Mmmm, peaches. A Canadian can never have too many peaches, because all too soon, we are once again peachless. At least, sweet juicy local peaches, not hard rubber balls flown in from California.
Another summer treat – visitors. My friend Patsy Ludwick has been visiting from Gabriola Island. We met 38 years ago, in 1970 – I was working backstage at Neptune Theatre in Halifax, about to go to theatre school in London, and she was a brilliant, fierce and beautiful young actress who had just graduated from that school. We were housemates in a little cabin in a cove, and that year on August 1st, for my 20th birthday – is it possible? Was I ever 20? – she wrote “Happy Birthday” signs and placed them all over the house for me to find – in the fridge, in the coffee pot, even swimming in the toilet. And then there was a party.
And now we sit eating peaches, middle-aged ladies, not as lovely and fresh – oh God, back then, glossy hair and skin, flashing eyes and burning, ardent idealism about what we would do in life. All that, gone. But now, we are so much happier and at peace. We both started as actresses and ended up leaving the theatre for writing and the teaching of writing, though in very different ways – Patsy is a dramaturge and writing teacher on Gabriola Island, and I in the middle of downtown Toronto. But that nearly four-decade bond could not be stronger.
And tomorrow I am going to Muriel Duckworth’s hundredth birthday party. Muriel is one of the great human beings of the earth – a Quaker peace activist, serene with a grand sense of humour, open, warm, generous, kind.
It occurs to me that if Patsy and I, who have known each other for 38 years, live another 38, I will be 96 and she will be 100. One of her grandmothers lived into her hundreds; my genes are not so formidable, but I will try. I’m looking forward to that get-together. Another joy of peaches – even without many teeth, they’re still good.
