Sunday, December 29, 2024
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+ 5
As Doug noted, we have been friends for the last 35 years.
Sandy and I met on a warm sunny morning as I walked our young sheltie, Chloe. She and toddler Veronique were out taking the air on her front porch at the same time, and that was the moment. Veronique and Chloe were born the same year, and were all delighted with one another. As Sandy and I exchanged hellos and started talking we knew we would be friends.
We were there for one another through all of the things that life would bring our way—joys, sorrows, anxious moments, moments of artistic discovery and accomplishment. When we still lived next door, we often had tea in the afternoon, and talked about the clothes we were sewing for our kids, or projects we were working on, how we might create new curtains for our homes, what we were making for dinner that night. We filled the hours that our husbands spent working with our friendship and were helpmeets with the logistics that entailed.
After we moved to ease Doug’s commute, we still got together and spent many kids’ birthdays together, talked on the phone all the time, and as our children grew older we began exploring the joys of historic forms of decorative painting. We decided we had to take workshops with Jo Sonja, and traveled to Lancaster several years in a row to take week-long classes. Through those we met the women who encouraged us to join Tole Time at the Jersey shore. I’d pick Sandy up for the monthly meetings, and we’d learn, we’d teach classes, and just enjoy the camaraderie of that time. I have ornaments and objects that we made, many from Sandy, that I have put on our Christmas trees for years, each bringing back memories of those times.
Eventually we decided to turn our attention back to fine art, and started pursuing skills in pastel—-a freer form of art than decorative painting, and we also explored watercolor together. We each took joy in that creative process, in adding to one another’s art supplies, in both gaining juried admission to the Pastel Society of America on our first try. Sandy and I first explored plein air painting at historic Olana, in Hudson, NY, and later she would come to the Adirondacks with me to paint in plein air festivals. We had many adventures, and many funny happenings as we stood for hours by our easels on the side of the road, serious about our paintings, and eager to see how they would look on our show walls, and to know if they would sell. Jay would be out with his camera, capturing beauty in a different way while we painted. We’d come together for dinner with Doug, who was either holding down the home front, or perhaps had gone to a museum with Jay where they would enjoy mutual wry commentary and much laughter. Each evening we’d gather for dinner that Sandy had made in advance, brimful of stories. Just last year Sandy and Jay came up for the Keeseville Community Arts Festival, and Sandy and I painted through last summer’s smoke-filled skies on the first day, went to a northern marsh on another day, and stayed in a nearby hotel like we were having a 5-day sleepover. Just being girls, artists, friends. No warnings on the horizon, just joy. I am so glad we had that time, and had planned on repeating it in 2024. Alas.
In the early days of her illness we said, “Next year, we’ll do it next year.” I will miss her presence next to me on the roadsides, but I can tell you that I will talk to her from time to time while I’m out there. I know how her hands moved as she was painting, remember the tilt of her head as she looked at her subject matter, and loved seeing her work come together. We loved talking about all of it, and shared our watercolor travel paintings, went to museums together, and simply lived and breathed all of that joy. Our kids were grown, and we’d found another thing to share.
Friendships formed in adulthood are especially precious. Ours spanned more than half my lifetime, and I am so grateful for it.
On the night she died, the song “For Good” from the Broadway show “Wicked” was running through my head, and I played it and cried. In closing, I’ll quote part of the lyrics from that song: “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”
