I Can Do Hard Things

 

I can do hard things.

 

I can walk five miles with shooting heel pain as I endure an excruciating bout of plantar fasciitis. Then I can pull out my trusty reel lawn mower and limp across the grass, back and forth, back and forth until the most determined of dandelion stalks finally succumbs to the no-longer-sharp blades of the push mower. I can do this for 93 minutes in 97 degree weather, sweat stinging my eyes and soaking my shirt. 

 

I can pee in a Port-a-Potty while flies swarm above soft and fragrant blobs, wondering all the while if it is choice or necessity that there are ALWAYS feces in that dark, dank hole. 

 

I can give up body parts – two knees, one hip, one uterus, two ovaries, two bosoms, one gallbladder – without shedding a tear.

 

I can bury a favorite soul sister. 

 

I can endure a stranger’s thigh pressing against mine on an airplane, I can cringe silently through an uncovered covid-cough, I can have spirited discussions without berating one’s political convictions. I can drink half a bottle of bourbon without slurring a word (though one might argue that would be better categorized as "I can do foolish things"). I can write heartfelt eulogies for people I’ve never met, I can survive hours and hours at a Hearts Tournament without mentioning the lack of ice (like, why?) and I can watch 153 out of 162 Mets games a year which, anyone who knows, knows isn't always easy.

 

I can forgive to a fault, friend the unfriendable, fearlessly ride my bicycle on car-crowded streets and wear Spanx for 16 hours straight.

 

I can do hard things. 

But a four-inch mouse in my house is a hard I can’t handle.

 

Let alone six of them. 

 

Living in a house that has outlived most living souls brings a set of challenges that almost, but not quite, negates its beguiling bones. We’ve had squirrels in the eaves, a cawing crow in the daughter’s bedroom, an ant-infested kitchen, backed-up sewer lines, clogged up sinks, bathtubs, showers and laundry tubs and yes, mice. We’ve had them before. We’ll have them again. 

 

To be honest, I had seen the prolific evidence. But as with so many problems in my admittedly charmed and privileged life, I opted to ignore the droppings, hoping they would just go away. But after discovering a gnawed-through bag of croutons (the expensive brand) in the pantry, I knew I had to take action.

 

I pulled out the trusty “humane” mouse trap, smeared peanut butter on one end and tossed a crouton in the other – after all, they apparently enjoyed those zesty-Italian flavored cubes. 

 

The next morning I headed to the pantry and slowly, so slowly creaked open the door, bracing for the sight I would find. My heart skipped a beat, whether it was from fear or joy, I'm not sure. But there it was. A little brown mouse, surely wondering how it had gotten its crafty self into a pickle like this. 

 

“Ever-loving spouse!” I shrieked. 

 

Luckily, the ever-loving was working from home that day so off he went, dog on leash, mouse trap in hand, to the nature preserve half-a-mile down the road. 

 

Now I’ve heard the rumors and have googled for confirmation. Apparently a mouse can find its way "home." So while it's perfectly possible that it had been a former tenant, it's still a stretch that it, or any mouse, could or would ever criss-cross two busy streets and pass forty houses on the way up the hill without one of them having more to offer than ours. 

Day after day, we (meaning, of course, my ever-loving spouse and creature-loving son who was home on break from the horse show) caught and released, caught and released. As long as I didn’t have to do anything but put a couple crumpled croutons in the trap every day, I took a certain pleasure in the process. 

 

Until. 

The spouse and son went off to Michigan, leaving me alone with the dear-old dog and my word games for three whole nights. 

 

I debated whether or not to put out the trap while they were gone. After all, what was I going to do if I caught one? Again, I turned to google. 

 

No home ever has just one mouse and don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. Mice can breed year-round with one female able to produce five to 10 litters per year. With an average of six to eight babies per litter, a family of six mice can multiply into 60 over the course of three months.

It was abundantly clear that I couldn't let down my guard. 

So as I am wont to do, I surveyed my gaggle of girlfriends, asking advice on what to do if I indeed trapped a mouse while all alone in my old, creaky house.

I reasoned that I'd probably be able to pick up the cage, if I averted my eyes– but I knew for sure I wouldn’t be able to carry that trap to the park. And I also knew that the scratching sounds of an entrapped rodent, albeit 1/10,000ths of my size, was something I'd never be able to unheard. 

"Do you think I'll go to hell if I just toss the trap into the trash can?" I asked one friend.

"It's a rodent," she responded. 

"But it will die a slow death. It will slowly smother with all that trash on top of it." 

"It's a rodent," she reiterated. "In YOUR house."

 

I now knew the course of action that I would take if, God forbid, I came face-to-face with the vermin in the morning. After tossing the mouse-filled trap in the trash, I would simply buy a new one on Amazon, to be delivered on my doorstep within 24 hours. I also knew I could never confess what I had done to my creature-loving son or sister, or anyone else who could use it against me in a court of law.

I settled into a CBD-induced slumber. Dreaming, of course, of an infestation of rats. In my bedroom.

 

Thursday morning was beautiful. The humidity was down, the hound let me sleep in. I was full of confidence and as I flung open the pantry door. 

 

And there she was. Silently glaring at me. 

 

“I can do hard things. I can do hard things,” I said to the dog who couldn't quite figure out what it was that he was sniffing.

 

I headed out to the garage and slipped on my garden gloves which were caked with dirt from last year’s weeding. 

 

“I can do hard things. I can do hard things,” I mantra-ed. 

 

I plucked the trap from the shelf, trying not to make eye contact, and dropped it into a little white paper bag with rope handles that my new Apple watch had come in. 

 

I lifted the top off the metal trash can outside my back door, but immediately lowered the lid. 

 

“I can do hard things. I can do hard things.”

 

Instead, I put the little white bag that the Apple watch had come in, that now housed the green cage with the mouse, into the back seat of my car and drove. 

 

When I arrived at the nature preserve, I was faced with a new challenge. How would I ever be able to open the door to the trap and survive the sensation of a mouse scampering across my gloved hand, or worse, exposed arm or leg or foot? I almost headed to the dumpster in the corner of the parking lot.

 

“I can do hard things. I can do hard things.”

 

The mouse was at one end of the trap, facing the door with the flip-flop flap rather than the end where the peanut butter goes, the end that has to be eased off the base, slowly and methodically. I gave a gentle shake, trying to turn her around, but her little claws clung tight. I took a deep breath and yanked at the door – the one she wasn't facing – and somehow, some way, she was out and gone in a mili-second, off in search of her family without ever touching any of my exposed or unexposed body parts. 

