One of my favourite reads at night is Oma's blog Gone to the Dogs (link below). This is by a very good friend from long ago when we were in high school. Our lives took very different twists and turns causing a long separation. We would hear snatches of news about each other from a mutual friend Pat.
Pat was very keen to get Barb (Oma) and I back in touch but I was very resistant to the idea. So much time had passed and I had very little nostalgia for my high school days, I was sure revisiting Barb would be a mistake. Pat didn't push. The reunion probably wouldn't have happened had Pat not become gravely ill with cancer last year. Barb and I decided independently to go to England to see our friend. Our visits overlapped and within two days we knew that we couldn't lose touch again. We believed that Pat was dying and went to her. We talked and talked and remembered why we had liked each other back all those years.
Barbara the girl was extremely pretty, petite and vivacious. She was everything I wanted to be but wasn't. I was tall (1950s not so good for tall women), extremely slim, and not at all vivacious. I was not unattractive, but unable to see that. I had good legs that reached up forever and was blessed with a quirky sense of humour. Boys liked me, but they loved Barb. I wasn't jealous exactly, I felt gangly beside her.
She was very bright and shared my passion for horses. We used to hitch hike to Oka from Pte. Claire to ride at a stable there. Then we would hitch a ride back home again. I told my parents that Barb's father drove us because I was forbidden to hitch hike. I suspect she told her father a similar lie. It was a different era and hitching rides was relatively safe then.
Our friendship was not terribly deep. We were not confidants. She lived with her father and Oma which was different. Most families had two parents. I had no idea that she was unhappy at home or that her past was touched by loss and sadness. She had no concept of the problems in my home, my mom's bipolar disorder was peaking then. We sought each other out for distraction from our problems, not to talk about them. We saved our deeper thoughts and discussions for Pat and another mutual friend Peter. They kept our secrets so Barb and I never knew about each other. In our final year at John Rennie High, Barb dropped out and to my utter amazement married someone who wasn't in our school. I heard she was pregnant but because stuff was pretty intense in my home I let go of the friendship.
Then I went to university, Pat went to teachers' college and we met and married our respective husbands. Pat stayed in touch with Barb and so did Peter but my life was completely out of Pte. Claire by then. My father died in my last year at school, followed by my mother and Peter all within 22 months. It was a terrible time of loss. Pat moved to England so there really was nobody to connect me to Barbara.
Forty years passed filled with divorce, relocation to New York, remarriage a baby and another world. I wasn't even close to Pat then because when I visited her and Tom in London, after my mother's death, Tom made moves on me. When I rejected him he fomented unpleasantness between Pat and me to get even. I left believing it was over, but with time our friendship revived. We had shed our husbands but resumed our bond. That was when Pat occasionally mentioned Barb.
I learned that she too had been through a lot, had gone back to school with two children and was doing interesting work in the Third World. It is extraordinary that we three friends all ended up single mothers raising our children with lots of imagination and limited means. What strong women we were and what survivors. So finally Barb and I met again and Pat was the catalyst. I'm delighted to report that Pat did not die and has completed treatment. Though not in remission quite yet, she is feeling much better. Barb is still interesting, doing folk art and teaching. I'm going to visit her in August and looking forward to it. As for me, you can follow my life here, on Facebook and Live Journal.
This would make a great Chick Flick possibly starring Bette Midler, Cher and Diane Keaton. It's good for at least two boxes of tissues once Hollywood gets through with it.
