All Grown Up

Bill's drawing of boy and girl at beach, by Bill Pyne

Bill and Cora

January 16  2013   7:44 am  Wednesday morning

My friend Cora has her birthday today.  From today till April when I have another birthday we are the same age.  It’s as if Cora’s mother Aurora got pregnant on the day I was born and nine months later baby Cora was born.

In Guadalajara Mexico where her parents then lived.  Her dad from Canada, Edward Winston, and her mom Aurora from Guadalajara.

I guess her mother was a townie. She lived in the university town in Mexico where her dad came to study romance languages. I never heard the story of how they met, fell in love and married. 

I just know that after I was born on Riverside Drive in Manhattan  9 months later baby Cora was born in Guadalajara. 

And twenty odd years later Cora and I met in Mary Anthony’s Dance Studio in the East Village of Manhattan.  Where Cora was the advanced student and I was beginner beginner.       

Cora was a tremendously beautiful modern dancer when I first met her. She would arrive late for her class.  I would be getting dressed from my class, elementary, when she arrived and said “how late am I?”

And she would stretch as she was putting on her dance clothes and then go out on the floor and join her advanced class.

And I would stand and watch her. Her amazing focus and intensity. Her tremendous drama and beauty as she did what her class had to do.

She was mesmerizing to me. With her long hair way below her waist, and her face which had some of the Indian in it. Her Aztec eyes which she got from her mother.

That long line of Indian which resulted in Cora. All the way thru the Mayan civilization, way before pre history. 

It seemed to only come out in its pure beauty and focus when she did her modern dance.  When she used her body as an instrument to convey feelings and emotions. What an extraordinary dancer she was Cora.

It was dance which brought her to New York City. Julliard had offered her a full scholarship so she came. She came from Santa Barbara where her parents now lived with her two younger sisters. Her father was professor at the university there, a professor of romance languages.

I met Cora in Mary Anthony’s dance studio the summer I was 24 years old and Cora was still 23.  She was looking for a job at that time.

And the one time I stood and watched all thru her class and waited while she got dressed again and then walked home with her she asked me if I knew of any jobs.

She also told me she had left her boyfriend Aquila back home and she missed him.

At that time I did not know that Cora had had a thousand jobs and was always looking for work. And that she had had a thousand boyfriends and would have a thousand more.

The advent of Cora’s having a thousand jobs and always looking for work came to an end when her mother came in from California and got her on social security.

So Cora could get a check each month from the government and no longer be constantly evicted and thrown out on the street with all her belongings.

Of course she went right on having boyfriends.

I am guessing her mother came and did that when Cora was 42. But it’s hard to remember in all the upheaval of our 40s exactly when what happened.

Her mother did a good thing to come to New York City and arrange that some of the chaos and upheaval and stress of Cora’s life would be removed.  A check from the government would arrive each month to take care of her daughter.

It was a small check but a check nonetheless. Cora did continue to have money problems her whole life.

And she had eviction problems her whole life too because the check was only big enuf for her to live with a roommate and no roommate was able to stand Cora for very long.

Cora did not have her own apartment again (she had her own apartment when I first met her and apartments in the East Village back then were only 87 per month) but while I was in Tucson her mom went to Heaven, and she left her lovely Santa Barbara house one-third to each of her daughters.

The lawyer who made out her will told her “leave Cora’s share in care of your younger daughter Laura who lives here, else they will take away Cora’s social security check.”

So Cora’s youngest sister got to be in charge of the money which was meant for Cora. 

And the first thing Laura did was to arrange for Cora to live in a lovely apartment in Brooklyn, her first very own apartment in 20 years.

But my darling wonderful friend, the best friend of my life, true to her nature, or true to her problems, acted up so much the landlord evicted her from that apartment too.

So Laura arranged that Cora, kicking and screaming, be brought to Tucson where the middle sister lives. Cora loved New York City so much she did not want to leave.

But Laura arranged that Cora and her dog Tiamo and all her stuff be brought to Tucson and a rental was found for her here. 

3 evictions later, and this past summer Cora moved into a little house which is few blocks from my swim club at the Y and just a few miles from where I live.