 

I put the empty green trap back into the little white bag that my Apple watch bag came in and drove home smugly, even allowing it sit in the front seat of the car.

 

It's been three days and three empty traps. Perhaps the mice are all gone, or perhaps they’re still making their way back home. 

 

All I know is that my ever-loving spouse will be back by the time the next rodent is captured. 

 

And even if he isn’t, I know that I can do hard things. 

Make Good Choices

“It’s a buck moon tonight,” Claire said as we sipped cocktails on the poolside veranda that just so happened to offer a breathtaking view of Buzzard’s Bay. 

 

“What’s a buck moon?” one of us asked.

 

“Google it,” another quipped. 

 

“It means that we have to swim buck naked under the buck moon,” Claire joked.

 

Except she wasn’t joking.

 

Anyone who has known me for 10 minutes – maybe even five – knows that while I willingly and regularly bare my sordid and sloshy soul to the most random of people, I would never voluntarily bare my scarred and saggy body to even my nearest and dearest friends. 

 

Except that I did.

 

Six of us gathered at Claire’s house in Mattapoisett last week under the guise of celebrating the other Betsy’s retirement. Not that we needed an excuse; we will get together at any time for any reason. But this was the first time we were all at Claire’s. And with any luck, not our last. 

 

Claire and Cari Jo are the other Betsy’s friends from high school. Ann, Sue, the other Betsy and I went to college together. Because we are fun-promoters and friend-sharers, our paths have crisscrossed throughout the years. Claire often makes an appearance during our annual pilgrimage to Maine and joined us on our 40^th birthday trip to the Bahamas – bringing along yet another friend. We assume we met Cari Jo at some point at some party in Lititz, but that was many hazy decades ago, so for three of us she was virtually an unknown. But stranger-danger is not in our vocabulary and we believe that any and all strangers are just friends waiting to happen.  

 

It was a very short wait.

 

We all descended upon Claire in the late afternoon, having flown, driven and Amtrak-ed from New Jersey, Atlanta, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Boston. After a tour of the fantastical house and flower-filled grounds, we were given full rein of the bar to create whatever concoctions would bolster the barrage of invasive questions, addendums to years-long sagas and repeats of stories some of us have heard 10, 20, 100 times before. 

 

In the midst of our second (third?) heavy pours, we noticed an arrangement of lovely blue hydrangeas and white roses. 

“Are they from your garden?” one of us asked.

 

“No, they’re a thank you from my daughter,” Claire responded.

 

We have 12 children between the four-sixth of us who chose the parenting path. The other two have a plethora of nieces, nephews, friends and acquaintances with offspring – making them equally as privy to the roller coaster of emotions, traumas, joys and concerns that child-rearing can bring. 

 

Which is why, when one of us read the daughter’s card aloud, the final line evoked all kinds of hoots and hollers.

 

Make Good Choices, it said.

 

We weren’t sure if they were meant as protective, regurgitated or sarcastic words, but knew it didn’t make a lick of difference. Our theme for the week was signed, sealed and delivered in the form of a bountiful bouquet smirking at us from its vase on the coffee table.

 

Though I am 100 percent pro-choice, it’s often hard for me to actually make a choice. I can spend multiple minutes in the presence of grimacing waiters as I vacillate between grilled or blackened chicken; I annoy patient kitchen designers (and sisters) as I change color palettes and preferences daily; and continually amuse my travel partners showing up with the biggest suitcase I own -- all because I couldn’t choose between the black sandals or the other black sandals; two long-sleeved tops or five; my laptop or my iPad; two books or four; the bigger or smaller of my portable fan collection. 

I counter this debilitating indecisiveness by drawing certain lines in the sand. Virtually, that is. Because I don’t do sand. I have a whole slew of rules that keep me from having to make choices. I have adamant I don’t, I won’t, I can’t and I would never’s covering everything from ice-less drinks to the aforementioned walk on the beach. From sleeping in sub-par hotels to eating lobster after witnessing its squealing descent into boiling water; from going to stand-up comedy shows to watching Stranger Things on TV, there are some things in life I simply Will. Not. Do.

 

But I suspect those were not the kinds of choices to which the darling daughter was referring.

 

Whether it's intentional or just dumb luck, most of my friends are fiercely independent women whose significant others encourage extra-marital vacations. Spending time away with “the girls” has rejuvenated our spirits and saved our souls countless times, in countless ways. However, weekends together do tend to take on an age-regressing timbre, taking us back to the days when our most important decision was whether to go to The Fort or to Maxie’s for shots and beers. 

 

I suspect those are the kinds of choices to which the darling daughter was referring. 

 

Oh ye, of little faith. 

 

While we can easily revert back to our 20-something year-old selves when we’re together, we trust our 60-something year-old selves to pump the brakes before things go south. We’ve now lived long enough to know that we should always apply sunscreen before yachting to Martha’s Vineyard for lunch. That we should take Jarred’s hand rather than jumping full-throttle into a dinghy. That riding in a convertible after a boat ride will not mess up our hair and if it does, it doesn't matter. That we should ask in advance what exactly market price is to avoid ordering a 40-dollar sandwich. That sand can be easily extricated from rubber flip-flops and that corn hole does indeed have rules. We know that buffalo chicken dip can serve as supper, but consuming sun-soaked caramelized onion dip is not a good idea. That your friends don’t care if your dress is too short, your pants too tight, your face too wrinkled, your bunions too big. But that maybe you should paint your toenails to deflect that bulging bump. 

 

We have lived long enough to know that it’s okay to point out rogue chin hairs and that offering up a Bic razor is a kindness. That crack cocaine can’t hold a candle to crack corn and measured martinis are infinitely more drinkable than their just-wing-it counterparts. That allowing the Betsy’s to repeat their stories…over and over again…may end up helping with retention as our minds grow older and dimmer. 

 

And we have lived long enough to know that swimming buck naked under a buck moon will not kill us. It will only make us stronger.

 

In the aftermath of our Mattapoisett trip as we transitioned back to our real lives, we sent dozens of texts back and forth, many of which were tongue-in-cheek reminders to Make Good Choices. 

Which led me to think about all the myriad choices we make that can alter the course of our lives. We choose who to love, when to leave. We choose our career paths and how we spend our free time. We choose how to take care of our bodies, our minds and our bank accounts. We choose our gods, our guides and our girlfriends. 

