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...After All Those Years |
 That's Joyce on the far right with
the baseballcap, getting a big kick out of posing in the mouth of a whale's skeleton. Right below her is sister columnist Joanne Engelhardt. They're laughing so hard, we hope they remembered to wear their rubber undergarments. |
A reunion in Oregon?
There ought to be a law!
By JOYCE KIEFER
of TheColumnists.com
I doubt that the men we talk to really understand us. They smile anyway when we tell our story: The six of us women have been friends since we came together in a senior women’s honorary at San Jose State 45 years ago. The group was called Black Masque.
Two of us moved to Oregon recently. The rest of us flew in from California to join the new Oregonians for three days together. We’re all staying at the home of Marilyn, who lives here in Depoe Bay.
At one restaurant we tell our tablemates that we’ve had eleven husbands among us.
The women we meet, as we chat our way through gift shops, galleries and museums, listen to our story with delight and perhaps a touch of envy. Most seem old enough to know what a treasure women’s friendship becomes over time. We tell those who seem interested that there were 12 of us originally and that 8 still keep in touch. One member of our group has passed away.
Words are the engine that supplies our energy over these three days. The surge begins when Diane, who lives in Eugene, picks up Corky, Judy, Joanne and me after we have flown in. Words swirl through the car as she drives past calendar scene farmlands and evergreen forests dotted with sycamores blazing with fall gold. They fill the narrow space between each of us with the persistence of the drizzle outside.
Like knitting, we take up where we left off the last time we were together, even if several years have passed for some of us. With each visit we share more than our present lives. We confide parts of our past that no one has known before.
Two hours later we arrive at Marilyn’s house, a beautiful little gem set in the woods. She reveals a master’s touch at interior decorating. Exclamations of delight reach to the top of her vaulted ceilings. Conversation never ceases. Certainly not in the kitchen. Never between mouthfuls at the table. Not even at the foot of someone’s bed at midnight. Not even when someone is doing her makeup.
What could we possibly have to discuss for three days, my husband wonders when he picks me up. We’d covered babies and housecleaning years ago. Same with teaching, the profession most of us followed. There has been a reticence to discuss problems with the former husbands, but that is changing.
We don’t inhabit the past. Instead, we consider it a basis for our present lives. We discuss our collective world-wide travel, books, and the lives of our children. We share the physical problems of aging, relieved to talk with girlfriends who experience the same things. Have trouble sleeping? Yes, most of us do. Need calcium pills to stave off osteoporosis? Yes, from one or two. Fitness is a big topic. So are food and recipes, same as they’ve always been. We still have working taste buds and digestive systems and utilize both at each meal. Someday, when there’s no choice, we’ll be skinny again.
Without husbands fuming behind, we shop
with Èlan but most of us don’t buy much until
we hit the outlets in Lincoln City. Marilyn gives us 40 minutes
so we can be on time for our dinner reservation. I blitz through
several stores and show off my trophies right there in the parking
lot–shorts and Onesies for my grandson-to-be at 49 cents
each.
Bigger excitement lay ahead. Hey, this is Friday night--Girls’
Night Out. But we could never imagine providing the floor show
at the Sea Hag.
That evening we go there for the Marionberry cobbler, which Marilyn recommends along with the funny blind pianist who looks like Neil Diamond. When we walk in, we realize that most people are not there for dessert. We sit demurely around a fireplace in the center of the room and order the cobbler. One of us tells the waitress our story. She relays it to the piano player.
He asks us for requests. We shout the titles of Johnny Mathis tunes. He pretends he’s never heard of anything that far back. Finally he gives in and begins a medley that could have been the sound track of our college romances.
A bald-headed man about our age dances with his girlfriend. We watch the smooth way he swings her out and then back, never missing a beat. Then he looks our way and points at Joanne to be his next partner. They dip and twirl together, Joanne lively as ever. Nothing has changed. Then he dances with each of us.
“Neil Diamond” asks us to sing the San Jose State song. My mind goes blank, but Marilyn’s doesn’t. “Hail, Spartans, Hail . . .” The rest of us picked it up. The words spring to life and flow through us. Once again we’re women on the brink of adulthood, wearing the same faces that smile out of our yearbook.
We finish our Marionberry cobbler and leave. Everyone at the Hag wishes us a good time.
The next morning we go home. Bill picks me up so we can drive on to Washington to visit our daughter and her family. The minute he walks up the steps, Marilyn and I regale him with all that we’d done in the past three days. I had just checked my e-mail and found a note from him that said he had an “interesting” conversation with a neighbor about the death of her father and about God. I could hardly wait to hear more. Finally I was alone in the car with Bill. I asked about his conversation, still primed for cataracts of words.
“It was interesting,” he said.
That’s all.
I go into reverse culture shock. I open
an audio book by Bill Bryson and slip a CD into the player. The
book is “A Short History of Nearly Everything.”
©2005 by Joyce Kiefer. The photo is the property of the
author. All rights reserved. This column first posted Oct. 31,
2005.
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