the most important thing we do….”

The next entry (in that journal) was 10 years later when I had a weekend away by myself. By then I had a second child and a consulting job. I was still in my thirties. The 4 page summary began with…

Motherhood has changed my life more than anything else before it.

And ended with…

After all these years I’m finally starting to acknowledge that there’s another side of me that’s been buried – perhaps a more creative side – I’m not sure…”

Looking back, I was spot-on about the motherhood thing.

…I also have several well worn notebooks filled with stories of all the amazing, funny, and truly one of a kind things my 2 children ever said or did.

Truly like no other kid ever in the history of the world. Obviously. For example: How many 8 year old boys do you know who can make an earring out of a Cheerio? And whose mother wrote a story about it?

I couldn’t help myself. It was such fun….

Unique

June 24, 2019September 25, 2020 ~ oneletterup ~ 13 Comments

Post inspired by Lens-Artists Challenge #51 The prompt: Unique

My friend AR came into my life when we were 15 or 16. I met her when I joined “PF” (aka “Pilgrim Fellowship”) – a Congregational Church youth group. Basically a group of high school kids who met on Sunday nights. We formed committees. We planned activities, trips, coffee houses and spaghetti dinners. It was a friendly and welcoming group.

AR and I attended the same high school – a regional school drawing students from 4 towns – so we may not have ever crossed paths if not for the church connection. She was quiet, shy and…I was to find out…brilliant. And talented. Some may have added…eccentric.

We were both the oldest in a large family. She was the oldest of 6. I was the oldest of 5. We both had difficult childhoods; although at the time we didn’t openly discuss the darker places we later found out were eerily similar.

The summer we were 18, she embroidered a swatch of denim (~14″x18″) with words from one of our favorite songs by The Rolling Stones. I don’t remember what the occasion was – or if there was even a specific occasion that sparked her creativity – but I still treasure this unique piece of art. It is framed and hangs on the wall over my desk.

You can’t always get what you want…

Now isn’t that the truth.

abby patch2 — Crewel Embroidery on Denim – 1972

AR and I went our separate ways to college. We kept in touch with frequent letter writing. Letters I still have – with her tiny perfect script – detailing her struggles with making ends meet, making friends, experimenting…and…charting an uncertain future. Always signed: Your loving and sincere well-wisher.…

Shortly after we graduated from college, I lost track of her for a few years. Until her letter arrived telling me she was now Sister M.

My Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan loving friend had converted to Catholicism and joined a cloistered community of nuns. Beginning her new life in a monastery.

I have visited her off and on over the past few decades. We chat as if we were still those two goofy teenagers at PF meetings. Her eyes are bright as they look back at me from beneath the white habit she now wears. Denim a long forgotten thing of the past.

Once I showed her a photo of the beautiful detailed embroidery she made for me.
She was incredulous.

You still have that?

Of course I do!

She smiled…Oh my!…that was such a long time ago.

Anniversary

April 25, 2019 ~ oneletterup ~ 17 Comments

This post inspired by V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #45: Anniversary

…pick a date (not necessarily a date of traditional significance) and look back.

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In some places the leaves were just starting to change colors.
The day my friend Becky died.
On September 18, 1999.

It will soon be the anniversary of that date.

Twenty years since the woman who was my close friend for over 20 years…and partner in crime at work…left this world.

After 6 years of fighting the fast growing cells that had already spread to her lymph nodes. Discovered after a radical mastectomy in 1993.
She refused a wig and a prosthesis…too much trouble, she said. I will beat this.
She was 40 years old.
Chemotherapy. Physical Therapy. Radiation. Repeat.
Intermittent remission.
Until there wasn’t.

I’ve watched friends die of breast cancer. I guess I can do it too. She announced one evening…looking at me over her half-eaten plate of scallops and mixed vegetables. As we sat together at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

I stared at her. Speechless. But Becky always got right to the point.
She continued…You know, life is hard if what you want is pure enjoyment.

It would be one of our last dinners out. Before we switched to meeting for breakfast. When she had a bit more energy and had shifted to part time work.

By early September 1999, she was admitted to a local hospital for the last time. Coincidentally I had started working there again the year before. Where we had worked as side-by-side dietitians 20 years earlier. Before our first children were born within weeks of each other. And we began sharing the joys, fears and trials of motherhood and marriage. No subject off limits.

I slipped into her hospital room. Becky it’s me.
With her eyes closed, she asked about my 17 year old daughter thinking she was still 12. Her husband stood nearby…looked at me and shook his head.