I will always, always advocate for making, keeping and surrounding yourself with fun-loving friends. Friends who will raise you up, accept your faults, bolster your dreams, tolerate your quirks, mitigate your morning-afters, laugh at your nonsense and hug your heart.

Which is why, darling daughters to whom we've uttered the very same words, you don't have to worry about us making good choices. 

It looks like we already have. 

Too Old To Remember. Too Young to Forget.

I have long contended that I loved every minute of high school. But I am also acutely aware that memories tend to wax and wane and skew in countless ways as we try to harmonize our pasts with our presents.

As we planned for a reunion twice delayed by Covid, I was met with a mystifying amount of resistance that ranged from, “There is NO way I’d voluntarily spend an evening with those people,” to “I already keep in touch with anyone I care about,” to “If I lose 30 pounds by then, I’ll go.” I began to wonder if perhaps I had lost my marbles and maybe high school hadn’t actually been everything I cracked it up to be.

But when my lifelong sidekick, Margaret, suggested pulling out the Retina – our yearbook – to cram, I found myself swelling with nostalgia rather than cringing with PTSD. I had never given much thought to why this book, covered in a blue-jeaned graphic, was called what it was, so I did something I couldn’t do back in 1975, and googled the word retina.

The light-sensitive layers of nerve tissue at the back of the eye that receive images and sends them as electric signals through the optic nerve to the brain.

I guess in layman’s terms it means that we can all see the same picture yet process it differently.

And I have no doubt that along the way, some of our retinas have torn just the tiniest bit.

As I looked at high school through the yearbook, I remembered it as The Way We Were, coincidentally our much maligned prom theme. While there’s no denying the power of Barbra’s pipes, perhaps Why Can’t We Be Friends would have been a better choice for those formative years.

After all high school was first and foremost, about friends. Making friends. Losing friends. Keeping friends. And looking for acceptance in alternate friend groups.

There were myriad cliques in our mostly homogeneous high school. We were jocks and jerks. Motor heads and air heads. Hard guys and fast girls. Freaks and geeks. Swimmers and spazzes. We were cool and we were nerds. Cheerleaders and color guards. Handsome hunks and hot chicks. We were members of the Wilderness Survival Club , the Chess Club, the Pep Club, the Debate Club, Stage Crew, Chorus and Band. We were class officers, class clowns, and in the top and bottom of our class – though most of us fell somewhere right in the middle. We were musical prodigies, budding artists, aspiring novelists, thespians, lesbians, boy crazy, girl-crazy and just plain crazy.

Yet, as the years rocketed by, those old familiar lines of demarcation blurred along with our memories.

“Do you remember Joe Sonneborn?” (name changed to protect poor Joe’s past, present and future), I asked Margaret soon after his reunion payment showed up in my Venmo account.

“Sure,” she responded. “He was in my home room. He was a hard guy who hung out with the juniors.”

“No he wasn’t. He was the volleyball team manager or an A-V guy or something. He was definitely NOT a hard guy.”

“Did we even have a volleyball team?”

I pulled out the Retina. Yes, we did. But no Joe Sonneborn was pictured with the team.

And so it went. As the RSVPs filled my inbox, I began to wonder. Was he a football player? Was she in I.I.? Was he at that party in Wyndmoor? Was she in my consumer math class? And mostly, did it even matter almost half-a-century later?

Still, I didn’t want anyone to think they’d been forgotten. So, Margaret and I conjured up a foolproof scheme for successful identification at the reunion. We set ourselves up at a table in the front of the room, crossing off names as people checked in.

“Absolutely no idea who this is coming in,” Margaret whispered.

“Head down,” I responded.

“Name?” one of us asked without lifting our eyes to the face.

“Sue McElroy.”

At which point we both popped our heads up and in cried in gleeful unison, “Sue!”

And for the record, hers wasn’t a case of, “OMG, who IS this old lady?” Actually, it was quite the opposite.

Of course there were the Lance Rultenbergs and Jane Arcaris and Nancy Barretts and Marianne Bakers who looked mere minutes older than their 18 year-old selves and everyone, but everyone knew them immediately.

If we had thought to order trophies, Ellyn Ballezza would have been the clear winner for the most “Is she coming?” queries. Runner-up to farthest distance traveled would be Diane Pollsen, representing the Lone Star State. But, ever the competitor, Kit Schaeffer beat her by 1200 miles. John Schaeffer, same family, had the shortest commute – coming from his childhood-turned-adult home right down the street.

Lauren Fisher would have gotten the award for best at keeping in touch, having moved across the river before high school, but was still one of the first to respond with a resounding YES. Beth Marvin, another friend who graduated elsewhere, would have taken the prize for best in talking Betsy off the ledge as I spewed my hopes and fears throughout the planning process. And of course, Sue Harting, tapping into her Spartanette skills, would win hands-down for her bravery in bullying classmates into submission.

A few of our friends get gold stars for good intentions – Karl Douglass, Jody Field, Jane Finkelstein, Anne Jordan, John McGettigan, Rick Nesbitt, Tina Pelensky, Chuck Presser, Bob Schultz (were you ever REALLY planning on coming?) – but life got in their way and they ended up not making it. And in the eleventh hour, after literal years of planning, Pam Kroberger caught Covid and Beth Holmes caught cancer. But they’re both going to be just fine.

Jeff Ullberg had been radio silent but showed at the door, as did fan favorite, Kevin Forster. Pam Thomas brought a photo album of our senior trip to Nassau where teacher chaperones bellied up to the bar alongside our teenaged selves. Lori Stein’s dimples have not diminished nor has her wonderful warble, though she did refrain from belting out 70s songs. Val Simmens still has her sardonic wit, Karen Brown her twinkle-eyed smile, Scott Geller his persuasive abilities to get aforementioned Val to attend. Barry Magen still retains his inclusive geniality, Paul Fischer his humor. Wes Acker, Robert Black, Chip Horner, Ray Cassidy and Dave Hissey all married well, bringing their personable, not to mention very brave, brides along for the show. Jim Hill still has a way with dogs and Leslie Leidy maintains her love for horses. Carole Sugarman still has her nose for nose, Barbara Crits is still a stalwart for social justice, Amy Katz and David Troyer still have their legal sensibilities, Vince Urbano still has my heart.

