Haply I May Remember

I hate when people get to the end of a vacation and they have to run around to visit everything the last day. The vacation isn't about the last day. It's about the entire experience and all the other days before.
And that's how I have to think about life too.
My friend Rini died on Saturday.
She was 61 and had a son the same age as Grace. We worked together at the same college and lived in the same small town.
She was diabetic and her health has always been fragile. Then she had a stroke Labor Day weekend but was recovering. No one expected her to die.
I went to see her on Wednesday. I didn't think it would be the last time.
Other women in the community are really torn up that they didn't make it to see Rini again, one last time. And that made me think about the last day of vacation.
It isn't about getting that last visit in at the hospital. It's about all the girls' nights out and meeting for coffee and having lunch or simply going for a walk -- together. All of those moments are the ones that add up to make a friendship, and in the end, only one of you will remember the last time that you saw each other.
Rini was my friend because she was caustic and witty. She offered me insights into the small town I moved into. She'd been teaching longer than I had, and we shared complaints as well as the accomplishments of our students.
Another teacher told me that I had been "lovely" to Rini. But our friendship wasn't about me doing things for her. It was mutual.
I enjoyed her company.
She might have needed me a little more lately, as she went through a divorce this summer, and when she needed someone to walk the dog last summer. But I got as good as I gave.
Thanks, Rini, for your friendship. I hope you're at peace now. You will be missed, but all those moments before, will be remembered.
Here's a poem by Christina Rosetti that I think talks about remembering the life, instead of the death.

When I am dead, my dearest

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Ghost Touch

Everyone recognizes sights or sounds that are familiar, that transport them back to another place and time. I didn't realize that the same could be true of touch -- until today.
Today I dressed in a knit pullover shirt that belonged to Grace. She put it in a pile of clothes to give away and that pile remained stacked in the hallway until one of the cats knocked it over. Then I spied the medium blue shirt and picked it up. Too short for Grace, who is half a foot taller than I am. I kept it for myself.
I slipped the shirt on this morning. It has four tiny buttons along the top and sleeves that stop just below the shoulders with knit ties.
All day today, I've felt the those ties brush on my upper arms and I've tossed my head to push back the ropy weight of my hair against my upper arms. But the feeling isn't my hair. It's the ties of the shirt.
My hair now falls in curls again, but they stop just below my shoulders. They don't stretch down to the middle of my arms like they once did, sometime maybe 8 years ago. My hair grew long, and I followed the Curly Girl advice and didn't wash it or comb out the curls. The curls fell like dreadlocks, but not locked in tight. When I ran, I'd reach behind my neck and secure the hair in a long braid. I still have a mark on my back, just above my running bra, where the pony tail holder rubbed a scar as it swung back and forth during my long runs.
Even as I conciously knew that the weight along my arms was the shirt rather than my hair, each time that I felt it, it took me back.

Flag Memories

Last night, Grace asked if I would go to the football game with her. The weather had turned colder, and I'm a wimp. I had planned to stay in and grade papers with half an eye on "Say Yes to the Dress."
Grace was meeting a friend at half time so I only had to commit to the first half of the game. I texted my friend Jane whose son plays on the team. She would be there. I had a feeling Grace wouldn't be my companion for long. We hadn't even walked half way across the front of the stands when Grace scampered off having spotted her friend Haley who she hadn't seen since leaving for college.
I searched for Jane to no avail so tromped up the bleachers to sit beside another Jane.
"One Jane's as good as another," this Jane said to me when I told her who I was searching for.
Grace came back to sit with me right before the band took the field.
Our school has a big band for its size. More than one-fourth of the students in the school are in the band.
The other team's band had flag girls. They had three different flags to use throughout the show, switching, well, I'm not sure why they switched but the gold and burgundy flags looked pretty.

I was a flag girl at my high school. That's how I met my best friend from high school, Tracey.
We're the same height, so we were always opposite each other in our flag lines.
The year I started as a flag girl, we got new aluminum poles. Those poles were so much lighter than the old wooden poles we used.
Before we could use the aluminum poles though, we had to go to band camp. Does anyone remember band camp in August? I don't think I ever felt more miserable, and I was always on my period during band camp, standing in the hot field throughout the day with bees and flies landing on my bare legs. We had to hold positions like the foot to knee and if we slipped we had to run a lap.
The band director would say, "If you didn't hold attention, you need to run. You know who you are. We saw you."
I always felt so guilty that I would run even if no one was around to see me.
At band camp, we used heavy metal poles to practice with. We couldn't risk ruining the new aluminum ones. We also had to create our own flags from white cotton sheets. I can't remember what kind of scene I used to decorate my flag, but here's one thing I do recall, a white cotton sheet on the end of a metal pole gets pretty darn heavy.
Add to that the early morning practice, the field filled with dew, and soon that wet cotton sheet weighed down my arms.
As the week of band camp passed, I grew much stronger.
Cut to the actual show. We practiced with our heavy poles and flags for weeks. In the band show at half time and competitions, we'd switch to aluminum poles and nylon flags.
One of the highlights of the show was when the flag girls in lines opposite each other catapult our flags to our partner. We each end up with the other girl's flag.
Weeks of swinging the metal pole with the heavy cotton flag.. well, you can guess what happened.
I launched my flag pole and it flew over Tracey's head landing on the bright green turf. We had a runner to gather flags or other discarded objects, but she didn't see the flag laying on the field, so Tracey had to mime her flag work through the rest of the show.
Now that I think about it, I'm rather amazed that Tracey is still my best friend from high school.
We're going to have facials together in just a few weeks. She never forgave me for the flying flag incident though.