First Meetings

Freshman year of college at good old GSC is filled with almost as many memories I've held onto and cherished as those I've blocked out... or at least tried to. It was an exciting year.

I was young when I started college and even young for my age. I'd been pretty sheltered and my parents probably took great pride in the fact that they'd protected me from so many "evils".  And then I went to college. The freedom! The Possibilities! It was all so thrilling and heady and the pull of adventure was strong.  Of course, there was also plenty of down time. Those moments when boredom set in and a girl just wasn't sure what to do with herself.

It was one of those times.  Bone and I were bored and not sure what to do next. We wound up walking off campus, up the road to the Wawa where we wandered the store in search of, we knew not what.  We wound up buying a jar/can of chocolate cake frosting.  Once back at that dorm, we didn't feel like being cooped up in the room so, we grabbed a couple of spoons, popped the top off the frosting and headed out into the hallway. We were quiet, for Bone this was exceptionally odd, just walking down the hall, taking turns scooping out spoonfuls of frosting.

About halfway down the hall, we saw two blonde girls come out of the laundry room and look our way.  One of the girls, looked at us and said, "We've got some peanut butter in our room." and turned and headed the other direction.

We followed them down the hall and into their dorm room, still not speaking.  Then, we stood around, four girls eating peanut butter and chocolate frosting.  Introductions came some moments later.   That was the first time we met Monko and Chauncey and began a decades long friendship. The next semester we became sorority sisters and the school year after that we rented a house on Eben Street, where we became 4 of the infamous nine Eben Street Girls.  To this day, no matter the distance or the time spent apart, we are all still the Eben Street Girls and their friendships are some of my most cherished.

I can't remember the day I met Bone. I'm sure it was at the Hot Spot on the boardwalk in Wildwood, but it never stuck with me as much of a momentous occasion. Those all came afterward as we navigated the good and bad adventures and dramas that we faced together.  Now, we've reached the years where we've begun losing parents.  Two of the girls have each lost one and both of mine died far too young. It didn't occur to me that we'd bury each other, at least not for a really long time.  In some ways I feel like that same 17 year old girl who started college all those years ago.

I know that we aren't really going to all be 90 year old bitties rocking on a porch somewhere together.  Then heading in for our chandeliers quarters game, although, we might have to switch out the beer for prune juice some days.  At least that's the idea you get from watching tv now, but that's a story for another time.  I really did think we were far too young to even consider this as a possibility.  The being little old ladies someday was a fanciful little joke between women young enough to not feel any reality in it.  We're certainly too young to be saying our final goodbyes to each other.  And yet.  Less than a week ago I went to my first Eben Street Girl funeral.  I certainly hope it is the last for a very long time.

Rest in Peace, Boneman

I met Bone when I was 16 years old. She was the loudest, most boisterous person I've ever known.  When we wound up at college together, we became very close and remained so for years.  It wasn't always easy, but it was always interesting.  Bone was a year older than I and an inch taller, which when you are 5'3" as opposed to 5'2" I guess you get bragging rights.

Over the years we went to school together, we took road trips and vacations together, we worked together. Not all of those all at the same time, but we spent a lot of time in each other's lives. Bone was with me the night I met my ex-husband. She was maid of honor in our wedding.  I'm still working at the law office job she found for me.

At some point, our lives diverged drastically.  As she started to spiral out of control and away from the world we'd usually companionably shared, I started to go in the other direction, I got married, went back to school, bought a house and raised a dog. The split must have been hard for her in a way I couldn't understand.  In her opinion, the direction I was headed was like an assault against her.  It wasn't. How could it have been?  What way she took her life was totally up to her and I would've been her conscience and cheerleader as I'd always been if she was looking to improve her lot in life.  And, even though she sat 40 hours a week, about 10 feet from me, she took the path I'd least like to travel on some seriously rough roads, without anyone knowing just how much trouble she was in.  Then, one day, she just stood up, and walked out the door. No goodbyes, no looking back, literally.

When it was obvious that I was the focus of her anger I let her slip away.  When she was doing her worst, it was better for me. When she was doing better, I didn't think it was healthy for her.  She identified me with the ways things went wrong for her.

For the last 10 years or so, she's been in and out of trouble, as well as in and out of her friends' lives.  Until last week, when I got word that she was gone, forever.  It didn't really matter how long we'd been estranged. Bone and her family had been part of my life for twice as long as they hadn't (if that makes any sense).  I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that she's really gone.  Despite the darkest parts of our history, I like the idea that she was still out there, and I really wanted things to get better for her.