As we made our way through memories with the in-from-the-beginning Gail Margulies, Frank Abromitis and Rick Altomare, the kindness-spreading Halligans and Pam Hadley, the coupled after multiple drinks at the last reunion, Kathy McIntyre and Jeff Simmons, the ever-active Caryn Hartman, Thad MacNamara, Leon Dender, Roger Stewart, Gwen Donofry and Terry Kiely, the multi-sported Marion MacNeill and the still-smiling Lynn Wallach, we learned that despite the things that haven’t changed, the way we were is not necessarily the way we are.

Except, of course, for some of us. Just like back in the day, Margaret Sommerville, Lynne Murray, Alexa Koutsourus, Ann Lupica, Karen Bruno, Sue Harting and I were intent on keeping the party going, finally closing the bar at 2 am.

We wandered through the room, sharing our unique accounts of Springfield High. We reminisced about our almost-winning hockey team, the football parties we were or weren’t invited to, our first kisses, our first beers, our worst kisses, our worst jobs. We remembered detentions with Mr. Matula, canoe trips with Dave Cockrell, Driver’s Ed with Mr. Reifinger, communal showers after gym class, ice cream cones at Yum Yum, victories at Oreland Girls Softball, being shushed in the library by Ms Newton and pep rallies in the gymnasium. We talked about the prom, our rain-soaked graduation and getting stopped by the cops because Karin Shea was riding through Erdenheim on the literal roof of my mother’s wood-paneled station wagon. We recalled smoking in the woods behind Harston Hall, joining Sunday night youth groups based solely on which church drew the coolest kids, abusing open campus privileges by hanging out in parentless homes and driving eight-to-a-car into Flourtown for a hamburger from Gino’s or a hoagie from Cisco’s. We laughed about the parent-busting party in Ellyn’s basement, and driving laps and laps from town to town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hunk of the hour. We challenged our memories with “who was that guy who…” and debated our opposing truths of whether the poor girl was a victim or a villain that night on the golf course.

While making rounds from table to table I lamented those who had no interest in coming.

“It’s easy for you,” one classmate said to me in defense of the absent. “You were always popular.”

I scoffed. Me? Popular? Now that's a distorted memory. I’ll be the first to admit that I wanted to be popular as much as I wanted to have straight hair. And though I could hang with the best of them and did my fair share of dangling from the high rungs, I never earned a firm and final perch at the top. That was reserved for those with looks and charm way beyond my reach. 

I also know that I exchanged more words with some of my classmates in the course of party planning than we had in all our years of school put together.

So why, one might ask, would I want to go to a reunion with people I hadn’t spoken to in 47 years? And why would I want to kindle a relationship with those I may never have spoken to at all, ever?

I must admit, leading up to the event there were moments, though fleeting, when I questioned it myself.

But when the night was over and we said our goodbyes, vowing to stay in better touch, swearing our undying allegiance and promising to become fast Facebook friends, it all made sense as to why we were there.

Unlike two dozen members of the Class of 1975, we had survived. We had gotten through deaths and divorces, conquered Covid and cancer, hobbled through hip replacements and job replacements. We became business owners and doctors, lawyers and financiers, engineers and journalists. We became controllers and consultants, volunteers and vice presidents, psychologists and dog trainers, realtors and writers, musicians and managers, nurses and hygienists.

But at the root of our souls we’re all just average Joes who serendipitously shared our humble beginnings at Springfield Township High School. We navigated our lives as best as we were able only to find that the former athletes struggle with their arthritic joints just as the beauty queens now harbor their jowly necks. Some of us went to college, some of us learned trades. Some of us have children, some of our children have children. Some of us are happy, some of us wish we were. Some of us have way surpassed our parents' successes, some of us can barely get by. Some of us peaked in high school, and some of us still have a long, long way to go.

We shared a lot, this class of 1975. Vietnam and Watergate. Driver’s licenses and college rejections. The energy crisis and Earth Day. Long hair and bell bottoms. Patty Hearst and Saturday Night Live. Broken hearts and not-so-perfect prom dates. And of course, the hallowed halls of Springfield High.

Sure, we have packed on the pounds, lost our hair, and wear deep wrinkles on our faces. But we're also a little bit wiser, a little bit kinder and a little bit more tolerant than we were back when we were jockeying for position on the pages of the Retina.

After all was said and done, I pulled out the 200-page spiral-bound notebook that served as my diary throughout my high school days.

Somewhere between being SO mad at Debbie Atlee that "I can’t WAIT to get away from here and go to college," and three days later, raving about the Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert at the Spectrum (which I attended with former ex-friend, Debbie), there it was.

“I am soooooooo lucky !!!!! (multiple o’s and exclamation points). I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine EVER having as much fun as I’m having in high school.”

I was oh, so right. Yet oh, so wrong.

Cheers to The Way We Were and the long, and windy road that led us to The Way We Are.

...And the Way We Will Be at our 50th reunion. Save the date coming soon!

A Life Well-Lived: The Takeaway

“I see Patty in Jesus’s face,” Madge, our faithful Jew, whispered across the pew to Rachel, Debbie and me. 

We shoulder-shook-giggled as we’ve done so many times over the course of our 50-year friendship. 

 

“I’m serious,” she said. 

 

By no stretch of the imagination did I see Patty’s face in the floor-to-ceiling Jesus that was prominently displayed beyond the priest in the pulpit. But I immediately recognized a somewhat familiar pose. 

 

Patty, the fifth member of our friend group, was perhaps the most dynamic, artistic, wittiest and wildest. Though to be fair, those very descriptors will likely be used interchangeably in all of our hopefully far-in-the-future eulogies. 

 

Along with her brothers, Patty had long ago defected to Florida – their mother, Jean, joining them for the last few years of her life. As they were born and bred Philadelphia folk, it made sense to bring them back home for a joint memorial service and burial, especially since they died just seven weeks apart. 

 

It took over a year-and-a-half, mainly due to this travel-deterrent, social pariah of a thing called COVID-19, but finally, far-flung friends and family had converged in Pennsylvania – trunk-loads of stories in tow.  

 

As Jesus waved in the foreground, the requiem mass continued with Patty’s beloved nephews, aka Jean’s grandsons, proudly proclaiming meaningful Bible verses about eternal life (all you have to do is believe) and forgiven sins (audible sigh of relief). The sweet sounds of Ave Maria and the can’t-hear-it-without-the-ol-throat-constricting Amazing Grace filled the sanctuary and we floated out On Eagle’s Wings.

 

In those awkward post-service moments with pockets of people nudging one another with, “Isn’t that the double cousin?” or “They must be the high school friends” or “Those are Bill’s kids over there,” it began to rain.

 

“Tears for Patty,” Rachel said, looking to the sky.