I didn’t find out that Cora was living in Tucson and was no longer in New York City till she had already been here two years.

When she called me on my birthday to wish me happy birthday.  At the end of the long phone conversation I said “what time is it in New York City now?” The conversation was fairly late at night.

And she said “I’m not in New York I’m in Tucson.”

She thought she had to apologize for being here two years before she called me but heck! in my own way my life has been as bumpy as Cora’s.

The circumstances of me leaving New York City for Tucson were just as surprising and just as earth shaking as Cora’s. I can perfectly understand that it would take her two years to get herself organized enuf to call me.  And what difference does it make anyway when she calls me!  It just seemed totally mind blowingly wonderful and thrilling that she is here.  My own darling best friend in Tucson with me.

I don’t even remember when that phone call took place.  Maybe 10 years ago.  I heard from her once or twice after that. Maybe two long phone calls and the others were just to tell me the radio program she is so enjoying now and I should turn it on.

And then 3 years ago I wanted to bring a copy of the book I had just written and published to her, Bill and I stopped by after our swim at the Y in the afternoon. And to my surprise Cora was up and about. She is a night owl who sleeps way into the afternoon.  And so I got to see my darling friend.

I still remember the tears which rose up from my heart and nearly came into my eyes as I gazed at her. They were tears of love. I had no idea my heart was filled to overflowing with love for Cora . The actual era of our friendship had been when we were both in our twenties. After that it had been bumping into her on the street. And after that she had moved to Washington Heights so I stopped bumping into her on the street.

And then I had moved to Tucson.

We did not write letters. There had been one long phone call when her sister Laura first moved her to that lovely apartment in Brooklyn. Cora told me all about her mom going to Heaven, how Laura is in charge of her money, Cora does not like that plan, and how much she loves her apartment in Brooklyn. It is a floor thru. Big with lots of rooms on the second floor, the Italian family who owns the house lives below.

And the bedroom faces a garden where the birds sing to her all day long. Cora was so happy there.

All that peace and beauty and loveliness and nature, after the chaos of roommates.

After 20 years she had finally found a refuge.  Quiet solitude peace and nature and the birds to keep her company.

I was very happy for her.

And then the next time she called, that was on my birthday but I don’t remember how many years later, that is when I found out she has been in Tucson two years.

And when I finally laid eyes on her 3 years ago there was the beloved of my heart right in front of me and I cried with love.

I instantly brought her the few steps from her doorstep to where Bill was sitting parked in the Mustang. And they both burst into laughter at seeing each other.

Laughter of joy. There is a great friendship there too.

When Bill first moved to NYC from San Diego and I first became his girlfriend, he was staying with his friend from San Diego, his friend from high school, who was being put up by a guy who worked for a record company here.

Bill needed a place to live altho he had already gotten a job working at the Paradox, a hippy macrobiotic restaurant in my neighborhood. Which is how I met him.

We were friends first, then went on a date and I became his girlfriend.  And I told him my friend Cora is looking for a roommate to help her pay her rent. 

That was when she was always 7 months behind on rent but her landlord Mr. Kessler had the patience of a saint.

So Bill moved in with Cora and paid her half the rent, $44 month.  Plus brought home for her from the Paradox those huge gallon jugs of organic apple juice she loved so much

And then he got a better job as a shipping clerk at a dress factory right around the corner from Mary Anthony’s dance studio.

And when his friend Timmy arrived from California, Timmy moved in with Cora too. And Bill got him a job at the dress factory too.

With Bill and Timmy, Cora practically had the whole rent each month, but they gave her the money in cash, so she just spent it at the health food store or on all the organic food she liked to buy. Cora was always a health nut.

And since she arrived at all her typing jobs 3 hours late, Cora refused to rush thru her breakfast, or not spend one hour doing her exercises each morning.  She always kept her dancer’s body in perfect shape. (It still is today!)

She never held on to any job very long. Then Bill and Timmy got their own apartment. Bill was very happy there. But in January I wanted him to move in with me. 

So he reluctantly gave up his own apartment and moved in with me.  And then Timmy went back to San Diego.  I guess New York City did not work out for Timmy.

