Nanu Nancy

In the city recreation department where I worked years ago, we were a misfit group of aquatic professionals at different junctions in our lives, who meshed. We were a special group. Murphy recognized it first. He was our number one patron, and while he came to swim--riding his bike from home--for exercise, he came to check up on us more often than not. He lent an ear, kept us entertained, and was a father figure, even to those of us who had one already. A mediator in the court system, he used those skills to help us work through our issues, and when the topic strayed too far out of his comfort zone, he'd tell us: 

Murph: "Talk to Nancy."

While I doubt she had a choice, Murph's wife went with the flow when it came to his strays. He collected strangers like she did shells, and she opened her door wide to us. Nancy was one of my water-walkers, and like her husband, she listened to my woes and my stories, and if I asked, she gave her opinion. We've been friends for over thirty years.

Three years ago, Tom and I celebrated Nancy's 90th birthday with a room full of her friends and family, and afterward, I blogged the event, but never posted it. It sat in my draft pile until too many months had passed because I wasn't satisfied--the post didn't convey enough how deeply her friendship--and Murph's--means/meant to me.

We mingled that day in the beginning, with everyone I met wanting to know about my relationship. How did I know Nancy? The question stumped me. Here were her family, her co-workers, her childhood friends, her neighbors, and me. Those from out of town didn't get the reference to the pool. Those who knew it didn't understand the connection. I finally just started telling people I knew Nancy through her husband. 

Ah. They'd nod with a knowing look in their eye.

But that was the thing. My friendship with Nancy is more than the one I had with her husband. Back in the day, she offered a different perspective, cheered us on silently, and told her own incredible stories. I filed away things she mentioned, information that helped me navigate married life and raising my children. She humbled me, never taking me too seriously, but I knew, if I ever needed something, Nancy was a phone call away.

We sat at the table with her school friends, where I learned a little more about her as a young woman through their stories. The pics in the slide presentation made me smile, laugh aloud, and shed a tear. While I knew her children and her grandchildren were number one in her life, it was interesting to hear how vital Nancy was to all of them. She let Murph shine, but we all knew who backlit him. 

Murph: "Nancy's the boss. Whatever Nanu says, I listen and do. She knows best."

I thought about all of that through the celebration. How blessed I'd been with the friends I collected through that pool job. How we don't see one another daily, but how we know they are there. How lucky I'd been to have Nancy as part of my story. 

I don't think I've seen Nancy since that celebration, but she reads my blog. We've talked on the phone. Recently, Nancy called me to come over to show her some water aerobic moves so she could stay active in her backyard pool. I'm afraid I talked non-stop the entire time, catching her up on my personal life and those lives of everyone I knew. Some things never change! Sorry about that, Nancy.

But thank you for sharing your life, your husband, your home, and thank you for the years of friendship. Here's to many more, and I promise not to talk to your ear off the next time we're together.

Nancy aka Bogie the Clown

I lost a friend this week. Nancy was one of my water walking students who joined my deep water class in 1991. We bicycled around the deep end of the pool, exercising mainly our mouths more than we did other parts of our body.

Back then, Nancy still worked, and she told great stories of her workday that usually started off with, "Ooh, I'm so mad!" and by the time she was finished, we were either plotting revenge or laughing so hard we'd get water up our noses. Nancy had an infectious laugh and a cheerful attitude toward life no matter how irritated she got with her job or her husband's antics.

Nancy was a golfer and one of the first of my pool people who took my mother under her wing when she visited Florida. She spent her vacation days traveling with girlfriends and family, and she always returned to class with great stories and even better pictures. But, Nancy's greatest joy besides her kids, her sister, her grandkids, and her dogs was her alter ego Bogie the Clown.

Nancy went to clown school, created Bogie, and was a part of a group of clowns that visited our local hospitals to uplift patients' spirits. She told terrible jokes, performed silly clown rituals, and laughed more at herself and her antics than anyone else.  My mother saw Bogie last when Bogie visited my mother in her hospital room.

She was there for me during my engagement, my wedding, and the birth of my daughters. I still have the toilet paper sash she made me with the written poem when I finally ended my teaching duties and left the pool to stay at home with my girls.