There is nothing they can do, he said. It’s in her liver. She’s in kidney failure. Too late for the new drug study.

He may move her to a rehab place for pain management.

What about hospice? In your home? I asked.
I hadn’t thought of that, he answered.

That was where I spent my last hours with Becky. Beside the hospital bed set up in her living room. Between two bright windows…the September early morning sun peeking in at us.
No coffee. No muffins. No Chinese food or wine this time.

I pulled up a chair. Reached in between the metal rails and held her left hand in mine. The head of the bed up. Her face turned in my direction…eyes shut. Corners of her mouth turned down.

Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. Her mouth opened slightly with each breath.
Her hair was just starting to grow back again. Wispy buzz cut style.

Her hand was cool and smooth as I laced her fingers between mine. We were alone. It was quiet. A slight breeze blew in through the open windows.
Her leg twitched. Her arms jerked upward a bit.
I whispered in her ear…Are you cold?
Turning slightly toward me she murmured…No
I leaned closer and whispered back…You always were a hot number.
I saw a tiny crooked smile.

Her eyes opened slightly. Looked at me for an instant, their blueness in stark contrast to her colorless skin.
What is it? I ask.
But she can’t tell me.
I picked her hand up again and held it between both of mine.

Her large gray cat stepped over my feet. I felt its softness brush against my leg. I don’t like cats much. Never have. She had always teased me about it. I leaned close and whispered…Somehow this big cat got in here.
A hint of a smile…and she mumbled Be nice to the kitty. It’s a nice kitty.

It was late morning. I was still holding her hand. She shifted in bed. Sighed. Sighed again.
Breathe in. Breathe out. I stopped counting.
Becky do you remember that time when we tried to get a picture of the kids sitting on your couch? They were about 6 months old. We’d get them settled and then by the time we’d step back to snap the picture they would both slide sideways on top of each other? And they’d start to cry? And we’d prop them back up again?

A faint smile came and went. I squeezed her hand.
The front door opened and closed.
The hospice nurse had arrived.
To care for my friend Becky. Wash her. Make her comfortable. Ease her pain.

I bent down to kiss Becky on the cheek, feeling the soft coolness of her skin.
I love you Becky. I hope she heard me. But even if she didn’t, I knew she knew.

The next morning I picked up the ringing phone.
Her husband’s shaky voice… Becky died this morning.
She was 47 years old.

Even now – years later – I catch myself thinking I have spotted her in the grocery story parking lot. But of course I didn’t.

Becky’s place in my heart is rooted deep.
The epitome of strength and love and loyalty.
And what a fighter.
She loved her family and her friends and her God.
I am privileged and grateful to have known her.
I’m a stronger person for it.
And a better friend.

She will soar into my conscious thought at random times…cheering me with her signature humor. Triggering a memory of times past.
And our life adventures together.
Cut far too short.

Reminding me…of the precious gift that friendship truly is.

Becky 1984 — Becky, her son & my daughter
1984

Friendship

December 5, 2018 ~ oneletterup ~ 8 Comments

This post inspired by Ragtag Daily Prompt: Friendship

I couldn’t let this prompt opportunity go by…although it also has inspired me to write a longer piece on this powerful topic at a later date…

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I have often thought…where would I be without my friends?
Now and in the past.
I don’t think I want to know.

Being somewhat of a loner, I was never part of a large “crowd” when I was growing up. I did, however, have “true friends” (as I called them) and included this small tribute to them in a diary entry. In the Memorandum section at the end of December, when I was in the eighth grade:

These are some friends of mine (own age) that I have known & liked very much. They have stuck up for me when I was down, been faithful & kind & above all a close friend I could trust. I won’t forget them wherever I go.

I listed 2 girls. One of the two is still my faithful friend.

My girlfriends were my salvation. In a difficult childhood. And the years that followed. Even at the age of 13, I apparently understood friendship…faithful, kind, trusting.

Again, I can’t imagine life without them…
I am still in touch with several special friends from high school – who each went down very different paths, but remained connected to me. College also left me with several friends who I cherish to this day. As did my work life, my parenting life and my empty nest life. My friends have enriched my life beyond measure. Some have passed away and my heart hurts with missing them.

One “summer friend” – from a high school summer job 300 miles from home – sewed patches for my threadbare bellbottom jeans – “crewel work” embroidery displaying the perfect message. The jeans eventually disintegrated. But I cut the patches out…they are now behind glass in a frame which hangs on the wall in my “writing room.”

friends patch