Connections

 

 

M. and I met when we were five and six at the Children's Shop when our mothers outfitted us or the start of school.

We didn't see each other much after that. Our families traveled in different but equal social circles. 

We really became friends in high school when this handsome blue-eyed boy dated both of us. We decided we liked each other better than him. He was the seed for a decades long friendship where we shared dreams, hopes, troubles, and everything else.

When my brother pushed me down the stairs, I packed up and went to her family and stayed. 

I loved her family's apartment. One felt at home the second one walked through the door. It was a kind of Jessica Fletcher's down Maine 1950ish home. I had sour cream on a baked potato for the first time there.

Eventually the mothers found a solution for me and I went home. 

Because my parents were divorced, her father took both of us to any Father-Daughter event our activities held. 

We didn't lose touch when I moved to Europe as a new bride. We stayed friends when I came back to go to college in Lowell. M. graduated from Emerson in the same class as the Fonz before he was the Fonz.

M. went to work doing research on downs syndrome children confined to a home for a man, who was ahead of his time. He put her name on all research papers that they worked on together. 

She was the sanity in my bad marriage. My ex hated me talking with her, more because Boston was a toll call raising our phone bill. I talked her through bad relationships too.

When both our lives had gone smoothly for a time and we didn't talk, M. called and said, "Where've you been? I'm not just a foul weather friend, you know." 

After my divorce her mother would visit me every Tuesday often bringing clothes for my daughter, the grandchild she would never have. If her mother noticed a problem in the house, a couple of days later her father would arrive with his toolkit. My daughter loved the round green wagon they bought her. 

He was a salesman and my daughter's day care was one of his clients. Whenever he saw my daughter, he would check on her then tell me how happy she seemed playing with this or that. 

M. take the train from Boston, we'd play gin rummy, eat potato sticks, and walk my daughter. 

She developed a relationship with my daughter teaching her needlework that became a life-long passion of my daughter. 

We often had to cancel dinner plans. "Listen she said. Fate is getting in the way of us meeting. We'll fool it." From then on instead of voicing plans we said, "We won't meet at the Blue Parrot in Harvard Square Monday at 7 p.m." It worked.

When I moved to Europe, she sent potato sticks and letters it was pre- internet days. Her father and I exchanged letters regularly. He called me, "the little girl from Reading who moved to Europe."

Thankfully M. divorced after the move to California and found her soul mate. They visited me in Geneva. Seeing her happy brought me joy.

We ate local raspberries, reminding us of walking behind her parents' Maine cabin and picking the berries as we talked.

The phone rang. I ran to my house mate's room where there was a phone.  

"I never thought I would have to make this call," M's partner said. M. was in an accident. She died on the operating table.

I sank into the chair in front of the wall that was solid books. I heard howling and realized it was me. Walking to the balcony I stared out at Lake Geneva, flat, calm, beautiful. How could that be when M. was gone.

M's partner gave my daughter $10,000 from M's estate when my daughter went to Graduate School in Scotland. M's partner attended my wedding to the soul mate I found late in life. M. and I as teenagers and women in throughout much of our lives never thought that soul mate discovery would happen, but it did to both of us.

M. was one and the first of the four women I've known that has walked in my heart and soul.  Only two are left and I've locked rooms full of memories. Knowing them has helped make me who I am today. I am blessed to have known them.