Places Spirit runs deepest

Didn't I just write about roller coasters last post? Well, here I am on one again. I want off.

After my hopes for a job were dashed last week, I received an e-mail this week saying I qualified for the final round of a rather robust grant. BIG news, yet also BIG work. And, I have a BIG weekend with two major kids' arts events that I lead.

Did I mention my back is also acting up?

You know, I did get a day off, Thursday, in a strange, unplanned and not-necessarily welcomed manner. I got to catch up with old friends. Friends from my first working days as a full-fledged reporter fresh from college. Friends who knew me when and care for me no matter what.

Only easy-to-find photo of my early newspaper days [with Tad]

Ronda and I bonded easily when I arrived in the newsroom. She worked for another paper in the chain and traveled between offices. She was always easy, generous and funny. Her laugh, infectious. She showed me the ins and outs of local bars around Dayton, especially her favorite, The White Rabbit. It was just a strip-mall bar, but with Ronda there, it seemed magical.

She was nearing her first-year anniversary and making vacation plans. I told her I'd love to go to Florida, but I wasn't due for another few months. She waited.

Ronda, me, Jean and Mary at a newspaper reunion

We took one of our grey Chevettes, though I don't remember which one. Maybe mine. Black vinyl and no AC. That's what was affordable to a moneyless, new graduate. And it got us to Daytona Beach. Our first stop was somewhere in the mountains of Virginia. I am not sure. I wasn't much of a navigator back then, but Ronda taught me all about reading maps. Before being hired as a reporter/photographer, she took baby pictures at department stores. She knew how to get around and ask for what she needed. We pulled into a small motel and, after settling in, discovered our TV didn't work. Ronda went to the manager and sweet talked him into bringing us his from his house! I learned a ton on that trip, such as:
– Betting on a dog called flea-bite because we were so chewed, winning and taking ourselves to a posh dinner in a French restaurant owned by Hugo of Marseilles.
– Learning to make hobo stew of hamburger and vegetables in foil cooked over a grill on the beach.
– Throwing caution to the wind and heading to the world's fair on the way home sans a reservation and sleeping in the back of the Chevette in a camp ground. One of our air mattresses went flat in the night.
– Lucking into buying someone's ticket stubs to get into the fair in Knoxville, TN. Still not sure why it was there.

We have so many memories of weekends, other trips, meeting between her home in Toronto and mine in Cincinnati with our spouses and kids.

The reason I was able to see Ronda this week is because her father died. There's no way I wouldn't go to the funeral, north of Dayton. I arrived at the visitation in enough time to use the restroom and, when I returned, another reporter friend (one I have known since college, who also happened to work with me and Ronda) had just arrived. Ronda couldn't believe we had both come to attend the service.

Because Jean only lives a half-hour away, we are in touch more frequently. When my mother was recovering in rehab after an extensive heart surgery, she visited numerous times to give her healing-touch therapy. That's just the kind of soul Jean is.

We agreed to go to the cemetery, then the reception. I was the last in the car assemblage and lost my way to the American Legion. Somehow, I thought I heard VFW and, when Siri directed me there, found an empty parking lot. Even the funeral home couldn't tell me where to go. Fortunately, I had Jean's cell in my contacts.

I was grateful to find a full parking lot this time, entered and noticed a gathering around the bar. There was Ronda's husband, the lovable Canadian for whom she had left us and the States. He offered to buy me a beer, then we laughed at how cheap, $1.25, it was. "Heck this would be $5 at home." As we shared some conversation, Jean called to see where I was. "On the other side having a beer with Bub." She led me to the reception and a nice spread.

It was really good to touch based with these wonderful, longtime friends, even in their grief. I loved reconnecting with Ronda's family and her high school friends, who also felt like family. These are wonderful, good, honest people. Just like Ronda's dad. Nothing fancy, but real and full of tremendous love for his wife and three daughters. That was so apparent in their tears and grief. Ronda's mother has never lived alone, so the girls quickly drew up a plan where she lives with each of the three for several months the first year before she has to make any decisions.

For several minutes during the visitation, I held a three-month old. Good as gold though she was teething. She's the granddaughter of one of Ronda's longtime school friends. It was so healing to hold this sweet creature in the shadow of death and the open casket. I was stirred at the cemetery, before the skies opened with more tears, as the lone Marine trumpeter wailed taps through his instrument.

I was out all day, living an honest, hard truth among friends and grief. My prayers and blessings are with this family as they move forward without their beloved father and husband and I am grateful to have witnessed such love, grief and grounding. These are genuine people who don't stumble over what matters most in life.