On the most dismal day imaginable, unseasonably cold, gray and rainy I drove the hour plus to the shore to say a final goodbye to Boneman and pay my respects to her family. I can not possibly describe just how terribly sad the day was.  I spent some time talking to her family and the couple of shore friends who were there. With each conversation, I pieced together the heartbreakingly sad tale of a life wasted.  She was a woman in so much pain, she spent every day trying to find oblivion, all while trying to convince herself and every one she spoke to that she was doing better and going to pull herself out of the hole she'd wound up in. At that point, it didn't matter how she'd got there, whose fault it was that she'd fallen so far.  All that mattered was that she couldn't see a way out and slowly, but surely she found one. Not with intention, though.  She was just trying to escape the pain she was feeling right then, just as she'd been doing for months. She succeeded all too well.  That was not the success I'd hoped she'd have.

What That Car's Name Is?

When my nephew Zack was very little he was under the impression that license plates were like name tags for cars.  Imagine every vehicle on the road with a "HELLO, my name is _________" on its front and rear bumpers.

Every time we passed a car or truck he'd stop, point and ask, "What that car's name is?" and I'd have to come up with something, using the letters given on the license plate.  My old Honda Civic had MRY  on it, so I told him her name was Mary.  
He has since outgrown that but I still find myself looking at license plates and coming up for names of cars.  My new car has a license plate that begins with YBF and I can't for the life of me come up with a good name for it. My friend Jean swears it stands for Your Best Friend, cute, but I would be beyond pathetic if my car was my best friend.

Of course, you never forget your first license plate. Or is that just me? My first car was a hand me down 1978 Datsun 200 SX and its license plate was the one I beautifully (ha ha ) reproduced above!

Saving Sea Turtles

Best Trip Ever

I was single, it was summer and I was an interested member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, New Jersey.  They offered a trip that promised to give an up close and personal introduction to the plight of sea turtles and my mother and I jumped at the chance to join.This was not our normal vacation, in fact, we hadn't been on a bus trip since 1975.  This didn't dampen our excitement. And, although this was the most low key vacation we'd taken since my brother and I were little kids, it didn't detract from just how special these few days were for us.

We boarded a bus outside the Stranding Center, in Brigantine and drove through the night to a barrier island in South Carolina.  The island where we stayed was divided in half. The north half is referred to as Seabrook Island and is filled with hotels, shops, restaurants, condos, etc.  It had been built up into a lovely seashore community. The south end of the island was Saint David's Island and the only parts of it that were at all developed were a camp.  It was half a businessperson's Christian retreat and half a camp for kids. The closest we got to children campers was the sort of shared dining hall.  The kitchen in the middle divided the two sides. There was a lovely club house with lots of windows and amenities. The lodgings were a sort of bare bones hotel/motel room.  No television or telephone (this was a bigger deal then) , two beds, a bathroom, a table and chairs, clock radio and there were plenty of fresh linens available.  No bells and whistles, but clean and neat and useful.  My mother and I were very happy travel companions.  We always got along really well, enjoyed each other's company and liked to share our common and individual interests with one another.  We were always compatible, but not really very similar at all.

We saw everything turtle on this trip.  As soon as we got to the island we headed out to check out the private beach and estuary just to the south of the camp.  There were experts on hand to give us a tour and teach us about the turtles and their plight.  We saw the tractor-like tracks showing that an adult female had been on the island to lay a nest.  We saw the tiny tracks of little flippers showing that a nest had hatched out the night before. Then there were the tragedies, like  the two-inch turtle that had been decapitated by a ghost crab, and the signs that a fox must have been watching as the female laid her nest the night before.  His tracks and trail of broken eggs were left on the beach.

We spent the rest of the day on our own exploring the island.  My mom and I sat and watched the dolphins playing in the surf and an adult female turtle swimming back and forth, waiting for the people to go away so she could lay her eggs.  On the other side of the island we shopped for souvenirs in swanky little boutiques and had cocktails at lovely outside bars.  Then we went back to camp for wonderful meals, prepared by an excellent chef, who was so happy to be cooking for adults. I'm guessing the other side of the cafeteria, although identical in seating and decor (or lack thereof) served strictly kid fare.

