Linda and I met when we were seven years old. We were together when we played jacks in elementary school and when we tried to learn how to kiss by using the top of my one-year-old sister's fuzzy, unresisting head as the object of our practice. We were together as we stumbled through junior high school, surely the most awful years of anyone's life, emerging intact (no pun intended) and on into high school, when, upstairs in the long hallway, she helped me paint all those banners that the football team so blithely tore to shreds every week ~ including the one that we had to re-do because we (I...) omitted the letter L from "Claremont".
During our early college years, we worked together at Sears in the "new" mall in Pomona and even endured ~ at work, before we wised up~ several titanic hangovers incurred at my house when my family left us "in charge" while they vacationed. Several years later, after she took it upon herself to "rescue" me from my insane roommate and my (equally insane) self-imposed poverty at San Diego State (thank you, Paul Filloon, for the $5 you left under the vase), Linda and I were together when she was the maid of honor in my (first, ill-considered) wedding.
We were together when Linda did what I thought was a truly brave thing: she went to Hawaii, alone, just to vacation and to visit with a distant relative in Honolulu. And this relative had a friend or another relative who knew someone who just happened to be male, single, handsome, and free for dinner. And damned if they didn't fall in love, get married (we were together there), move to Arizona, have two kids, and then grandkids.
I'm sorry to say that the last time we were together was at our 30th reunion, where we shared a room, made a few catty remarks, and laughed a lot. After that, we kept in touch at Christmas until one year, almost a decade ago, when the cards stopped, and I learned from her husband that we would not be together ever again. Ah, Linda, such a truly good person. I miss you.
Marsha G. Lomax (Sanders)
Linda and I met when we were seven years old. We were together when we played jacks in elementary school and when we tried to learn how to kiss by using the top of my one-year-old sister's fuzzy, unresisting head as the object of our practice. We were together as we stumbled through junior high school, surely the most awful years of anyone's life, emerging intact (no pun intended) and on into high school, when, upstairs in the long hallway, she helped me paint all those banners that the football team so blithely tore to shreds every week ~ including the one that we had to re-do because we (I...) omitted the letter L from "Claremont".
During our early college years, we worked together at Sears in the "new" mall in Pomona and even endured ~ at work, before we wised up~ several titanic hangovers incurred at my house when my family left us "in charge" while they vacationed. Several years later, after she took it upon herself to "rescue" me from my insane roommate and my (equally insane) self-imposed poverty at San Diego State (thank you, Paul Filloon, for the $5 you left under the vase), Linda and I were together when she was the maid of honor in my (first, ill-considered) wedding.
We were together when Linda did what I thought was a truly brave thing: she went to Hawaii, alone, just to vacation and to visit with a distant relative in Honolulu. And this relative had a friend or another relative who knew someone who just happened to be male, single, handsome, and free for dinner. And damned if they didn't fall in love, get married (we were together there), move to Arizona, have two kids, and then grandkids.
I'm sorry to say that the last time we were together was at our 30th reunion, where we shared a room, made a few catty remarks, and laughed a lot. After that, we kept in touch at Christmas until one year, almost a decade ago, when the cards stopped, and I learned from her husband that we would not be together ever again. Ah, Linda, such a truly good person. I miss you.