The 4 friends from high school in San Diego who all arrived at just around the same time, first Vincent, then Mitch, then Bill, then Timmy, only Vincent and Bill wound up having a wonderful life in New York City.

Vincent got a lovely apartment on 6th Street around the corner from me and got hired by Andy Warhol to handle business things. 

I guess he worked his way up, because now he lives in a fancy apartment on lower 5th Avenue with a sunken living room and his wife is a model.

It turned out Bill’s dream was to go to college, so he worked in the days and went to school at night the whole time we lived in NYC.

Bill loves school. Even tho he got his degree right before we moved to Tucson, here in Tucson he discovered Pima Community College. I don’t remember the first two courses he took there.  Maybe building construction and welding. 

But then he began art school there and that changed his life. Because it turned out Bill’s dream his whole life was to be an artist.

Art school is an unbelievable amount of work and I almost never saw my husband during that time.

When he wasn’t at art school taking classes he went in the evenings to the U of A to open studio to draw the model.

An ocean of art got created during that period.

And now that Frank has painted my house, I had him get it all out of the closet and put it up all over the walls.

When art school at Pima College finished, Bill went to art school at the U of A.

I think that is when he began oil painting.

So half the stuff on my walls are Bill’s drawings from Pima and half are oil paintings he did while at the U of A. Of course the wonderful tapestries and sculptures he did at Pima.

When Bill first moved in with me, Cora and Michael (who also worked at the Paradox) were my best friends. Cora was a dancer. Michael was a modern artist who had come from Indiana.

The minute I quit school teaching which was 3 months after Bill moved in with me.  (I was so depressed every day after my day of school teaching that Bill said “I can’t take the depression in the house.  Either stop it or I’ll move out.” 

I didn’t want to lose my boyfriend, I really liked Bill.  And there was no way to stop the emotions from school teaching so I quit.)

Instant I quit Bill said “Your friend Cora is a dancer, your friend Michael is an artist, why don’t you become an artist too. You can become a writer, I will support you.”

  So I did. Back then he was a messenger for a Japanese company on Wall Street, earning only $90 week. But my father decided to pay my rent for me which was only $90/month and somehow we managed.  I became a writer.

Bill was going to school at night, I was writing, we were each fulfilling our dreams. He was taking calculus and organic chemistry. He loved science and math back then.

The 1970s was a nice decade for me. Bill moved in in 1971. And for 10 years we had a nice life till it all came crashing down.

It didn’t really get fully back on its feet again till about 6 years ago. And by then so much water had gone under the bridge, that we were now new people living a new life.

Bill was now an artist, what he had done for me and tried to do for everyone else, he had finally succeeded in doing for himself.

He had gotten me to go back to my writing. I had stopped writing when I moved to Tucson. The world of spirituality had opened up for me, and that’s a breathtaking new world. All my beliefs about reality had changed.

And then I had found the world of the internet, and news forums, and news and politics.  I had consuming interests.

But Bill got me back into writing in 2004 after I had been in Tucson for 13 years, and then I discovered I could post it on a blog and in 2008 I discovered self publishing.

And you could say I never looked back. Writing and publishing became my new life.

And even tho suddenly out of nowhere and for no reason at all Bill went to Heaven 22 months ago, even tho to my stunning surprise I was a girl on my own again, the last thing which I ever expected to happen,  it turned out that writing and publishing were my life.

Because Bill had spent the previous two years drawing cartoons, I was able to scan them and put them in my books.

It made my books so much fun for me to publish that the cartoons were in them.  I got to really look at his cartoons and they made me laugh. They made me so happy to do all the grueling labor which publishing a book is.

I guess that was Bill’s gift to me.  He got me to be a writer. He always supported my writing 100 per cent.  He was thrilled when I started to publish.

And now his cartoons are in my books, making the books a joy for me, and making the labor of doing them a joy.

I begin to think it is a well kept secret how happy we are at this age now.  It’s as if we spent our whole life growing up, and now we are grown up.  Finally we relax and just let the joy bubble up. Life is so much fun at this age. It’s all about having fun, there is nothing else we have to do. LOL we already did it. We grew up.

Love Annie