Old Friends

Bonnie and I have been friends for forty years. She was my brilliant, funny, beloved professor at UTSA when I decided, at 32, to go back to graduate school.  She's still brilliant, funny, and beloved, and we're both seasoned  (and possibly wiser?) by forty more years of living.  

You may recall that she and Deb Fields wrote a book called Wonderful Old Women and asked me to photograph an assemblage of fascinating vibrant women over 80 whom she and Deb had interviewed.  They decided to keep the word, Old, to claim the reality of age and to counter the offensive "little old women" trope. 

In 2021, Bonnie got a new hip and I got a new knee.  Retired from UTSA, she's still teaching a Zoom writing class to seniors (who never want to miss her class)  and she goes to the gym four days a week.  

Our friend Gary died eight years ago.  After his diagnosis he was told he could expect two good years--which he had.  I still think of him when I drive past Demo's where we used to meet for lunch when he drove into San Antonio to do his piano gigs.  He never met an animal he didn't love and he and his wife fed deer out of their hands outside their house.  

So, Bonnie wondered, what would we do if we knew we had two good years to live?  She'd asked a few other friends that question and they had ready answers.

As we reflected on that question, neither of us wanted to change our lives in a dramatic way.  I'd like to go back to Italy--but until and unless COVID is ever a thing of the past, international travel seems virtually impossible.  

We're settled into a place we love--we both see Texas politics as repugnant, but we love our circles of old friends.  We prefer quiet visits with one or two or three good friends to parties.  We know that old friends are not replaceable.