We woke the next morning in time to catch a bus to Kiaweh Island where we spent a few hours with their turtle patrol.  That morning was so disheartening.  As we walked up the beach to meet our guide  we spotted a tiny newborn turtle, who had been inching his way toward the water since he'd hatched out of his nest the night before.  Because adult turtles return to the beach they were born on, some 25 years later, to lay their eggs, you aren't allowed to interfere with their march to the ocean.  Somehow, they memorize the beach and it's assumed they do it on the way to the sea.  Since this little guy had made it halfway to the water and had probably been at it for almost 12 hours, we got permission to give him a lift.  One of our group picked the tiny turtle up and swam it out into the ocean... where it was promptly snapped up, tossed into the air and eaten by a seagull flying past.

Dejectedly, we followed the guide up the beach, where she showed us a nest that was flooded out by the high tide, making none of the eggs viable.  The second nest we were shown had been marked more than 60 days prior, which meant that it was overdue for hatching out.  We watched as the nest was dug up to find that it had been attacked by fire ants, leaving no living turtles.  Of course, these were all nature conspiring against the turtle, but we learned about all of the ways that people increase the sea turtle death toll, construction over the nesting areas, artificial lights which detract from the moon (they follow the moon to the ocean), fishing nets that trap and drown the turtles, litter on the beaches and in the seas, the list goes on.

A very sad band of travelers boarded the bus back to our island.  The chef was seriously nonplussed when no one was interested in having lunch.  We all found our way back to the beach.  That's when we saw it.  The sand was pulsing. There is no other word to describe it. You could watch the sand rise and fall, like it was breathing.  While some stayed to watch, others went back to the lodge and notified the fish and gaming authority.  Soon, the sand was beginning to crack and the majority of our group stood, transfixed by the scene.  The chef was sending pleas for us to at least take turns watching and grabbing some of the food he had taken such pains to cook for us.  He didn't have many takers.  Our final message was that he wasn't keeping the kitchen open late for us and it was going to be our tough stuff if we didn't get there and eat.

A Fish and Game warden stopped by to see the scene and told us that it was the remnants of a nest which had hatched two nights before.  Because it wasn't the first hatch, we were given permission to assist the remaining turtle hatchlings.  Slowly we began to move sand out of the way, but as the day cooled and evening was turning to night, we began to really start moving the sand away, still being extremely gentle to avoid injuring the turtles.  And then we hit turtles.  They were out of their shells and their little flippers were going a mile a minute as they climbed up the sand, over top of one another and began boiling and roiling over the edge of the nest onto the beach.

Our amazement and wonder soon turned to extreme protectiveness. We began lining up to make sure none of the turtles wandered the wrong way, or met with any evil ghost crab shenanigans on their way out.  We counted as they hit the surf, over 100 newly hatched loggerhead sea turtles made it to the ocean that night.  As the light began to fade we watched as the last of their little heads bobbed in the sea, swimming for the Sargasso.  Statistically, only one of those turtles will survive to sexual maturity, returning to that very beach to lay her first nest.  I'd really like to return and see that.  My mom wouldn't be able to join me, I lost her 5 years ago to breast cancer, but I'm pretty sure she'd be there with me in spirit.

The Barbie Dress

Carly and her Barbie Dress

When my niece Carly was very young she picked out a little sundress that looked vaguely like the one you see in my lovely portrait. It was a purplish blue or bluish purple, with spaghetti straps and a fake white tee shirt dickey kind of thing in it.  She wore it every day.  Every night before she went to bed she would ask if she could wear her Barbie Dress the next day. Every morning when she woke up she asked if she could wear her Cinderella jammies.  It's a good thing she was so cute.  

We reached the point where I just couldn't bear the thought of seeing that Barbie dress one more day. I told her that if she showed up at my house in it, I just wouldn't let her in.  That's about the time the phone calls began.

Rrring!

Me:  Hello?

Carly:  Hi Aunt Jammie

M:  Hi Baby Girl! What's up?

C:  Can I come over to your house today?

M:  Sure, baby. You can come here any time.

C:  Guess what?

M: What?

C:  I'm gonna wear my Barbie Dress

M: (in mock horror) Noooooo! Not the Barbie dress! I won't let you in.

C: I'm coming over and I'm gonna have it on, Aunt Jammie.

She did this regularly.  Thankfully, I got a better deal than my father.  He taught her to spell Pop (which is what she called him). Then he taught her to spell poop.  He got a steady diet of "Pop, I can spell your name (imagine childlike sing song voice), P......O...............OP. Ha ha ha!  Your name is Poop.

My sister in law saved the Barbie dress. She occasionally pulls it out and Carly is shocked and embarrassed by the fact that she loved it so much.