DIRTY PLUMAGE

Danny and I had a long marriage, too long at times, too short at the end. It was never a close loving match. We didn’t take long walks together, holding hands, kissing in the park. We didn’t tear each others clothes off after a fun Saturday night with a large group of our country club friends.

What we did do most of the time was argue, about nothing, about everything, until we saw red, were tied in knots, would turn and walk away, harboring anger for days. Yet we knew, between the battles, tough times, there was love, a strange kind, but we did care about each other and did try to reform, overcome our differences, with little success.

We progressed in business, enlarging, sharing friendships. Life was turning beautiful. We traveled, made lovely memories, gave our three daughters large weddings–and I gave them lots of good advice–how not to be like their mother.

At what was the peak of our pleasure, whammo, disaster struck. Danny had cancer. The spoken words welded my heart and mind into one person. I finally became what I should have been many years ago, a caring, loving, sweet woman, wife. It was my awakening.

Simultaneously another eye opener struck. Our friends were fakes. They sat in the same canoe Danny and I sat for years. We had no paddles. Almost all of them swam away from us, drowned. Danny’s good golfing buddies, Gin partners, replaced him, seldom stopped in to say ‘hello’. My close lady friends somehow managed to squeeze in a phone call to me now and then. They faded into my falling tears. I realized they didn’t need me and I had to learn to not need them. Some, but not all, couples came to Danny’s funeral, came to our house where they ate like kosher pigs, told me to call if I needed anything, and were gone.

Never, not a single time in the many years since Danny died, did even one friend call me to have lunch, see a movie. Were they afraid of the only widow in the group stealing their husbands? Balderdash..but for what other reason was I ostracized? Yes, I could have called them, but was too hurt, too proud and found volunteering, helping others more fulfilling than lowering myself.

Last Saturday, out of the blue, a neighbor, asked me to have lunch with her, 2 other neighbors and Beverly Simon, a friend of hers whose husband had died last month. Beverly Simon, my lord, she and her husband Harry, were part of our fake friend group. I wondered if she knows I will be at the lunch, if she has any idea at all of how mistreated I have been for far too many years.

I am going today, will smile, tell Beverly I am sorry Harry has passed–but I will never call her, don’t want her in my life.

Bev’s mottled colors smeared my rainbow. Now she will have to find that pot of gold on her own. Enough coins are in my pocket and I can do without her.