My Susan

Susan is gone.

I was an only child who never attended day care or nursery school, and so I was very attached to my mother. When the time came for me to start to school, my mom walked me there that first day and got me settled in, then turned to go home. I fell apart. I held onto her. I cried. I begged her not to leave me. I made quite a scene. Then a pretty little blonde girl in a frilly dress and white socks and black Mary Janes came and took my hand and asked me to come with her. She led me back to the desk next to hers and got me involved in whatever she was doing. This was Susan. I didn't notice when my mother left.

Susan and I were best friends from that first day of school when she reached out to me through high school, gaining emotional distance only when we gained physical distance by going to different colleges. She was an only child, too. I loved her mom and dad almost as much as I loved her. We had countless sleep-overs at each other's homes. I remember she had a turquoise princess telephone in her room, and I thought that was really something. There are so many memories, too many to write them all. I'll just write impressions.

Susan and I took up baton twirling in first grade, but somehow that didn't last. Susan had a real majorette dress and real majorette boots. When we were little, our mothers shopped together, dragging us along. Her mom made the best and most tender pot roast, and my mom made the best fried chicken. We were in the ninth grade when JFK was assassinated. I remember how impressed Susan was with Jackie Kennedy, her poise, grace, serenity, and beauty. Susan saved pictures from newspapers and magazines of Mrs. Kennedy. She made me love her, too. I spent the weekend after the funeral at Susan's, and we made a pizza. A weekend repeated countless times.

Susan and I loved the same music, Carolina Beach Music and Motown Soul. Under the Boardwalk. Up on the Roof. My Girl. We sang along into our hairbrushes as though they were microphones. We were there when the Drifters came to UNCG, and we saw Martha Reeves and the Vandellas at the Beach Club. We double-dated Bill and Butch to a concert in Greensboro where we saw Joe Tex, Major Lance, Chuck Jackson, the Impressions, and more that I can't even remember. My memory is terrible. I have blackouts because of my father's abuse. In the 60s, 45 rpm records were only 98 cents apiece, and we bought all we could, never duplicating, and traded them back and forth. Between us, we had an impressive Soul and R&B library. Albums were only $2.98, so we had quite a few of those, too. And shagging, the dance that fits the music! There were pep rallies and dances from 7:30 to 9:30 on Thursday nights at the American Legion Hut throughout the school year. John Mellencamp's "Cherry Bomb" always makes me think of these dances, where one of the bands that played was called the El Rays, made up of boys from school.

The "El Rays" was a twist on the Spanish for "the kings," and I was dating James Brown. Well, not really. His name was Bill, but he could dance and do splits and all the things that James Brown could do. He played the organ and the saxophone. I was mesmerized. Bill and I and Susan and Butch double-dated all the time. We did a lot of silly stuff, like get take-out hamburgers one night and then go climb up on the roof of the high school to eat them. We got into some mischief, too. Not telling. And lots of times we just stayed at Susan's house and played records and talked. And made pizza. One of the records we played was "Misty," and that became Bill's and my song.

Susan and I valued proper English and had a grand old time collecting examples of local violations. We used to joke about "secaturl" school, which is secretarial school, and rinching our hair, which of course is rinsing. I lived in the country on a farm where we had a party line telephone. As kids, Susan and I were terrible eavesdroppers, listening to old country ladies talk about their gall bladders and other ills. We were awful.

Susan's parents always invited me on all their family vacations as a companion for Susan. We used to go to Bugg's Island Lake in Virginia, where Susan's father taught me to water ski. But mostly we went to Ocean Drive Beach, SC. It's now called North Myrtle Beach, but it will always be O.D. to us. We would walk miles on the beach in each direction every day. Every morning I awoke to the sound of her father whistling tunes as he drank his morning coffee and read the paper. He was such a happy, cheerful man. I never saw him even frown. Early one morning, and I mean early, like 5 am, Susan and I walked several miles to the Krispy Kreme doughnut bakery and on the way back, we met two guys. They told us that Susan, the blonde, was the prettiest girl they had ever seen and that I, with my dark hair and dark eyes, was the cutest. I didn't even mind.