 

No sooner were the words out of her mouth that the rain, and the tears, were gone for the day. 

 

It was all a bit surreal, piling into Debbie’s car as if we were our 16-year-old selves. But today no one was stuck in the middle of the backseat; instead there was a magnetic FUNERAL flag teetering on the roof. We couldn’t help but reminisce about the thousands of miles we had spent in cars together –singing Fifty Nifty United States on the cross-country drive to Rachel’s college, peeing on the shoulder of Route 81 en route to Canada or heading to Jimmy’s Hatboro house for a Super Bowl party. We drove to the Spectrum to see Jethro Tull, The Allman Brothers, Traffic, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Eagles, Jackson Browne and everyone in between. We took the Schuylkill Expressway to cheer for Manny Trillo and Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, making it back to The Fly in time for last call. We barreled down the Black Horse Pike to Somers Point for 7-for-a-dollar beers at The Anchorage and to Cape May or Strathmere for weekend-long parties. Belting out Beatles' tunes, we rode from arboretum to arboretum in search of the best buds. We looped from Flourtown to Wyndmoor. From Laverock to North Hills. From Oreland to Kensington. From South Street to Plymouth Meeting Mall.  We pooled our pennies to fill the tanks during the Energy Crisis, hoping our parents weren’t monitoring the odometer as well as the gas gauge. We rode with the windows rolled down in summer because there was no air conditioning and in the winter to keep the cigarette smoke from permanently permeating the family cars. 

I distinctly remember sitting in Patty’s khaki-colored Corvair, lost on the side of some road somewhere – probably on the way to one of Bobby Katz’s parties -- when Rachel had one of her many Eureka moments. 

 “I know!" she exclaimed. "We should invent a gadget that tells us where we are and how to get where we’re going.” 

 

If only. 

 

We had no idea where we were all heading but we talked about it. All.The.Time. We talked about who we were. Why we were. Who we were supposed to be. What we’d become. Where we'd Iive and with whom. Which guys were worthy of our pursuit. And vice versa. We shared our biggest fears. Our strongest convictions. Our weakest moments. Our darkest secrets, our most cringe-worthy moments, laughing through the tears as we over-analyzed our actions.  

 

We may have looked like your typical party girls on the outside, but truth be told, we were deep. Oh, so deep. 

 

So, there we were, the grown-ups we never truly believed we’d ever become. A Jew, a Quaker, a Heathen and a Presbyterian. Three liberals and a Trumper. A nurse, a data analyst, a writer and a state worker. All of us in committed relationships and mothers of kids who never in their millennial dreams would believe the life we had led. So mostly, we just didn’t tell them. 

 

“I liked the bit about how we shouldn’t focus on what we think we need,” Debbie said as we pulled out of the church parking lot, kicking off our discussion of Father Larry’s homily. “But that we should be content and happy and thankful for what already have.”

 

“I totally missed that,” I replied. “All I heard was that we are all broken in our own ways.” 

 

“How about the phone?” Madge chimed in. “He held up his cell phone and said that when we get a call, even though a name pops up, we have to have faith that it’s really THAT person on the other end.”

 “What I heard, and you know I’m half deaf,” Rachel added. “Is that we have to believe that Patty and Jean are still with us. But of course, we already knew that.” 

 

“There was something about the finality of goodbye and how the Irish always say farewell rather than goodbye -- is that true, Betsy?”

 

“What do I know? I don’t have a drop of Irish blood in me.”

 

“You don’t?”

 

“You know I don’t.”

 

“Maybe it’s early dementia setting in.” 

 

“Early?”

 

“Well either way, we better never say goodbye to each other ever again.”

 

We fell silent for a minute on that one. 

 

“But the phone thing,” Madge continued. “It was about keeping the connection. And how we have to keep talking to the dearly departed even if we can’t see them.”

 

“Right. Not to treat them like a memory, but as if they’re still here.”

 

“Patty??? We’re talking to you. You listening?!” 

 

We laughed, knowing that she was. And that she was loving every minute of it.

 

We wound our way through our old stomping grounds, landing at the cemetery across the street from the long-gone Korvette’s where one of us had started her short-lived, coming-of-age shoplifting career. 

 

We stood at the gravesite and recited the Lord’s Prayer, some of us forgiving trespasses, others forgiving debts, then each placed a flower by the marble urns that held their ashes. We swallowed hard one last time and headed to the part of the day that Patty would have loved the best. While a true believer in God and most of his wonders, she would have cherished the church service. But she also recognized the power of a good party.  

 

Having been in Patty’s life for half-a-century, we knew her people. We loved her family. And we embraced her friends. Everyone who had gathered for her life celebration was there with a different perspective. Her oldest friend from grammar school days, her bestie from art school, her step family who stepped so far beyond the moniker, her brothers’ friends who became her own, her nephews and cousins and sisters-in-law, both past and present. We all had our memories, our own whys and what ifs and together we resurrected Patty in all her gorgeous glory. 

 

The last time I saw my friend was on our annual cruise, back in 2020 when this crazy coronovirus was first rearing its ugly head. And while neither Patty or her mother ever got COVID, I can’t help but think about the part it played in our final days together. 

 

Patty tended to focus on the catastrophic; the what-if-the-hurricane-hits scenarios, where I obsess over the fear of forgetting a favorite pair of shoes. Despite having every possible anxiety covered, we traveled well together. 

 

My ever-loving spouse begged, and I mean begged, me not to go on what ended up being the last cruise out before the no sail order took effect. I left for Florida anyway, assuming Patty would never in a million years board that boat and that we’d end up driving to Key West instead. But when we called Patty’s mother the night before departure, agreeing that we'd heed her sage advice, Jean didn’t hesitate for a second. Go. Absolutely go on that cruise. You only live once. 

And so we did. 

 

In a complete reversal of roles, mine was the heart palpitating with each and every horror story we heard while at sea. Patty would simply ply me with chocolate then lead me to the Lido deck for umbrella drinks where, inevitably we’d meet another new friend and forget all about the COVID cooking around us. 

 

I can’t help but wonder if somehow she knew this cruise would be our swan song. 

 

By the time we finally were able to celebrate Patty’s life, COVID had become background noise. Though I have always respected its virility, having lost more than a few friends and acquaintances to the virus, I no longer feared it. I had spent over two years quaking as I followed the rules but was now both boosted and bored.  Even though there was a recent uptick of one of its pesky variants, COVID didn’t even cross my mind when it came to Patty’s final send off. 

 

Oh the irony.

