So Long Ago

 

February 13, 2022

My sister having helped me discover those online people finders, I went into an orgy of personal archaeology.

Betty Andonian, my mother’s best friend at the end, died in 2017. I must have seen her just before her death. 

One Patricia Evan responds from, I suppose, Akron: Hi this is Ron Evans wife. You emailed my son Ron Evans Jr. You have the right Ron Evans. His brother David died 2020 Mike passed 2022 Tim not sure when he died might be 10 years n Linda died in 2005 have all passed. His Mom in 2008 n Dad in 2004 have passed also. He is the only one left. Sorry to say that he has short term memory. Not sure he will remember you. But I will see what he says n see if he remembers you. Thanks for thinking about him n his family.

I have very specific memories about each person she mentioned. My memory is of them children and teenagers. Linda was boy-crazy and had a necklace with a big blue stone. I went to the Tallmadge carnival with her once, and watched her hunting down boys. I was probably, without knowing it, taking notes. She spread bubble gum across her lips, so when you kissed her you were kissing bubble gum. This might have been my first non-familial kiss. Mike and Tim were burly kids tagging along behind us. Ron’s big brother David was a testosterone-y teenager, but also, when the moment came, tender and kind. He gave a teenage party in their basement and invited me, and all the big girls asked me to dance. Ron was my best friend. He was quiet and kind. I was not. I was warned to take care for his–well, stupidity– as he was warned to take care for my fragile heart. When I stayed with them during my mother’s illnesses, I had to wait for him to get home from summer school to play. Maybe it was he who turned me into a wilderness wanderer. That is certainly what we did, hour after hour, in a wilderness– thinking back on it–no bigger than this neighborhood. My parents grew to despise him and the family– I don’t know why– so after a while he vanished. It’s shocking when everyone you used to know is either dead sunk in memory problems. I want to say to his wife, “I have written about Ron many times: here he is in The Falls of the Wyona–” but, I have learned, the odds of her appreciating it or understanding it are vanishingly small. I have taken my time getting my story out. No matter, on several accounts, but the place where it matters is that everyone to whom it might have meant something personal is gone. There will be no reminiscences where somebody recounts, “Oh! I was with him when this happened!”

Two Bach pieces, farewells said to O at church. I know everybody prizes vulnerability, and probably applauds breaking up in the middle of a speech, but I think of Yeats’: “But they. . .  If worthy their prominent part in the play, do not break up their lines to weep.”

Sounds of the Superbowl from below. I have never once in-what? 56 years? –watched it. Vowed that tonight would be different.