by Nils Peterson
I used to tell my creative writing classes the artistic form that came the closest to depicting the lives we lead was the soap opera – because, as in the soap opera, we all have many stories going on at the same time. Some are short, some are like lyrics in tone and length, some go on and on, drop into the background, and are revived later when some necessity draws them forth – Uncle Ned goes off to explore the Amazon Jungle and comes back three years later just in time to make the wedding legal. This story of mine is long in years, short in hours.
Small Kentucky college. 25th Reunion. I gave a reading of poems and stories about love. Peterson Pontificates on Love trumpeted the college paper. Many old friends came and came up on to the stage afterwards. So, up comes this beautiful woman, catches my eye, says “Hi.” I say, “Hi.” She says, “Hi . Do you remember me?” and in the silence – “Do you remember me? I’m Patsy.” Indeed it was. I said “Hi,” kissed her on the cheek, turned to cut off my other conversations so we could really talk, turn back, and she’s gone. “Patsy,” I holler into the cavernous auditorium, “Patsy,” but she really is gone. To myself I say, “Peterson, you’ve done it again.”
I got her phone number from the alumni office and called and called, even at 5:30 in the morning, but she was never in. I finally did connect and she explained that she was off fox hunting the morning I called so early. We made a date for that night to meet for dinner and went to a restaurant where her son was a waiter (she had had two sons from a marriage that didn’t last). He raised an eyebrow as he shook my hand. We went back to her place and talked for a long time. Here’s from a poem I wrote about the experience,
What the young offer each other
is the marvelous future, all that can happen,
all that will be. Older, suspicious of promises,
we learn to offer what we have lived.
It is a smaller, harder gift, yet beautiful like fact.
We wrote back and forth and then lost touch again, but 10 years later I went back to my 35th reunion and we reconnected, the talk as easy and as good as it had been the decade before. It was convenient for me to spend the night at her house, but I had to get up early. She was going fox hunting again. So, October dark, five in the morning, she in her hunting outfit and a dungareed helper got her horse into its trailer and set off. I followed in my rental car.
There were forty or fifty people, maybe more, in black caps, red coats, white trousers and black boots getting ready to ride at this beautiful Kentucky farm. There was a blessing from a robed local priest. Everyone had a stirrup cup of sherry before setting off. Someone was missing, so I helped serve, reaching a silver salver of small glasses up to the riders on the horses. The riders were ready, the hounds were ready, and the fox, well there wasn’t really a fox. Someone had prepared a trail of fox scent for the hounds to follow. I was glad to hear that, remembering Oscar Wilde’s line about fox hunting in England, “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.” I stood and watched as they all set off, hounds, horses, riders, and Patsy. And that was my last sight of her.
But not quite. The story hasn’t ended. Remember that son who raised his eyebrow? Well, I received a note from him on Message. I responded and he gave me Patsy’s phone number. I called and we talked, she a widow, I a widower. And so we began talking again, old people talk. She told me about her good second marriage. He had even built a barn for her where she could keep horses. She was living now in their big house, no other houses in sight but with a couple acres of lawn that she enjoyed mowing. I pictured her perched like a horseback rider on the mower as it went round and round. I shared things about living in a senior residence and my long marriage, the ways in which it got better and better as the years went by.
She welcomed my calls. I was someone she could talk to about the thises and thats of her life. I felt the same. I don’t retain jokes but I have a friend who always has a new one and I would get one from him before I called because she liked to laugh. I’d call once or twice a week. Then she came to visit her son who, as it turns out, lives in the same city as I do. This is what I wrote about the visit.
“On Friday I had a wonderful talk. It was with my first real girl friend, Patsy. We got together in the fall of 1953 at my small Kentucky college. I mentioned our coming meeting to a friend here at my retirement home. She warned me “You’re going to see an old woman though you remember a young one.” I replied “Well, she’s going to see an old man.” Yes, there was an old woman and an old man there, but also a young man and a young woman and the four of us had a good time being and seeing both, remembering about the ways and wanderings of our lives. Patsy summed it up by saying ‘I rode horses, you read books.’” Not exactly right, but also exactly right.
As we sat waiting for her son to come and carry her off again, Patsy suggested we sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow. “ We had both been in the choir, and so we did. I suggested we sing “For All We Know, We May Never Meet Again.” We did know, we did know how unlikely that would be. Flying had become hard for both of us. But then all of our meetings had been unlikely. “We come, we go, like the ripples on a stream….”
In the fall she mentioned that she was losing weight, and later that she felt tired. She had liked the life at my senior residence and liked my apartment and began to think of moving to such a place. I encouraged her. Then it was discovered that she had a serious cancer. She was moved to a nursing home. The last time we talked, her daughter-in-law had to hold the phone to her ear.
In our last real talk together, she shared a memory of that time at the fox hunt. It had just come back to her. She remembered that before she rode off, I stood by her horse, reached up my hand, and rested it on the neck of her horse. I have always been somewhat afraid around big animals, yet I swear so fiercely did her remembrance come back to me that I could feel the neck of the horse beneath my hand as I looked up at Patsy all costumed and ready to ride.