So here is the rest of the story that ended with me and Waneen reading Sherman Alexie aloud in North Bend, Washington:
In 1976, Steven was needing to transfer to the University of Idaho in order to finish up his degree. So I went searching for a job and eventually found a job with the residence life program at Washington State University, which is 8 miles west of Moscow, Idaho, where the University of Idaho is located. That is where I met my friend, Barbara (I have two friends named Barbara, one of whom is alive and well and living in Spokane). Barbara was the Associate Director of Residence Life. I was hired as a Head Resident, which meant that Steve and I lived in a high rise women's dorm with 350 screaming, hormonally unbalanced 18-20 year old young women. How we survived this situation, I shall never know. We were pretty young too at the time, so that helped
Barbara became my fast and good friend almost immediately. She was a full on feminist, a thinker, a reader, a lover of music. And she was a fantastic cook. I became a part of a little women's community of friends. Those were great days, except maybe for the crazy young women, nuttier guys, elevator rides, drunken parties and other charms of dorm life in the mid 70's. Steven was 24-25, I was 27-28 these years. One of our favorite memories of this time was the Miss Va Va Va Voom story. One day there was a knock on our door and Steve answered. There stood the most luscious, gorgeous college Freshman the world has ever beheld. And she says, "There's something wrong with one of the washers downstairs. Could you get it fixed?" Steve replies, "Uh, uh, uh, uh, ...okay". He did manage to keep from drooling, which under the circumstances was a good thing. So we named her Miss Va Va Va Voom and have never forgotten her.
Well, two years pass and Residence Life decides that they need to get supervisors for the Head Residents, who can supervise everything more closely. So I applied for the job and got it. Another person who applied and took the job, site unseen, was my friend, Waneen. She and I met on a grassy hillside one late summer day. I said to her, and I swear this to be true, "You and I are going to be lifelong friends." Here it is 47 years down the road and I'll be darned if that little prediction hasn't held up. Waneen became good friends with Barbara as well and life continued apace for another two years. I remember long dinners and longer talks with Barbara, Waneen and myself. I remember glasses of wine and breakfasts at the Biscuitroot Park or the Hotel Moscow. I remember dinners at the most fabulous restaurant in Pullman called the Seasons. It was this little house up on a hill in downtown Pullman. It was chef owned and operated and served the best food in the world. It really may have been world class cuisine. I remember Waneen, Barbara, me and several other women going to the San Juan Islands to go to a workshop put on by Anne Wilson Sheaf, who at the time was a big feminist writer and lecturer. At the time she was in the process of writing Women's Reality, which became really kind of central to my emerging self. I remember, I remember, I remember...
But life being life, in 1980 we all went our separate ways. Barbara went back to Delaware, where she had been before coming to Pullman. Waneen started on her journey that took her all over the world first as a Peace Corps volunteer, then as a trainer for the Peace Corps, then as a country director then on to other countries and places for the next 20 years. Steve and I moved to Portland, where I started graduate school at Portland State University. Barbara and I stayed in touch. In fact she came to visit me in Portland the first year I was there. But as the years went by, our contact diminished as both of our lives took on different trajectories.
Until 1995. By then, Waneen was traveling back and forth and around and decided to visit Barbara in Delaware. Well, she found her in a mess. This crazy thing had happened at the university where she worked. Somehow she got caught up in some kind of crazy thing where a colleague accused her of racism. And her boss sort of threw her under the bus over this allegation. This all came of the accuser harassing her and her responding, as I recall. Barbara was the last person who would use race as some kind of weapon. They called me while Waneen was there. Waneen was very worried about her and so I invited her to come out. She came in July of that year. She spent about a week with me and was visibly shaken, not herself. She was doing all the right things, going to a therapist, taking medication. She had married, but the man was an idiot and didn't know how to support her. Her friends kind of deserted her it seemed like. She was broken. She really was. But at the time, I didn't really believe that. I thought she would be okay with time. Well, she wasn't and in September she killed herself while on suicide watch in a psychiatric hospital. I had called her the week before and she was hysterical. I tried to talk to her husband, but he wouldn't talk to me. I called back again in a few days and she said she would be alright. By then she had decided to end her life and was just waiting for the right time and way. A few days later she was gone. It was a classic ride up to suicide. I was a therapist by then of course. But I couldn't have done anything. She died while on suicide watch in a locked facility. So Barbara to find a way to make it happen. There was something about this thing that happened that took her to her knees and she just wasn't able to get up again. I will mourn her forever.
Well, now to the part where Waneen and I met in North Bend, near Seattle. It was somehow the most convenient place for us to meet at the time with Waneen's work and life. She we meet up in North Bend, about 20 miles or so from Seattle. We stayed at Steve's friend Don't house. He was off on a Himalaya trip, so the house was ours. This was not too long after Barbara's death. We had wanted to meet so we could have some sort of ceremony of goodbye to our beloved friend. We did a bunch of stuff, all of which I can't totally remember. The biggest thing we did is we took these photos that I had taken of Barbara while she was visiting me in July and took them down by the waterfront in Seattle and tore them up and lit them on fire and let the ashes go into the water. We talked and cried and carried on. I had brought my copy of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven and took to reading it aloud to Waneen each night before we went to sleep. It really did make us laugh and cry. Or it made me laugh and cry. Anyway, this one night we had just turned out the light and out of nowhere the smoke alarm went off. Well, I being of little or no use in a middle of the night, have to do something situation, just kind of ran around while Waneen got up on a chair and somehow got the thing to stop. So we go back to bed and a little while later, I would not make this up, the faucet on the washing machine breaks off and starts gushing water all over the place. Well, if I can't deal with a smoke alarm, you can only imagine how completely useless I am when water is gushing out all over the place. Again, Waneen gathers herself and somehow manages to turn off the water. It was the craziest thing ever. We were convinced and still are that it was Barbara's spirit in there giving us shit. Saying goodbye. Telling us to let her go. It was amazing. Truly.
I don't have much left of Barbara. A cookbook of her's and a recipe that I still have in my little recipe box. I still make it every now and then. It is the original paper, in her writing. Here it is:
