I’m going to drive south to
Elma Washington. My good friend Dianne lives there and she is a widow as well. We’ve
been friends for almost 50 years. I think AJ was about two when she moved to
Seattle to live with my sister and work in the federal building downtown.
Besides my sister and their two gay roommates, she didn’t know a soul in
Seattle except for me and that was only because of my sister.
We became fast friends before she
decided to return home to Montesano. But, John and I (and AJ) really liked
Dianne and over time we got to know her much better and then the man who came
into her life, Wild Bill. Actually, he wasn’t really wild, we just liked to
call him that.
Bill owned a dairy farm with his dad
and brother on the Wynoochee River. John and I began to go to the farm every Memorial
Day, July 4th and Labor Day weekends. There was always a big potluck (Dianne’s family is huge and they sort of adopted the Karlbergs); and
we enjoyed ourselves immensely. John and AJ even went down a time or two to
help Bill and his family with farm work. I had a job and couldn’t go. Somewhere
in there Dianne and Bill had a daughter, Misty.
Eventually
the dairy farm was sold and Dianne and Bill bought some land outside Elma. They
built what was to be Bill’s shop (in about 20 years); and I remember one
weekend, John wired the whole place for electricity so Dianne could use her
washer and dryer and have hot water. This amazing woman did all her cooking on
a wood stove, including canning the vegetables she grew, fish they caught, etc.
You never went hungry when visiting them; plus, we never ever left without milk
or vegetables or something they’d produced on their farm.
In 1979, John and I had been trying
for five years to have another child. Dianne had just had her second
daughter, Brie, the previous January.
“You’ll
get pregnant when you come down here.” Dianne predicted. “Everyone around here is
pregnant. It must be something in the water.”
So,
down we went for Memorial Day weekend as we always did. We slept in our 1970 VW
Camper; and it must have been the water because when we went back on July 4th,
I was pregnant with Thor. Dianne seemed a little distracted and I remember
telling John she didn’t seem too excited about my pregnancy. Well, Labor
Day weekend, I learned the reason for Dianne's distraction...she had gotten pregnant that weekend too and Brie
wasn’t even six months old then. Pretty big shock.
Dianne
gave birth to a boy, Reese, five days before I gave birth to Thor. For years, John
and I and the boys went down to the farm. When they could (which wasn’t often because
of horses, cows, crops, etc.) they’d come visit us. Thor would spend a week
with Reese in the summer and Reese would spend a week with us.
We
had so many good times, meals, adventures, that I have a plethora of memories
that include all of us. I could fill pages and pages with those memories, some
that would make you howl with laughter, some that would touch your heart, some
that are almost unbelievable and each and every one would include both Bill and
John.
Since
Bill died, the visits have been infrequent and different and now, they‘ll become different
again. Like me, Dianne is a strong woman and when Bill died after a long
illness, she continued on with her life, maybe not as she’d originally planned,
but she continued just as I am now. The two of us continue to have so much in common it
amazes me.
I am so looking forward to
seeing Dianne (and her family) the next couple of days. I’m looking forward to
sharing laughter, food, memories and quite possibly some tears. But, most of
all, I’m looking forward to making a new memory, perhaps bittersweet in some
fashion, that’s
just the two of us “old” widows.