One year, the night before we left for the beach, Susan and I made a list of things that would disqualify a young man from our consideration. Socks with sandals. Arms hanging out the car window while driving. White zinc oxide noses.  Panama hats, which I now think are cool. Things like that. We were terrible.

Susan had a sleep-over party after the prom. Back then the prom didn't last all night. We had a wonderful time and music was at the center of it all. I remember we all cracked up when Janet introduced a record, "This is Gladys and these are the Knights and these are the Pips."

My home life was so tumultuous and traumatic, and Susan's family understood that. I had my own bedroom and bathroom at their house with a toothbrush and clothes that stayed there all the time so that I could go home from school with her any day on short notice if my family erupted. We could talk all night and never run out of things to say. But this wonderful friend and her loving parents gave me a home to come to whenever I needed it, no notice required. The value of that gift can never be calculated. Even when we didn't sleep over, we talked on the telephone into the morning many a night, whispering, trying not to get caught. We just never ran out. God sent me a family.

I went to church with Susan very frequently. I got into a bad relationship and Susan's parents arranged for me to receive counseling from their pastor. I still remember what he said about Mike, and he was right. If only I had listened.

Every Christmas season, Susan and I worked together at an upscale men's clothing store called Hooper & Moore. They did offer a few items for women, some very conservative skirts and sweaters, and of course they sold Bass Weejuns. We all had Weejuns in every color and style they made. Olive green, navy blue, brown, with and without tassels, you had to have Weejuns to shag. On our first day on the job, Mr. Moore had to break us in right, so he sent us to his competitor, Williams and Company, to ask for shelf stretchers and sky hooks to borrow. Silly us. We went and asked, not thinking it through, not realizing there were no such things as shelf stretchers and sky hooks. Everyone had a great laugh at our expense, and we laughed at ourselves.

Once there was a controversy among the girls in my peer group, and everyone was mad at me for something except Susan. She stood by me. After a few days of mulling things over, I had a change of heart, and I said to her, "I'm wrong, aren't I?" Susan replied, "Yes, Vicki, I think you are," but she would never have told me had I not realized it on my own. She stood by me.

There was egging at Halloween, the capturing of a downed - we didn't down it, honest! - stop sign. But that's the worst we ever did. We were good girls. We didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs. We were so happy and had so much fun, we didn't need to. We wanted to be cheerleaders more than life itself, and we got to be JV cheerleaders in the tenth grade. The fun, the cutting up, the AWAY games, the memories...it was the highlight of high school for each of us.

Because we were so close, we thought it would be best to go to different colleges, to make new friends and to learn to stand on our own. But we grew too far apart. Susan went society and I went hippie. Susan met her future husband the first semester of freshman year. They are still married. I was in their wedding in the early 1970s. There was an empty seat next to me at the rehearsal dinner, reserved for my estranged husband George, who did not come with me. Susan and Eddie have two beautiful daughters, one grandchild, a boy named Walker, and another on the way. Susan drove from Richmond to Arlington several days a week to help with Walker until recently. Last year she planted 500 impatiens plants in the yard of her house on Monument Avenue.

Recently, Susan's parents' home was on the market and I was shopping for a house, so I considered buying the home where I used to spend so much happy time. When I went to view the house, I was struck by the collection of very large professionally taken black and white photos her mother had placed on one living room wall. There was the fair and blonde Susan with her two blonde little girls. She was the prettiest girl I've ever seen. Those photos revealed the essence of beauty and motherhood.

Cancer has been dogging Susan for about ten or twelve years. She has faced it with the spirit and disposition of her father, always cheerful, always hopeful, always brave. And she has held it at bay until now. In the meantime, she has lost her father, and her mother has developed Alzheimer's. Susan passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by her husband and daughters on Friday, April, 22. She was only 62. I cannot bear to think that she will not see her second grandchild. My heart aches for Susan and her family. And for me. We can't make up the times we've missed. But no one could have been a better friend to me. No one could have given me better memories. From the day she took my hand the first day of school to this moment, Susan is My Susan. And she always will be.