My Pal Kate

I've told you a little bit about my pal, Kate. You first met her, briefly, within the first three days of my getting this blog up, in Why Not Do It In Public?. Not long after that, I mentioned the peculiar rites of her Girl Scout Troop in Rabbit-Rabbit-Rabbit which led to a discussion of the fact that many, many, many people do the Turtle Greeting.

We met when we were in high school, through the caring offices of a librarian, which I told you about in Friendship. Kate and I have been friends since 1957, a long time in anyone's book. For years, because we had both moved at the same time and then had both changed last names, we lost track of each other. Julie remembered my saying how much I missed Kate, and found her in 2003 on Classmates.com. Kate and I were delighted to be reunited and have been the same great guns we were way back then, ever since. We even still have sleepovers, just like in high school, although now they last a week and we don't have to worry about waking anyone up is we get a fit of the giggles in the middle of the night.

Kate is the one who got me interested in archeology. She's the one who introduced me to Georgette Heyer books. She's the one who took one look at Julie and recognized that her father wasn't who I thought her father was. She's the one who drove me for hours in a truck without air conditioning during a heat wave to visit another friend. She's the one who, when my original flight was canceled and I needed to stay with her one more day, said "of course" when what of course meant was that she would not be able to have her grandson Ross come to visit the next day and the next day was the last visit they were going to get before school started, which meant it was the last one until Winter Vacation. (Luckily a friend of hers had a solution and she didn't get so horribly dinged for her good deed.) She's the one who visited me in the hospital when I had my tonsils out, bringing me a stuffed rabbit she had made from her father's dress socks and made me laugh so hard they wouldn't let her come back. She's the one who came to visit me in the hospital when I had my hyster out and brought fresh fruit and books and good cheer. She's the one who dressed my wound every day for a week when she is really uncomfortable doing that even once at all. She is the one who drove me all over Sacramento to visit places I missed and eat food I can't get in Alaska. She's the one who made lemonade for me from the Meyer lemons in her back yard.

And she's the one who has a new blog, called Hugging Aspens. Visit it.