 

Some of us got hit harder than others, but we all made it through. Apart but together, as we'd been for much of our adult lives. Over the next two weeks our COVID connection precipitated no less than 7711 texts in which we scrutinized every how, when, where and what if scenario. We kept each other laughing as we struggled to unearth the deep mystical message enveloping Patty and COVID and the life that we all shared. 

As the texts and symptoms started to wane, the takeaway came to me in an uh-duh moment. We've screamed it from car windows and scribbled it in birthday cards. It's been our mantra and motivator and our lifeline since the day we met. It's always been there, through good times and tough times, breakups and breakdowns, feats and defeats, sicknesses and health, births and deaths.  

It's such a simple takeaway from a life well-lived. And it makes such perfect, beautiful sense. 

I'll get by with a little help 

from my friends. 

Boomer Babies Having Babies

“You mean I didn’t HAVE to breastfeed?” a new mother, whose name I won’t reveal for fear of anti-suckling shaming, exclaimed when I admitted that not one of my offspring’s lips had ever grazed my bare bosom. Apparently she thinks my kids turned out just fine despite the cruel and unusual Similac punishment I imposed upon them. 

My ever-loving spouse begged me to at least give breastfeeding a go, but my deep-seated body image issues, not to mention a strong dependency aversion (both fully disclosed before marriage) prevailed. He hoped to wear me down by colluding with the maternity nurse, asking her to voice the virtues of a mother’s milk, but sorry dude, it didn’t work. 

 

At my daughter’s first doctor’s visit, I asked the pediatrician if it was indeed necessary to sterilize her bottles and / or warm the formula inside. 

 

He didn’t say I shouldn’t boil the bottles but when pressed, admitted that as soon as I touched them they were no longer sterile. Unless, of course, I was going to go full-out with protective gear and instruments – but we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

 

“There’s no medical reason to warm a bottle,” he said. “But think of it this way. Which would you find more comforting at 2 am – drinking something nice and warm or something ice cold?”

 

As this was just the beginning of our relationship, he was not yet aware of my abhorrence of hot drinks. Or warm drinks. Or any drink served without an extra cup of ice on the side. So he was a bit taken aback with my resounding response of “COLD!” 

 

He gulped (the first of many gulps in the course of our tenure together) and said to just be consistent with whatever I did. And so for every one of those three babies, I kept pre-mixed bottles of formula on ice, in a cooler, next to their cribs for their middle-of-the-night comfort. Oddly enough, though they all grew up to be healthy human beings, all three of them drink hot coffee. Something that has never, ever crossed my lips. 

 

It’s been 30 years since my first and favorite daughter entered the world. Twelve years since she left for college. Fourteen days since she last returned to do her laundry. Time and tumult has passed. Yet I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that kids her age and younger are having kids of their own. 

 

These are the very same kids whose mothers rode shotgun with me through my formative years. The kids whose mothers I drank shots with in college. The kids whose mothers were my very first friends when I became a mother myself. 

 

These are the kids who grew up with my own, waltzing in and out of our house with their Barbies and baseballs and (much later) bottles of Hennessey. I cheered with these cheerleaders, trick-or-treated with these witches and warriors, watched them win and lose countless basketball and baseball and football and softball and soccer games, packed them in the old minivan for adventures near and far, filled their bellies with gourmet-as-it-got chicken roll-ups and tacos, harked their herald angelic voices in church services and Christmas pageants and bonded with them over Duke losses as forever friends on Franklin Street. 

 

These are the kids who signed my daughter’s closet door with deep thoughts and dark sharpies. The kids who I found curled on couches in our basement on Sunday mornings. The kids who camped together on Woolley weekends. The kids I carted around and catered to for half of their lives. The kids to whom I offered unfiltered insights and light-hearted band-aids, assuring their tortured souls that one day they’d look back and laugh. Or at the very least, not cry. 

 

But cry we did – through funerals and failures, graduations and weddings. And just when we thought we were all emoted out, these kids went and started having kids of their own. Nothing, not even that missed free shot at the championship game, has tugged harder at my heart strings than watching them grow into parents themselves. 

 

Recently, the world has welcomed Leo and Theo. Hannah and Savannah. Demi and Dominic. AJ and Aspen. Ziggy and Zoey. Lila and Lia. Emma and Ellie. River and Win. Maeve and Maxwell. And Tommy the Third. 

 

Maeve’s baby brother is brewing, Kendall is still kicking from the inside out and Ava is bouncing around in her mama’s belly, anxiously awaiting life on the outside as an honorary Voreacos. And just today I found out one of my all-time favorites has a sonogram not yet shared on social media. 

 

I rejoice with every announced pregnancy, every gender reveal, every long labor of every one of these kids I've known and loved. But are they really old enough, strong enough, savvy enough to be parents themselves?

 

The answer, of course, is yes they are. Just as we were. But we wise old owls just have to hold our tongues, knowing that any opinions we choose to impart will be met with rolled eyes and blank stares. 

 

Just like way-back-when in a crowded grocery store line, I picked up my shrieking – and I mean full-out, flipping-out shrieking – infant, and a random woman waggled her finger at me crooning, “I see a spoiled baby.”

 

Just as on a separate but equal occasion, when my own mother who was oh so good about not voicing her thoughts, delicately suggested that my beet-red-from-crying baby was simply tired and that perhaps I should just put her in the crib and let her sleep. 

 

Or when their grandfather gently suggested how to break the 16-month old’s pacifier addiction – just mail it to me and tell him I’ll hold onto it for him. Or when my sister, who was watching our kids for the weekend, crumpled and tossed my three-page instruction manual when I walked out the door. I remember all too well those who denounced me for letting my kids watch television. For not letting them quit the team until wrestling season was over. For making them go to church. For strolling them through town in both 25 and 95 degree weather. For never having a monitor, let alone a video camera. For impeding their development with an in-home babysitter. For causing them trauma when they switched to out-of-home daycare. For introducing them to chicken nuggets and fries. For training them to nap every day at 1 pm so I could watch All My Children on TV, rather than watching all MY children. For not panicking when they fell. For calling Claire when they bled. For working too much. For working too little. For pushing too hard or not hard enough.

 

They were all right. Every single one of them. 

 

And now, with bittersweet humility, it's time to hand over the reins.

