It's 2022 and I'm entering a manuscript into my computer. I wrote a memoir 47 years ago, and decided it deserved to be exhumed. This passage at the beginning of the book is about an experience I had at age 23.
"Kate. We had met by accident at the park when her Jennifer and my Michael were infants. Our husbands were both in medical school and spent long days over cadavers and long evenings over textbooks. We met at the park . . . I said the words to myself, standing still in the shower, letting the water rush over me. She had had a big large-toothed smile with a slightly zany glint to it. She never smiled a little, never halfway—had no pleasant face for the world at large. In fact, she often frowned when others around her were laughing. I loved her from the first moment because she was odd and unpredictable and made me feel interesting and articulate there on that park bench, wiping a runny nose, or standing behind a swing, pushing to shouts of “Higher, Mom!” Did we miss a day in those two years? I would hurry through breakfast dishes, happy, singing, and then at last “Want to go to the park? Want to play with Jennifer”? And of course, having caught my fever, he'd clap his hands and start running toward the door. I would push the stroller the two blocks to her house, go up to the door, knock, and each time, as I would wait for her to answer, I would feel the blood in my face, the trembling of my fingers. “Here she comes!” I would cry out to Michael and I knew. I even remember saying to myself, “I am in love with her.” But the words fell into a void.
Knowing of no such love in literature or in life, I had no net of associations to catch my own words and feelings. The one exception, a book I had read years back, The Well of Loneliness was so bleak and scary that I had pushed it deep into the recesses of my mind. And there too went my current feelings and thoughts, like coins into a deep pool. First a jagged flash of reflected sun, then a dull glimmer, and then gone, hardly a ripple.
Day after day we would walk past the wide-porched Philadelphia stone houses, brake the strollers along side the park bench, and talk. Talk about books, movies, politics, marriage. Telling and retelling the stories of our lives. She would talk about Memphis and poverty and Seventh Day Adventism, how she fled from an Adventist school to a variety of jobs, factories, stores, airlines. And I would tell of a large wealthy Jewish family, the best schools, and embarrassed, of never having had a full time job except during two summers in high school. I admired her strength, her wit, her honesty, she my intelligence, my thoughtfulness. You’ve done so much, I would say. You know so much, she would say.
One day at the park I announced that I was sure I was pregnant, and she said, my god, I’m in my 6th week. That year, as our bellies began to stretch, we started touring the Philadelphia museums. I remember the two of us sailing majestically through the Rodin gardens with Jennifer and Michael trailing behind, holding hands. They couldn’t stand to be apart. Did I take secret pleasure in their mirroring of our love? Davy and Craig were born within two weeks of each other. But no sooner were we back at the park, surrounded by carriages and diapers and bottles of juice, then suddenly medical school was over and internships were to begin at hospitals separated by thousands of miles. The next year brought both of us near to mental and physical collapse, and neither of us could say why.
We had lost touch finally.
That had been 15 years ago. Now, I was at least aware of the significance of that relationship. I wondered if she had known then, knew now.
On impulse just the other day, I sent an email to "Kate's" daughter. Yes, "Kate" was still alive and well. I called her. We talked for hours. I just got off the phone with her this morning. She knew then.
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