My Private Lady Baltimore

I'm not exactly sure the first time I had encountered a vegetarian. Lady Baltimore was certainly one that stuck in my life. She was 17 when I had met her and she had given up all animal flesh and only ate eggs if they were an ingredient in something (such as potato salad).
She had an electric skillet in her dorm room and she knew how to make texturized vegetable protein balls to eat with spaghetti. She also enjoyed killer minestrone from scratch with Italian bread on the side.
When you hear and learn of people who met as teenagers and can talk about them while you are both in your 60s, there might be the assumption that you lived every waking hour sharing the events of daily life with one another. So not true!
First of all, when we knew each other in the 70s, there were no cell phones. And telephone calls were on the pricey side (we lived in a city that did not have free, unlimited calling). So we would write to each other or speak on the phone once a week or set up a date to meet. There were no email accounts back then either.
In the early 80s, I took off for Austria for a year. It was part of my education plan. When I got back, I had lost touch with her. We weren't angry or upset with each other... we just didn't connect. And we stayed disconnected from 1982 until 2007. One fine day I decided to look her up on FACEBOOK... and there she was!
So I wrote to her and asked if she had remembered me, and she wrote back and said that she had. And from that point on(ward) we were in constant contact. We started by email; 2 or 3 times a day. Most of the emails were the endless line of questions:
- Why only one kid?
- What happened to your husband?
- What did you do after graduation?
- What names were you thinking of for the baby?
- Are you still blue over green when it comes to favorite colors?
- Who do you wish had married you instead of that psychopath? (the answer was Andy Garcia!)
- Still a democrat?
You get the picture.
She was Irish and I was (and am by birth) Jewish. We went as each other's plus one to weddings; I took her to four Jewish ones (2 in New England, 1 in New York, and 1 in Virginia). She took me to the wedding of her son (a vegan/omnivore affair that included two wedding cakes). That was in Camden, Maine and I honestly can't remember the last time I had been around so many Caucasians in one place. And they all spoke English!
Her health has been declining. Diabetes, kidney failure, cholecystectomy, water retention, weakness of the lower extremities, electrolyte imbalance... It sounds like the health condition of Mr. Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey as described by Roseanne Roseannadanna:
“I’m depressed, I gained weight, my face broke out, I’m nauseous, I’m constipated, my feet swelled, my gums are bleeding, my sinuses are clogged, I got heartburn, I’m cranky and I have gas."
I had a chance to visit with her for her 64th birthday. I'm in CA and she's in MD. So I flew on Southwest and stayed at a hotel nearby. I visited every day. We made fresh pasta and tomato gravy. We watched TATTLETALES and PASSWORD on television. We napped and we saw BARBIE. Of course, the critique followed.
I left with a big hug and took the next day off. I needed to stock up on food, do laundry, and get readjusted to the time zone difference. Her son called me that day and told me that she had coded in the hospital. I was devastated.
Still am.
The family is having a celebration of life. That's another American non-Jewish thing that always requires a definition for me. I'm never sure what or how those particular sub-group of Americans are going to celebrate. Heck! I was surprised when I had learned that Episcopalians celebrate at Sunday service. "What are they celebrating?" I had asked. "Why, that it's Sunday," was the response.
"Oh. We call it observing the Sabbath. But yours works too."
So now, for the second time in my life, I have lost a female soulmate who was my everything except sex. You don't meet someone who speaks your language every day. When you do find one, make sure that he/it/they/she is a keeper !