Jaci Dawn

I have no photos of today, so you will have to use your imagination. When my friend, Helen, posts the photos on Facebook, I will steal them (and give her credit) and post them on my blog. But for now: imagine.

Prologue: I’ve known Helen since 1988. There was a long period of time when I did not know where Helen was, but I thought of her often.

I have known Kathy for a very long time, too. Same scenario. I lost touch with Helen before I lost touch with Kathy, but some how and some time we all lost touch with each other. Helen’s children grew up and her grandchildren got older. Kathy gave birth to sons I never met and they grew up.

Kathy is a dear friend from the same era as Helen and they know each other.

Then came Facebook. Say what you will, but Facebook has reunited me with more than one dear golden friend, making my life richer.

Kathy’s boys grew up to be wonderful men, but Kathy also managed to put herself through college with the support of her husband and those sons. Kathy graduated from college this morning and following her graduation was a fête at a park in Salem.

Helen asked me if I’d like to go to the party and that is where our adventure begins.

We agreed to meet at 1:00PM in the parking lot of the Tualatin KMart, next to Michael’s. I arrived at 1 and did not see a little red car like Helen’s. Checked my cell phone: three missed messages! I can’t hear the dang thing go off most of the time and I wouldn’t answer it while I’m driving anyway. All three were from Helen. She wanted to know where Target is in Tualatin? I called her.

“I said KMart.”

“Oh. That’s where I am!”

I said I would drive over and park by her. She said she was in the Taco del Mar car. I was still looking for a little red car and didn’t see the Taco del Mar car. I started to dial her again when I saw her. Standing next to a very visible PT Cruiser with a huge surf board on top and the words, “Taco del Mar” emblazoned across the sides and the surfboards.

This was to be an Omen.

We drove down I-5 to Salem in the flashy PT Cruiser with the surf board on top. It was hot and muggy and I am sure a lot of people thought of sand and cold Pacific Ocean water every time they saw that surf board on top of the car pass them by.

I let Helen download the directions and she did very well: take Exit 353, right on Hwy 22 toward the Armory and left on Turner Rd and the park would be on the left. Really simple directions. The exit to the park was right next to a Super Walmart Center.

But the park was not what we expected: a small lake with a few lazy boats floating on it, all powered by oars and human labor. A few fishermen with lines in the water in the heat of the day when fish are deep in the cool, waiting off the heat and hoping for a good hatch of mosquitoes at eventide. A good excuse for sitting around doing nothing except getting a sun tan and drowning worms or marshmallows or pink Powerbait™. All very quaint, but no Kathy.

There was a one-way bridge at the park, so we drove over it to see what we could see. The other side is what we saw: lots of big cottonwood trees (AH CHOO!) and picnic areas, cars and no Kathy.

Kathy is a big woman who wears loose, comfortable, flamboyant clothes.

We parked and walked around. There were picnics with purple banners and princess tiaras and “Happy Birthday” signs. There was what appeared to be a family reunion with a large inflatable “bouncing house” and the requisite generator. There were young men in muscle shirts playing Frisbee™. There was a huge mud puddle in the parking lot that we had to drive around and had to walk around.

The party was at 2:00. At 2:15, we decided we were at the wrong park and we returned to the car, thinking we could ask at Walmart.We skirted the big mud puddle again and Helen said, “Wow, there’s a huge mud puddle here. Was that here when we drove in?”

Helen tried to call Kathy, but she was pretty certain she got Kathy’s land line and Kathy wasn’t home to pick up the phone.

Walmart was no help. I bought a Salem city map. The only Cascade Park it showed was the one we were just at.

Helen thought maybe she had the address wrong and it was on 25th street. I couldn’t remember because I only looked at the directions once, but it could have been on 25th. So we drove up 25th. No park.

We parked in a glass shop parking lot at 25th and State Streets while Helen called her brother in Woodburn and made him go online to check the address of the park. Helen’s brother told us it was on 22nd Street, in the 1700 block, just south of where we were. I found the directions on the map but the map didn’t show any park. We had to pull over into another parking lot because I was getting carsick trying to read the map while Helen drove.

We drove to the 1700 block of 22nd St SE in Salem. It’s a neighborhood on one side and industrial on the other side. There’s a lake to the south, all fenced in and private, but it’s on the 2700 block. We decided to try north of Hwy 22 (Mission) on 22nd street.

It’s a quagmire of narrow little streets that dead end for no reason, zig back to Mission, have signs that say “not a through street” and streets that start up again as mysteriously as they dead-ended. We found a park. No Kathy.

So what to do?

We decided to drive back to the first park and look One More Time.

And there was Kathy, in the first picnic area as we crossed the one lane bridge and she yelled and waved as we passed by. There were exactly 40,000,368 cars now parked in this tiny park’s parking lot and we had to circle the bid muddle puddle again (“I still say it was not there the first time,” Helen muttered. “It was,” I assured her.)

Someone backed out in front of us and we zipped into his spot.

It was wonderful to see Kathy, but embarrassing to be introduced as a sort of “spiritual mom” to her. I didn’t think I was that much of a mom figure to her when she was a young single mother. In fact, I can remember being downright… downright…

Well, she called me once in the late evening. David (her son) and my son were about 3 and 4 years old. She told me she was standing on a chair, holding David, because there was a mouse in her apartment.

And I laughed.

Because that’s the kind of spiritual mother I am. So I can’t believe Kathy remembers me as some larger-than-life nurturing soul.

I made her buy a mouse trap and set it herself.

Ah, but she was the larger-than-life spiritual mom. She still is. She has wonderful sons who love her. The David I remember lives on the other side of the universe (the East Coast) with his new bride and they are expecting their first baby. David writes on his mother’s wall all the time, things like “I love you, Mama.”

My son occasionally looks in on my Facebook page and says things like, “cue spooky music…” or “you’re older than Methuselah”.

She ordered one of her adult sons to cut an onion and he did so with a smile on his face.

My adult child would look at me and say, “I hate onions.”

My point is this: Kathy, who I once knew as a bit of a neurotic newly single mother of one son, is now a college graduate and a mother of four beautiful young men who speak to her with courtesy and respect. She’s happily married to the man she married 21 years ago. She’s a beautiful old soul with a depth I can only begin to feel the pulse of when I hug her, like the tension on the surface of a lake where the water gliders sit. There’s so much more below the surface.

And Helen? Helen is a funny, cool-minded woman who has this whole patience thing down. If I had not been so impatient, we might have waited in the park five more minutes and not missed Kathy at all.

But we wouldn’t have had the adventure. And Helen would not have been reminding me it was an adventure while I tried to read the little map of Salem while she was driving. I’m sorry, Helen, if I snapped at you that I can’t read when the car is moving. I just get carsick.

I came home with a Kathy tye-dyed T-Shirt which I will blog about later. I need to process the gift. I mean, I was there for her graduation celebration, not to get a cool Tee from her as a gift.

But I love it. And I had a good time. In muggy, hot weather under the cottonwoods during haying season. (I took antihistamines before we ever set out on the adventure and if one thing went right today it was this: the antihistamines held.)

Thank you, Helen. I’ll get lost with you any old time.

Thank you Kat – it was your party and you were so gracious. You are more of a spiritual mother than I will ever, ever aspire to be.