 

It's their turn to figure out proper pronouns and perfect preschools. To balance careers and childrearing. To choose between motorized bassinets and family beds. To puree the peaches, pre-chew the carrots, de-glutenize, veganize, or cancel the word treat. To find the fine line between over-parenting and under-caring. To decide between home school, private school, charter school, Catholic school, magnet school, trade school, public school or anything in between. To go with cloth or disposable, to buy the Volvo or the minivan, to promote or prohibit piercings, tattoos, TikTokking or yet to be popularized forms of expression. 

 

And now is our time to watch with the wisdom that only hindsight and heartbreak can endorse. We will love these new parents, support them, laugh with them and cry with them. We will watch with full hearts and open minds and closed mouths as they navigate the rocky road ahead. We'll slip up, we always do. And when we offer that ridiculously old-fashioned and completely unsolicited advice from which they recoil, we will simply smile, knowing there's one true thing amidst all the doubt. 

 

Despite all that we did wrong, it’s abundantly clear that we also did a whole lot right.

Good Neighbors

Despite an obvious and completely warranted devotion to their four daughters, it never occurred to my parents to vet the neighborhood before building a house on Woods Road. We’d end up having friends on our street, or we wouldn’t. Either way we’d live and perhaps even prosper. 

And if we didn’t, oh well. 

 

But fate was in our favor. Woods Road was an elongated horse-shoed enclave of forty houses varying in size, shape and personality. And within those houses were kids, so many kids, who spilled from kitchen doors into Four-Square games, Capture the Flag battles and bicycle races up and down the steep hill that really wasn’t very steep at all.

 

Because of the dense concentration of fun per capita, kids from adjacent neighborhoods emerged from the wooded lot next to the Bishop's house, cut through the Siefert's backyard, crossed over Station Avenue and found their way to Woods Road. 

 

And so, the Neighborhood Gang grew and prospered. 

Together we epitomized the last great generation of free-range children, reveling in the rumpus of spontaneous softball games, fearless fraternizing and unscheduled entertainment. We lived before helicopter parents sharpened their blades, before SAT tutors charged $100 an hour, before teachers got fired for drinking with students on senior class trips in the Bahamas. 

 

It was a childhood spent walking to Perkel’s Pharmacy for a five-cent candy bar, of calling phony numbers from party-line telephones and of climbing backyard tree houses built by our fathers. It was a time of holding séances in one musty basement and playing ping pong in another. Of rushing outside the second dinner was over and running in packs until dark. We lived in the day when we could (and wanted to) deliver newspapers at ten years old, babysit at 11 and work at the movie theater at 15. 

 

It was when a teenaged boy could expose his male member to 12 year-old girls – repeatedly – without fear of parents finding out, let alone being registered as a sex offender. When pulling the fire alarm in school was considered a prank, not a precursor to incarceration. It was when friends, not parents, picked you up and bailed you out. 

 

We left for college in wood-paneled station wagons filled to the gills with ragged bedspreads, threadbare towels and boxes and boxes of record albums. We went to law schools and medical schools and party schools. We came home for holidays on the Greyhound bus, or with a random stranger found on the ride board. And we always met at Schaeffer’s house on Thanksgiving Eve to boast about our new adventures. 

 

We grew up. We fell in and out of love. We tolerated unfathomable boyfriend and girlfriend choices -- but the ones who lasted, we embraced as our own. Some of us got married. Some of us had kids. Some of us found success. Some of us are still looking. Some of us stayed close. Some of us moved away. But we all find our way back. 

 

Last weekend more than a dozen of us got together under the guise of Kit coming in from Seattle. But the real reason was to lend some levity to a founding father with a disturbing diagnosis and a surgery looming. In the course of conversation that ran the gamut from long-dead dogs to long-living mothers, it struck me, not for the first time, that we are indeed a lucky bunch. 

 

I know that in the grand scheme of things we’re not so different from most people our age. Boomers near and far lament the same loss of innocence – not to mention hair, hearing and health. Our coming-of-age stories are interchangeable; the risks we took, the dreams we had, the unyielding belief that we had limitless years of life ahead. 

 

But what makes us remarkable is that no matter how old we’ve gotten, how far we’ve gone, how infirm, incompetent or incorrigible we’ve become, we still haven't outgrown the Neighborhood Gang. 

 

And at this stage of the game, it doesn’t look like we ever will.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I have happy memories of what I've often called a Norman Rockwell childhood. A childhood filled with unconditional (and believe me, I had a lot of conditions) familial love fortified with uncomplicated and enduring friendships that set the stage for a lifetime of infinitely adventurous fun. 

Last weekend I met two of my sisters and my first friend, Margaret, at Enfield Elementary School in Oreland, Pennsylvania. The building, which I hadn't been inside for over 50 years, is scheduled to be razed and repurposed and was open for one last walk down Memory Lane.

“Did I even have Mrs. Hillsley for first grade?” I asked my sister, Susan, who remembers everything. 

She shrugged. 

 

“I did, for sure,” Emily said.

 

“I know you did,” I glared.

 

My mind sees Mrs. Hillsley as a woman of ample girth wearing a royal blue dress and a string of pearls; her dark brown hair falling with beauty-parlor waves to her shoulders, thick ankles bulged above two-inch pumps. She was mean. Very, very mean.

 

I picture my red-headed self sitting in the front row of an asbestos-tiled first-grade classroom on the right-hand side of the hall. It was across from the kindergarten room where Mrs. Dreifus, my favorite teacher ever, built my self-esteem by encouraging me to read books aloud to the rest of the class. 

 

In this first-grade classroom I recall my eyes bugging with horror as another Betsy chirped, "Present!" when attendance was taken, in what I perceived was a direct threat to my individuality. 

I'll never forget the juvenile snickers and pointed fingers when my classmate (whose name I will not divulge on the off chance that she has forgotten her childhood trauma) wet her pants, urine rapidly pooling beneath her chair. In my bulging box of memorabilia, I have a mimeographed copy of my first short story: Pokey the Turtle, by Betsy L. Hunsicker, Age 6, First Grade. 

 

But what is most vivid are Mrs. Hillsley’s words that still echo decades and decades and decades later.

 

“You should be ashamed of yourself! Your sister, Emily, would NEVER act like that!” Mrs. Hillsley bellowed in response to me running down the hall. But there are wafts of unspoken words whirling around my brain whispering something like, "But you don't even know me," that lead me to believe that she was not my teacher. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking.

