Old Friends

I'm sitting in The Post, an East Nashville coffee shop around the corner from Jude's first house at 1802 Russell Street.  Like everyone else inside the perimeter in Nashville, this neighborhood has changed tremendously the last 15 years.  This a cool place.  I smile as I remember it used to be some type of a plant store that, for reasons we could never ascertain, wasn't open to the public.  We used to joke about it being a front for some type of a marijuana selling operation.

My smile fades a bit as I realize how long ago that was and how much has changed in our lives since then.  We are older, for sure.  I'm not sure if we're any wiser or, maybe, a little more cynical about life.  I think I probably am, anyway, and that's a little sad.

I just finished 5 miles on the trails at Shelby Bottoms.  I haven't run there in a while, so it was nice to get over there early this morning.  There's something magical about that place for me.  Running on the Cornelia Fort trail under a canopy of trees with me feet falling in the same place they've fallen so many times before.  There is something comforting in that for me, something that seems to reset the compass of my life.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with my mom.  We had a nice visit for the most part.  She was confused about when she was supposed to go downstairs to eat, which is her normal state.  More concerning, though, was that earlier in the day when Tracy stopped by, she discovered that my mom had somehow locked herself in the bedroom and was on the floor.  Evidently, she hadn't fallen but, instead, had slid down to he knees and hadn't been able to get up.  This has been happening a lot lately.  Fortunately, the staff at Maristone was able to unlock her bedroom door and Tracy and a staff person helped her up.

While I was visiting, I called my one of my mom's oldest friends, Judee Potter, who lives in Southern California.  Judee reads this blog and has done so from the beginning, I think.  We talk from time to time and I had been trying to find a time for her to talk with my mom.  Back in the day - and I mean way, way back in day in the late 1960s, I think - Judee and my mom were relative newlyweds, spending time together with infant children, trying to figure out life and where they fit in it.

As young mothers with husbands that worked all hours, a big Friday night out for them was to go to K-Mart, put their infant children in shopping carts (Marci and me), and stroll around the store while they ate popcorn.  Or, at least, that's the story I was always told by my mom.  Judee may have to confirm its accuracy.

As I listened to my mom talk with Judee, I fought back tears during their relatively brief conversation.  I was so happy to hear my mom laugh as she talked to Judee.  I was sad, though, as my mom struggled to follow the conversation, asking Judee more than once how long she had lived in California.

Friday, at work, I received a telephone call from Colleen Burke, one of my mom's basketball teammates when she played for the Lady Vols in the late 1950s.  That's another story, but it was before the Lady Vols became the Lady Vols, if you know what I mean.  For several years, Jim Stockdale (my mom's coach) and my mom organized annual outings to the Lady Vols-Lady Dores basketball game in Nashville.  My mom always hosted a get together at her house the weekend of the game and many of Coach Stockdale's former players (and my mom's teammates) attended.

Colleen and her husband were in town and she wanted to stop by Maristone and see my mom.  It means so much to me (and to Tracy and Alice) when people reach out to us and want to see or talk to my mom.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how what my mom is going through affects her, obviously, and how it affects me.  I probably haven't spent enough time thinking about how it affects my mom's friends, people like Judee Potter, Jan Baker and Patti Sparks.  It must be incredibly difficult for them to slowly lose someone - a peer - with whom they have so many shared memories.  I'm sure they feel the same sense of helplessness I feel.  I'm sure they feel a sense of loss, too, for what was and what might have been.

Old friends are the best friends.