• When do I feel life is a roller coaster?
• How do I get off?
• When was a time it happened serendipitously?
• Who teaches me about love and being grounded?
• What lessons are there in grief?


reeling from
ridiculous
self-made
complications

I was called
away, out

to real
living

the stuff
that matters:
life, death,
love, grief,
family
and friendship

the places
Spirit
runs deepest

Listen to this post:

Seat next to me in Ms. Davis’ class

Way back in senior AP English – high school, we're taking – I sat by Ruth. She was the new kid in school and we just sort of found each other, perhaps because we were seated together. I don’t remember. What I do recall is that every day, when I would give her a look, she would glance at her watch and, with a smile, confirm that it, indeed, was 10:15 a.m. It became our inside joke as we endured a very tough, but as we would discover later, very wonderful writing teacher. We hung in the same crowd, kids who studied and chose activities like newspaper and yearbook, language clubs and honor society.

We packed off to Miami together. I lived on one end of campus and Ruth, on the other. We had our own friends and connected frequently. She was in international studies, while I took journalism/political science. Junior year, she traipsed off to Europe and that’s when I realized how much I missed her. She wrote terrific reports of her studies and travels on those light-blue, thin airmail sheets. When one arrived, I savored every morsel. Early that summer, she returned home with a souvenir for me: an oversized glass from the Hofbrau Haus. As in from Munich, Germany. Not across the river in Covington. She’d stuffed it in her down jacket ... the things we for for friends. I’m sure she’d more than paid for it by the beverages she had consumed.

We talked about the stein and her counterpart last weekend as we collected our families together at Findlay Market and a jaunt to Rhinegeist Brewery, which resembles an old, German beer hall. We meet every other Thanksgiving weekend, when she journeys to Cincinnati from her home in Chicago. We’ve watched our kids grow from toddlers to high schoolers and always pick up where they left off , usually over something goofy. Our spouses get on well, too.

When Ruth returned between junior and senior years in college, I asked if she’d be my roommate in the apartment I had shared with two other women, who were moving on. She was the best roomie, open to doing anything and clear about when it was time for me to clean the bathroom when I had slacked off. No nonsense and no drama. We had a lot of fun that year, highlighted by our third roommate, Didge, whom Ruth met freshman by the luck of the draw. I’ve got some ridiculous pictures of the three of us in shorts and antique, black hats left behind in the closet. I loved our cooking arrangement: I prepped and they cleaned up. We’d have grand Sunday feasts of roast chicken that made our friends envious and I could walk away from the dishes.

 

I convinced Ruth to become a little sis at the fraternity I had joined freshman year. After all, she already felt like a sister. We were together a lot senior year. I remember her parents retrieving us after graduation with a full-sized U-haul to schlep our belongings home. I located a reporting job in a tough market just north of Cincinnati, she headed to Philadelphia for paralegal school.

Then life got a little busy, though we stayed loosely connected. She ended up in Chicago and I got married. We visited her in her Mary-Tyler-Moore apartment on top of an old Victorian, then wondered if our new diesel would start in frigid Chicago temperatures one winter when she lived in a sophisticated flat. When she snagged a great guy, we attended a wonderful Windy City weekend. I am still somewhat resentful that we were prevented from celebrating their Elvis party one winter due to an ice storm. We almost made it to Indianapolis with our life-sized Elvis cutout in tow.

She had a son and a year later, I had a daughter. Two years later, one of us called the other to discover that, at 40, we were both pregnant. It was so affirming not to be the only older mother!

A few years ago, Ruth was dealt the blow of breast cancer. She hung tough and came through with flying colors. I am still amazed at her strength and ability to take so much in stride. More recently, her mother and I have bonded over our fibromyalgia, another link in our relationship.

I’d have to say she’s my oldest and dearest friend. When we were parting last Saturday and giving each other a final hug, Ruth said “How many people can you see every few years and pick up right where you left off?”

Ruth and I can and for that I am eternally grateful!

• Who is my oldest and dearest friend?

• How do I honor that relationship?

• What makes that shared history so special?

• How do some, special friends become the family we choose?

• How do I treasure and maintain my friendships?

she whirled in

from St. Louis

senior year

I’d already

made my friends

since we’d transplanted

nine years earlier

yet we were

drawn together

through:

English class,

college,

as room mates,

by travels,

and relocation,

marriages,

motherhood,

sisterhood,

illness

and time

so grateful

she landed

in that seat

next to me

in Ms. Davis’

class

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