 

In the baby book that my mother kept updated with everything from my birth announcement to milestones such as when I switched from Similac to a formula of evaporated milk, sugar and water at five weeks old; first tooth at six months to the day; first steps at 10 months and the dates (spanning a dozen years) of my FIVE polio shots and one booster (take that, Covid!). There’s a record of all the gifts bestowed upon me at birth, including the Rosebud print overalls from my godmother, Aunt Elva, and who gave me the biggest check – Aunt Mary for the win at $18.75. And of course, there's a carefully preserved lock of my bright red hair. 

 

My height and weight is documented for 12 years after which time annual checkups were pawned off on the creepy school doctor. I remember lining up at the scale in our waist-high Carter’s underpants and sleeveless undershirts; the nurse offering fuel to the bullies as she screamed out our poundage, followed by the old-man doctor tapping his cold, steel stethoscope on our mostly flat chests. 

 

There is a page in my baby book with a heading of School Days, but my mother neglected to fill in the blanks beyond kindergarten. I apparently took over the task in my own adolescent scribble, and for some reason recorded Mrs. Dreifus's name next to first grade. 

 

Also missing is the name of my third grade teacher, but that was not a mistake because I didn’t have a third grade teacher. 

 

On the last day of second grade as the class stood in line by the coat closet that doubled as a fallout shelter, Johnny Schaeffer flashed me a pansophical look followed by a sing-songy, “Did you open your report card yet?” 

 

Something got me in the gut – perhaps it was fragments of an overheard conversation or just a looming sense of disrupted order. I clutched my report card tightly and refused to look at it until I got home. And when I did, I burst into tears seeing that Mrs. Baker had incorrectly promoted me to Grade Four, rather than Three. 

 

My mother assured me it was not a misprint, but that Johnny, Michael Lachs and I had all skipped third grade. Emily told me I could sit in the way-back of the wood-paneled station wagon with her friends that afternoon, an invitation that was rescinded as soon as Naomi Kaplan got in the car and flashed her a look. 

I was told by my mother who was told by the powers that be that I was weak in Math. To keep me from falling behind I was given the third-grade math book so that Steve Simpson could tutor me over the summer. This was a year after I had commanded our Dalmatian, Pongo, to “sic’em,” and he did, biting Steve Simpson in the seat of his pants. 

 

For the rest of my life I have been bad in math. 

 

Later, much later, my mother confessed that she had agreed to letting me skip a grade under one condition, and one condition only. Now that my best friend, Margaret, and I would be in the same grade, she did not want us in the same class. It was simply a recipe for disaster. 

 

In true 60s fashion, my mother kept her mouth shut when ecstatically, Margaret and I found ourselves together in Mrs. Petersen’s fourth-grade class. And again in Mrs. Lieber’s fifth-grade class. It was about this time in my educational development that report card comments began to decry that I had “come out of my shell.” And that I would be a much better student, and by implication - person - if I would only focus more on my academic endeavors and less on my social life. 

 

“Aren’t you glad you were finally separated?” Mrs. Lieber asked when she stopped Margaret and me in the hall as we walked to our respective sixth-grade classrooms. “You’re sure to become much better friends this way.”

 

On our tour of Enfield Elementary last week, we made our way down to the cafeteria where Susan pointed out the corner of the room where she, always a model student, was tasked with selling ice-cream sandwiches; a nickel for a half, a dime for a whole. We moseyed around the music room where I had learned to lip sync after being publicly shamed for singing off key. We recalled tooting Hot Cross Buns on our borrowed flutes and Margaret reminded us of her musical superiority which included much coveted violin lessons. 

 

“Remember the day Kennedy was shot?” Margaret exclaimed as we entered the All Purpose Room. “We were called down here for an assembly and then they sent us all home.”

 

“What I remember is doing those horrible gymnastics routines to Born Free,” Susan said. In unison we belted out, “Born free … As free as the wind blows … As free as the grass grows … Born free to follow your heart.”

 

“My year the song was Love is Blue,” I said cringing with the sixth-grade memory of Miss Vaché announcing to the entire class that my cardigan sweater was in fact not hiding my budding bosoms and that it was time to ask my mother for a bra. 

 

“How about Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!” Emily chimed in and we roared remembering the silly song to which we did calisthenics. “No wonder we’ve had lifelong body image issues.” 

 

“I don’t,” the still-slim Margaret quipped and the rest of us glared at her. 

 

We laughed about the duck-and-cover drills, the unflattering solid-blue, one-piece gym suits, the time when Mrs. Murray pulled Emily’s dress up and underpants down IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE SECOND GRADE CLASS to check for chickenpox and how years later we retaliated by egging her house on Mischief Night. We talked about running across the huge playground and climbing on the dome-shaped jungle gym, holding our dresses down so the boys wouldn’t see our underwear. We remembered the wooden swings that gave us splinters and how we would jump off the see-saw so the person on the other end would go slamming into the ground, and pointed out where we would line up by classroom to re-enter the building after recess. 

 

Some of us recalled the pride of being chosen for Safety Patrol to serve as a student crossing guard or bus monitor or hallway police. Others of us were never granted such an honor and consequently became the reported rather than the reportee. We chuckled over Mrs. Lieber dragging Clifford White (God rest his soul) by the ear to the front of the classroom where she pronounced him, much to our delight, a Jackass. We peeked out of Mrs. Rosenthal’s window and discovered that though Mark Sharpe had indeed jumped out, it really wasn’t all that far down to the ground. 

 

We remembered sledding at North Hills Country Club on snow days, the thrill of occasionally walking the long mile home, rather than taking the big yellow school bus. We would take the secret pathway behind the church so we could walk past the Maher’s house and then cut across E. Heather Road to avoid Sammy Abrams mother who might write a story about us in the Oreland Sun. We remembered selling cookies and doing overnights at Camp Laughing Waters with Girl Scout Troop 413. We remembered walking to Perkel’s Pharmacy to buy candy bars and calling phony numbers and how once, in her most sultry pre-pubescent voice, Margaret said to a woman on the phone, “Tell your husband that Crystal called. It’s about the baby.”

 

As we walked out the front door of Enfield Elementary School for the last time, it struck our grown-up selves as how strange a thing memory is. How is it that one person can vividly remember every detail of an event while the person who was right there by their side has zero recollection of it ever happening? How can a traumatic memory for one became a whatever moment for another? How can one person's stumble be another person's stepladder? 

But, oh how easy it is to jump on the bandwagon of someone else's memory and rewrite the world as we wish it to be. One of us may not remember who we had as a first-grade teacher, and one day may not remember what was said two minutes ago. But if we continue to walk down Memory Lane hand-in-hand with those who love us best, in the end, that's really the only memory that matters.