By Karen Galatz in Reno, Nevada
My father loved Westerns. A man with a photographic memory who quoted poets and philosophers with ease, he also loved the simplicity of a Western. As he explained to 12-year-old me:
“There’s a good guy. A bad guy. A girl. A horse.
“There’s a gun fight. The good guy wins.
“He’s already got the horse. He gets the girl.
“The end.”
At the time, I should have realized I was receiving a valuable life lesson about men. Guys, even smart ones, yearn for simplicity. Women? Women, I would learn later, have a tolerance, even a need for a bit more.
This “simple” lesson came to mind not so long ago. I was all set to travel to New York City for my usual troika of delights — shows, museums and nonstop gastronomical gluttony. But this trip was unusual in one aspect. I was also scheduled to attend two separate reunions with childhood friends, friends I hadn’t seen in decades and had lost touch with in all those years.
My family was a peripatetic lot. We moved frequently, back and forth across the country, almost like migratory birds. I attended 21 schools. College and careers also increased the distance and lack of connection between my friends and me. Time took its toll. Then, happily, we reconnected on Facebook. Let’s hear it for those late-night sleepless Internet name searches!
Now, as I prepared for this trip and the two reunions, I felt nervous. How to launch conversations with women I had grown up with but also grown apart from? Should we start with the present or the past? The past involves so much talk of death. So many people are gone … parents, grandparents, and, in my case, two brothers. Not a happy way to begin a get-together and a meal.
Start with the present? What work do you do? How is your health? Tell me about your husband. Where did you meet? How old are your children? How are they doing? All important, good questions, but somehow, they didn’t feel “deep.” Anybody could ask those questions.
Still, my husband and son advised “keeping it simple.” But, for me, that didn’t ring true. I was craving that link to my past. In recent years, we have moved to a new town, and unlike my friends in this new community, these two women knew and loved my family. They know my history and didn’t need the backstory to understand my life and my feelings in the present.
You can talk about current affairs and the weather, even books, with anybody. That’s the stuff of today. But the past, that’s special. Pausing to provide a preamble and context to a family joke or reminiscence is no fun. It kills the punch line or the mood.
But to celebrate the past, you need an old friend, someone like Janie H. whom I met in sixth grade. Janie knew my grandmother. She tasted Grandma’s kreplach and chopped liver. Janie remembers Grandma’s wooden chopping bowl and her yellow apron. She knew my father and endured his stinky cigar, groaning beside me every time he lit one. We shared “The Secret Garden,” The Beatles, Twiggy, and Yardley lipsticks. We shared everything. Why would we ignore any of it? Why would we ever “keep it simple,” even if talking about it would bring on tears?
The same with Diane B. She, too, knew my family, my stories, my secrets, just as I knew hers. Like me, she misses her parents, who have been gone for too many years. Who but I and a select handful of other old friends could nod sympathetically and share stories about her sweet, funny, fastidious mother and doctor father who took care of us all?
The more I thought about the two upcoming reunions, the more I understood. Neither conversation would be simple. Both would be deep and bittersweet. Yes, laughter and tears would be served up right beside the lox, whitefish, and bagels.
Shoot-’em-up Westerns where they use fake blood may satisfy the guys, but true guts and gory glory are the stuff of womankind worldwide. It’s tough, but we can take it. As is written in Proverbs 31, a “Woman of Valor” is described this way: “Strength and honor are her clothing.”
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You can read more of Karen’s work at Muddling through Middle Age or contact her at karen@muddling.me.