{"id":8005,"date":"2025-03-07T07:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=8005"},"modified":"2025-03-15T07:38:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T11:38:02","slug":"on-the-unsung-pleasures-of-very-long-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2025\/03\/on-the-unsung-pleasures-of-very-long-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Unsung Pleasures of Very Long Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"

I made my first real friend when I was 11 and she was 12. Marsha moved in on the block. Soon after, her mother saw my mother in the backyard and said she had a daughter about my age. My mother said, let her come for lunch. Marsha wrote me recently, \u201cLoved your mom. I remember the first time we met and I had lunch at your house. We had grilled cheese w tomato.\u201d That was 72 years ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

We had an enriched childhood together. Her jokes cracked me up. We played pickup sticks for hours, practicing the small motor control that would enable us to paint and draw later. We started a \u201cfirm\u201d that didn\u2019t do anything, but whose mere name, Morgan and White, let us believe we were real artists and writers. <\/span><\/p>\n

We argued about whether the modernist movie theater, the Midwood, was more beautiful than the baroque Loews Kings on Flatbush Avenue. We did puppet theater in her basement for neighborhood kids. We put out a newspaper of our doings called <\/span>The Little Issue.<\/span><\/i> Only my uncle Jack bought a copy; he paid 25 cents, probably to encourage writing, typing and doing layout. We started a novel that began \u201c<\/span>Doctor Boshkov pressed the tips of his well-manicured fingers together.\u201d On the anniversary of the day we met, we had an outing to Manhattan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marsha visited me in college. She kept me from putting on a hoity-toity North Shore of Boston accent by laughing her head off the first time I tried it on. We shared the travails of dating. We did our first trip to Europe together, living on $5 a day, going our separate ways in museums as art lovers do and telling our finds at dinner.   <\/span><\/p>\n

After college we never lived in the same city again. She married. I went to various graduate schools, married and settled around Boston. In the child-raising years, we saw little of each other but kept up. When she divorced, her ex-husband kindly called to tell me she would like to hear from me. We picked up the friendship again. I have one of her paintings where I see it every day. When her second husband died, when she moved, we talked more often.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Nowadays, in our 80s, we email about our kids and grandkids, we discuss independent living and Continuing Care Retirement Communities. She\u2019s as instinctually funny as she ever was. Her Facebook posts are either beautiful or a hoot. “Morgan and White” was a prologue to a working life: “Morgan” became a writer and “White” an artist\u2014under our real names, of course. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m averse to nostalgia, I want to share my day to day and my opinions on the world\u2019s current events. But it matters that I remember her parents, and she, mine. Marsha\u2019s still one of my besties. She\u2019s like my cousins\u2014also childhood allies whose lives still crisscross with mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made newer friends, of course. But it\u2019s delightful how many friends from college or graduate school are still lunchtime and Facetime and email pals. Andrea, in Andover, is a friend from college who became a bestie in our middle years, when both of us were starting second careers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some friends are distant in space. Connie is in LA, Penny is in Baltimore, Caroline in Maine. I\u2019m in touch by email with one middle school friend, two high school friends. My women college classmates meet on Zoom once a month. We are more politically alike than we used to be; we are all feminists now. <\/span><\/p>\n

Who said, \u201cThe last of life, for which the first was made\u201d? It was Browning, of course, from \u201cRabbi Ben Ezra,\u201d not a very good poem but worth it for this line. We never stop needing the old friends and relatives who have known us through many changes of our life course. Indeed, we cherish them more in later life, as some loved ones die and others move away. <\/span><\/p>\n

My granddaughter, starting college, meeting many people, goes through the normal selection and elimination processes. She seems enchanted by the fact that I have kept so many close friends from those youthful years. Being accompanied as she grows up: it must seem miraculous. <\/span><\/p>\n

My life course ahead, like everyone\u2019s, is still unknown territory. I prize the companionship, while growing older. And it\u2019s axiomatic that my friends and I have more in common now than we ever did. How could it be otherwise? Anecdote by anecdote, story by story, we add to the Memory Palace we share. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made my first real friend when I was 11 and she was 12. Marsha moved in on the block. Soon after, her mother saw my mother in the backyard and said she had a daughter about my age. My…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more On the Unsung Pleasures of Very Long Friendships<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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