Women and Friendship : Letters to Friends

Every Woman Has a Story: Many Voices, Many Lessons, Many Lives
by Daryl Ott Underhill

(Page 2 of 4)

Jane Stebbins

I mailed 323 letters to friends last year.

And 437, the year before that.

I received four replies, not including the increasingly illegible notes from my grandfather and the token letter from my congressman.

I'd been putting this off, this spring cleaning, for about three years. And that day was the perfect day to do it: Outside, the clouds were pregnant with rain, inside, a fire cracked and popped in the woodstove.

With each name in my address book that was to be erased would go a history, a few more memories of the good times shared and the chances of ever getting the friendship back. I didn't want to let go of any of them, regardless how tenuous the hold.

I took a deep breath, flipped my pencil over, and cracked open the worn pages of the leather-bound book. A piece of paper fell to the floor, one of many with which the book was stuffed. It bore an address I wasn't sure at the time would reach permanent status in my book.

The name was familiar, as was the face; they all were. This one, from a high school chum with whom I was reunited at an impromptu party when I went home for Grandma's funeral, was crumpled up and tossed aside.

Melissa Anderson, with whom I'd shared numerous cups of coffee in college as we struggled through ornithology, was my next victim. A great writer while in college, her high-stress career on Wall Street long ago knocked me off her list of priorities.

Deb Bowie would be third. The scrawny woman with stringy hair and a shrill Massachusetts accent had pulled me out of more problems than I could count. Where she was anymore, I didn't know. I knew that at thirty-three, she had become a grandmother, having adopted her grandson as her own.

Gary and Rosemary. Cocaine, divorce, jail. Erased.

Hedwig Diehl. My other Grandma. She'd died last April; it was all I could do to erase her name from the top "Name/Address/City" line where her name had sat, in a child's block letters, for twenty-four years.

Juan Florence. Another high school buddy, ravaged by alcohol after the deaths of his parents.

The Filmores. His name got erased - death requires that. He was the minister who married us, atop a 10,350-foot mountain. He was eighty-three years old when we asked if he'd conduct the ceremony; that he would have to take a screeching ski lift to the summit didn't faze this man. "I'll be that much closer to heaven," he said.

Kristen Holland. The hardest one to erase, and one I shall never forget. I was engaged to her older brother for years before we finally called it quits. But I kept in touch with Kristen, even after she announced her homosexuality. She was disowned by her family, including the man I had once loved. I can still see her short white-blond hair whipping from side to side as she bounced all over the dance floor of our favorite bar. That woman never missed a moment of life.

The rain began to fall outside and the wind picked up.

The I's, J's, and K's were left unscathed, but L was where it all fell apart.

Janet Loren. The name brought a smile to my face. We'd met on a Grateful Dead tour and traveled from California to Maine, Washington to Florida, dancing the dance that never ended to the music that never stopped. She's probably on a Phish tour, now that Jerry's gone, I thought. Sholyo Im Fi Zhami, Janet. Sholyo.

Albert Lowe. We went back to the fifth grade, when he sat across from me in Mr. Ash's class. He was the first boy - and Chinese (my mother would have died) - I felt I really loved. Eleven-year-old unrequited puppy love. The last time I saw him, we were drinking froufrou drinks and betting on the ponies.

Ann Long. She wouldn't remember me anymore, since she was struck by a car and suffered enough brain damage to keep her in a coma for months. She'd never be the same, but I'd kept her name in my book for all these years. Just in case. People come out of comas, I told myself.

Among those who survived the carnage of my eraser was Caroline Winters, my first best friend, who moved to Ireland when I was ten, and she twelve. I wrote her today, one of thirty-seven letters written while the rain pounded down outside. One last chance, for both of us.

I closed the book and tucked it away. It was a lot thinner for my efforts, a small pile of crumpled paper lay at my feet.

The names fell away in eraser crumbs, but they will be replaced by others in time.

But the memories, I hope, will linger on.

Jane is a newspaper editor and freelance magazine writer. She lives in Breckenridge, Colorado, with her husband, John, and seven-year-old daughter, Erin. When I asked her what prompted her story, she said, "I was writing letters and thinking how few people write back, and how sad it is that friendships fade away."

© 1999 by Daryl Ott Underhill

About the Author

Daryl is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, and from a very early age found people and their stories intriguing. Facing her life each day with the motto that your "attitude is everthing" she wanted to find a way to share this with others, and this is the heart and soul of the book. Her brothers believe it is her tenacity and search for answers that makes her successful and led her to creating the Every Woman projects. Lori, her sister, will tell you Daryl has a unique talent to get people to talk, she asks the right questions, and then she really listens.