Friends

When I was young and watching what my mother did--how she lived her life as a woman--I saw that she had many women friends and they went out together in twos and threes, had lunch in a nice place, and then went shopping. So that's how women do things.

When my beloved cousin Maxine and I became teenagers we did the same thing; on Saturdays we frequently met in downtown Pittsburgh "under the Kaufmann's clock," had lunch, then went shopping. We rarely bought things, but we loved looking at the clothes in Kaufmann's and we chatted about what we were doing that night; a lot of times we would say goodbye and then we would see each other again that night, because the two of us "double-dated" with our boyfriends.

Now I live in the country where the population is small compared to Pittsburgh; many of the people here, male and female, are busy on their farms or working. Some people here have two jobs in order to survive. Not much lunching and shopping happens around here. So I figured that there was something wrong, usually with me, because I didn't construct a life the way my mother did.

Fortunately I was wrong and I'm grateful that I realized this before it was too late.

We have friends here, some of the best people I've ever known. I've written before about Doris Kile who operates a small farm nearby; Doris is a force of nature. She and the land are one entity. She sells eggs, beets, corn, lots of fruit, rabbits. She gets up at 3:00 AM in the summer to pick corn. Work and family make up her life and she's devoted to her Christian faith which is translated into action. But no matter how busy Doris is, she has time to talk. Even our dog Homer loves her and her husband, Alan. When Peter and I go away Doris and Alan always take care of Homer and our cats. They bring their grand daughters here to visit the animals and now the little girls have named their stuffed animals Homer, Callie, and Shana.

There are others too. Dan who manages Steve Shannon Tires where we bring our cars to get fixed (and none of the guys in there make me feel dumb), Rod who operates the small restaurant nearby and who decorated his place with model trains that run in a square, up above the tables near the ceiling (which enthralls the little kids), Bev at L & K Mills, a big hardware store where sometimes guys stand around and say funny things. There's this spark between Bev and me; every time we see each other, we laugh. The underpaid library staff at Bloomsburg Public Library works hard to supply our needs; when the trash collection men come around and empty our trash cans, they never toss the empty cans onto the ground but leave them standing with the lids on.

Will I ever go out on a Saturday afternoon and have lunch with any of these people? Doris is too busy to go out and have lunch, ditto for Bev, and Rod, Dan, and the trash men would think I was mad if I asked them to. So there are friends and there are also friends.