What happened to my childhood friends?

 

Promontory Point on Chicago's South Side
Scene of much high school fun

These days, girls have lots of BFFs (best friends forever). I had two from my school days. I may have mentioned Barbara, my best friend in high school who has lived almost all of her adult life in or around Jackson MS. Over the years, we’ve seen each other occasionally and we keep in regular touch through email and Facebook. It’s stll a close and treasured relationship.

But the story is different with Eleanor Lee, my first BFF. We met in a Brownie troop at the church where her mother was secretary. How I happened to go to that troop is a puzzle, because it was not my church. But it was a fortunate puzzle, since I ended up active in that church all during high school (my parents church had no strong teen program, a different and long story).

Yesterday, Eleanor Lee’s older sister, Liz Helman, sent me two thick envelopes. One contained the memorial I had written a few years ago when Eleanor Lee died. The other had obituaries and a farewell letter written by the husband of one of our close high school friends. I was maid of honor at their wedding, though now I can’t remember where it was held, except not in the church of our youth and not even, I don’t think, in Chicago. I had not kept in touch with Allan after Bernice’s death, but I do remember visiting them a couple of times, once when I was in Portland for a meeting and they traveled up from somewhere in Oregon to take me to spend a day at their home. Makes me wish memories were clearer or that I had paid more attention to the moment when it was happening. I think I have spent too much of my life anticipating the next thing to the detriment of my enjoyment of the moment. Better late than never, I also think I am better at that these days. Stay in the moment, is my mantra—or one of them

But it was the memorial tribute to Eleanor Lee that brought tears of both laughter and sadness. When I first started to read it, I thought it was from another friend—Eleanor Lee’s other BFF. But one sentence in, I recognized I had written it, recounting all the adventures of our young lives. I used to spend the night at Eleanor Lee’s a lot, and I still remember the first night my dad took me there. Her great-grandmother, Mamie, then in her eighties at least, spent a lot of time telling Dad how safe and sturdy the house was—and I’m sure it was, because it was one of those duplexes built in the 1890s. Dad must have believed her, because he left me. That house became the center of my social life, even through high school when there were long evenings of pizza and chess with a crowd of teenagers. And in the dark of night, an army of cockroaches came out in the kitchen. Eleanor Lee thought it was funny and named them. I was appalled.

We had other adventures, from summer vacations at my family’s cottage in the Indiana Dunes to weekends sunbathing with our crowd at Promontory Point and dipping my toes in Lake Michigan. Others swam in the rocky, deep water, but I was too cautious.

Eleanor Lee graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Illinois College and promptly married a boy we had all known, one who probably didn’t finish high school. We drifted apart, the distance heightened when Frank And Eleanor moved to Escondido. Eventually our communication was down to Christmas cards, and her messages were always recitations of tragic events—a divorce, the death of a relative, a problem with a child.

I visited them once when I was at a meeting in San Diego and had Jamie and Jordan, then quite young, with me. I remember a dinner on a wharf and a trip to the famous hotel, Del Coronado on Coronado Island. It’s another moment which I wish I could recall more clearly. Now, her sister, Liz, who had always been one of the “older” kids, seems to have taken on the job of keeping me in touch with the past, and I am grateful. Shortly after Eleanor Lee died, I heard several times from her daughter, also named Eleanor. Now I only get an occasional phone call.

It's been said that when a person disappears or drops out of your life, it means their part in your story is over. Makes me sad, makes me think if I had paid more attention, if I had been a better friend and not so wrapped up in my own life. But then again, perhaps there is no need for guilt. Maybe it is what it is.

“The moving finger having writ, moves on …” (The Ráibiyát by Omar Khayyam)