An un-typical friendship

When I was 14, I made an unlikely friend.  My civics teacher was one of the best teachers I ever had, and I was so taken with her that I volunteered to help out with some things after school.  There was an activity bus, so if I stayed really late, I had a way home.  Her name was Patricia Rudy, and she went off to Columbia University the following year for a master's and married instead of coming back.  I never saw her again after that 9th grade year, though I wrote a couple of times.

However, she shared a classroom with another history teacher who had gone to college when her kids were well along in school, and done her student teaching in her 40's.  Miss Rudy taught the last hour at the adjoining high school, and they got out a little later.  Being her assistant after school meant waiting twenty minutes or so for her to arrive back at our junior high. Evelyn Fleming, the older teacher, was willing to let me hang out and wait, help with minor tasks, and chat.  She had two kids, the younger a daughter my age at another high school.

One day I came to the room to the message that Miss Rudy would not be back as planned after all.  I had already missed the bus, so I had an hour or more to sit around somewhere, no help for it.  Mrs. Fleming asked where I lived, and it turned out that we went down the same road (Seven Locks) and then she turned down Bradley Blvd. while I continued halfway to River Road (about half a mile).  She offered to drive me that far if that would help, and I could get home sooner.  I agreed.  When we approached her turnoff, she asked how far it was and said she could just take me all the way home.  Maybe it was raining and she felt sorry for me, I don't remember.

This became a common occurrence.  If Miss Rudy wasn't coming back, or didn't need much, I would stay around and help Mrs. Fleming.  We would talk, and she never did leave me out to walk the last half mile that was out of her way.

The next year, no longer at the junior high, I took a chance one day and walked over from the high school on the premise that I could walk back and catch the high school activity bus if I needed.  I popped in solely to see Mrs. Fleming.  I enjoyed seeing her.  Critically, I was glad to know that she enjoyed seeing me.  She was ten years older than my mother, and I was just a kid, but this relationship continued strongly enough that when I left home for college she became 'Evelyn' and a visit with her was always part of being home; when I brought my intended home to meet the family, we arranged a time to drop by so she could meet him too.

Every adolescent, particularly a girl I think, needs someone who thinks they are smart, talented, and worthwhile.  Someone who is not their parent.  Your mom can say all the same things, and not be believed.  Your mother has to say that.  They have to love you--it's an obligation that comes with the job. An adolescent girl's insecurities automatically discount that.  Here was an adult who enjoyed visiting with me. Maybe someone could like me because I was worth liking.  Here was an adult who became my genuine friend past the needy, normal, insecure stage, as I became an adult myself.

I sent her a birthday card every year.  I wrote from time to time.  I loved the annual Christmas letters, and the tales of their travels when her husband retired and she quit teaching.  They went to Ireland one year, to South America another.  When her husband died of stomach cancer, her daughter sent everyone an update, and a year or two later sold the house and sent out her mother's new address of an apartment in Arlington, VA.  The husband, apparently, had been the one who prepared the Christmas letters, and she didn't have the mental energy to deal with keeping that up while coping with his loss--maybe next year.

I never heard from her directly again after that move.  I sent birthday cards for two more years without any knowledge of whether they'd been received, or if she was still in the same place.  After all those years, the link was lost, and it's been a number of years since.

I don't expect she is still living--she would be 91 now.  This May around her birthday I kind of tried to see if I could find an obituary in the archives of the Washington Post, or a death record somewhere.  I didn't want to subscribe to any Virginia local genealogical societies and I couldn't find anything through other sources, so I don't have the answer.

But her place in my life is not forgotten, and the lesson was remembered with my own daughters.  It matters that they have a place, maybe a person of refuge, that is separate from you--you just pray that they find the right kind of friend. You teach them to choose their friends, looking for those who will share their values, and then you support those relationships. Righteous reinforcement can come from more than one direction; in fact, the more places of strength and security in anyone's life, the better.