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Good friends make such a difference in our lives. I've been blessed with many good friends throughout my life. Joan was my best friend from first grade, all the way through high school. We shared just about everything together for twelve years - all of the silly things, fun things, semi-tragic things, secret things, wonderful things that children and teens share. After high school, she went away to college and I went to work. We remain friends to this day, although in recent years it has become the occasional letter and a few pictures, a much less personal sort of thing.
In my twenties there were two very good friends, Nancy and Eileen, with whom I became very close. Interestingly enough, they were not friends with one another. They lived in very different worlds, and I was privileged to share both. I am very grateful to have had both experiences. Eileen was to become maid of honor in my wedding a few years later. And yes, I am still close friends with both, but long distance. One is in Arizona and one in Hawaii.
Early in my marriage I met Pat. She was the best friend among many during the years when we were raising our children. Mutual support with other mothers of small children can mean so much as we struggle with the myriad of problems and questions we have as we learn how to deal with these little people who are so dependent on us. Sadly, I am no longer in touch with Pat She moved far away and has chosen to cut off communication with old friends, following a family tragedy.
Two years after my husband's death, when we moved to New Jersey, it was like moving into another world and another life. The first real friend I made here was Wyetta. She has remained my closest friend for the past thirty-one years. I am constantly amazed at how much we have in common, despite our vastly different backgrounds. I miss having her nearby. She has been in hospitals or convalescent homes for two years now. I visit as often as I am able. I took this picture a couple of days ago.
Some years ago - I'm not sure exactly how many - Lisa came to work in the same office with me. We liked one another, and found that we could work together very easily. We became good friends, and remained so after my retirement, despite our age difference. Lisa is the same age as my children. Our relationship is somewhere between best friend and mother-daughter. I call her my "other daughter". We now live on the same street, and she looks out for me, worrying over me if my car is gone from the driveway too long or if I forget to turn out the outside light in the morning. She calls me every day, and I look forward to her chats. (And she keeps me up on the gossip from the old office.) We enjoy nature walks together, and she asks me to join her on lots of little expeditions. Every so often I manage to do something stupid, like locking myself out of the house, or locking my car keys in the trunk when I'm far from home. (Yes, it's true. I've done that.) But I can always call Lisa to come to the rescue.
Last night sh
e came over and put up a new curtain rod for me. It's frustrating not even to be able to get up on a little step stool to do something like that, but she hung the curtain for me. I have no idea what it would be like for me if I did not have a friend like Lisa now. No - not "like Lisa". Just Lisa. She's one in a million.
And when she got up on that step stool, she said, "No pictures!" Oh well.
Don't know why. I guess thinking about Maya Angelou did it. Got me thinking about poetry again. I have a poem framed, on my bedroom wall. My youngest, Kitty, wrote it for me in 2003.
How to Write a Poem for Your Mother
First, create many unsuccessful drafts.
follow ideas into oblivion,
metaphors into cliche hums and mumbles.
Next, check your email.
Read your new messages but don't answer any.
Sing rainy day songs she taught you.
Wish in passing that you could whistle.
Wonder if it's her fault you can't.
Plant marigold seeds in the rain like she would.
Bring the open seed packet close to your face and sniff.
Know it smells like her.Open and close your journal several times.
Write the date on a page then decide to change pens.
Look at a calendar to find out exactly when Mother's Day is this year.
Re-read all the starts to poems you've begun for her in the past -
they talk about fireflies and butterflies, Tagore and Milne.
Find potential in wings and words and light and flight.
Decide having potential is like being told you are "nice".
Convince yourself you're washed up as a poet.
Spend time wallowing in this thought.
Pull the covers over your head and sleep.
Dream you are with her
walking arm in arm
through beautiful grey Budapest.
I love my poem.
I guess it sort of explains the marigolds I have started to use as my profile picture when I got tire
d of looking at my own face. We did spend some time together in beautiful Budapest in the spring of 1995. I have no picture of us together there. I do not look particularly happy in this one. Maybe the sun was in my eyes.
Kitty was teaching English as a second language to students at a gymnasium in a little town called Veszprem, near Budapest. The girl has always amazed me. She arrived there not knowing a word of Hungarian.
Learned it fairly rapidly. (Well, she had to know how to ask for potatoes in the market, and how to ask for ice cream. And only a couple of the teachers on the staff had any English at all.)
She learned to love the kids she was teaching that year, and I'm sure they loved her too. She also battled the local folks at city hall until she got to help the kids in cleaning up the graffiti and painting a mural in a pedestrian tunnel in town. That took some doing! Fighting city hall is the same world over I guess.
She isn't in the pictures. she was behind the camera.
I hope she didn't waste too much time with the covers pulled over her head. I do think she is a wonderful poet. And a prolific one.I wish that I could publish more of her work here, but that could compromise her chances of publishing elsewhere.
Well, enough of this for today.
I have just finished reading a blog post from a Canadian blogger friend, Dave. He has such a positive attitude, and he made me feel good. I wanted to pass it along.
If you aren't familiar with Dave's blog, Five String Guitar, take a look. Always an interesting read, and really Up today. I'm just very tired of listening to the media constantly telling us how terrible things are.
One of the heroes in my life is Maya Angelou, because of her books, her wonderful poetry, and mostly because of what she has done with her life. She suffered through some terrible experiences early in her life, but in spite of,or perhaps because of them, she has spent her time and energy bringing hope and inspiration to the rest of us.
Today Maya Angelou and her good friend, Norman Lear, will be honored with the Marian Anderson Award, for humanitarian leadership by an artist. One of many honors received by this wonderful woman. Well deserved.
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I was very happy to read in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday of the thousands who turned out Saturday for the Human Rights Rally at City Hall. I also heard from Pagan Sphinx and from Cunning Runt, of a similar successful rally up in Northampton, Massachusetts, and from my daughter of others out in Salinas and in other cities in California.
On a much smaller scale, I was pleasantly surprised at the positive reception to my own small post on Friday. Restores one's faith in human nature a bit.
I understand that at the rally in Northampton someone carried a sign that read, "Separation of Church and Hate". That one really got to me. It is so sad that people who believe themselves to be God-fearing and morally upright cannot understand that their hatred makes them anything but what they profess to be. God created all of us as we are. Man created laws that say He must have made a mistake.
e came over and put up a new curtain rod for me. It's frustrating not even to be able to get up on a little step stool to do something like that, but she hung the curtain for me. I have no idea what it would be like for me if I did not have a friend like Lisa now. No - not "like Lisa". Just Lisa. She's one in a million.