Nancy and I got together for lunch every other week or so at a Greek restaurant not far from where she lived. Eventually, the restaurant closed, and our communication dwindled to phone calls, Facebook posts, and the yearly Christmas card. We always talked about getting together, but neither one of us made sure we did.

As always, after someone dies, that is my biggest regret.

I'm so grateful to have had Nancy as my friend. She was one of a kind, as was Bogie, and they both will be missed.

Hugh Murphy 1924 - 2008

Today my friend Murph died.

I've been trying to think about what I want to say about him and all I keep seeing is a reel of moments in his life like you would see on a soap opera episode when the character is killed off and they show flashbacks of his time on the show set to music.

There is music in my Murphy reel, but for some reason, I can't hear it. I just know it is there.




It starts out with him sitting in his wheelchair in the front lobby of the rehab center where we would sit and talk while we waited for the van to pick him up to take him to his radiation treatments. From there the reel, like my slide show of pictures on my Picasa computer program, goes just slow enough to take in the scene, to remember when it actually happened. I see him coming into the lobby of the pool where I first met him 18 years ago. He is walking beside his bicycle, wheeling it in with him.

Murphy: "How ya doing, kid?"

He and the bike disappear through the men's room door out to the pool.

I see him in the deep end of the pool with his swim buoys. He is facing me and talking. Then he is back in the wheelchair upstairs in the rehab center yelling, "Cara, Baby!" I see him coming toward the deep end of the pool with his water cuffs on his ankles, his swim buoys in his hand, his gnarled toes scraping the pool deck as he walks. And then he is diving in, and I hear his imitation of Al Pacino in the movie, Scent of a Woman, his favorite thing to yell as he is sucked into the depths of the water, "Whoo-ah!"

I see him as he is in the picture above sitting in my backyard, and then he is gone, reappearing in the pool again. I see the back of his head and he water walks across the deep end, burping and then saying in a mocking way, "Excuse me, Cara."

I see him on the Pinellas trail riding his bike, waving as he goes by.

I see him in the pool with his flippers, lying face down as he swims freestyle from one end of the 25-meter pool to the other. Then he is at the end of the pool, looking up at me, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes.

Murphy: "How ya doing, kid?"

I see him outside in the courtyard of the rehab center, his forearms on the armrest of his wheelchair, his hands clasped, asking my daughter questions.

I see him reclining in his favorite chair at his house and then he is sitting next to me at the Mexican restaurant telling me this food will make me fat, eat up.

I see him through the mirror as he combs his hair in the bathroom at the rehab center. Then he is back in the pool on his back, spitting water up into the air like a whale. I see him on the couch in my living room letting my daughter put bows into his hair.

The pictures come a bit faster and I hear his voice as each memory flickers past:

"How's Tom?"

"Cara, can you hear me?"

"How are the kids?"

"You have a good memory, you know that?"

"You're right. Your always right, Cara."

"In my house, Nancy is the boss. Nan-nu!"

"Thanks for coming."

Then I see him out of the pool, his shoulders rounded, his towel around his neck, and he is pushing his bike and heading out the side gate at the pool, and as he passes me he thumps the lifeguard chair and I hear, "I'll see ya, kid. Take care." And then there is darkness.

And then the reel starts over again.

It Had to be Hugh, Wonderful Hugh

My friend, Murphy, is ill. He was recently diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme tumor. It is a nasty brain tumor that doesn't give up no matter how much surgery, chemotherapy and radiation you give it. Murphy maybe has a year.

I met Murph 18 years ago when I started working at the pool. Back then he was an icon at the pool. He came almost every day by bike to swim and water walk. He would wander into the facility pushing his bike, and he'd sing or yell your name at a volume that would not pass in today's "indoor voice" world. He'd walk right out to the pool deck and just keep on going straight into the pool head first.

He liked to swim laps with flippers on his huge feet. Sometimes he would use a kickboard and stick his head out of the water to shout something at the lifeguards. Then he would take off his flippers, put on his water "weights", and go into the deep well to walk around. It was there that the lifeguards would listen to his stories and there where he would dispense worldly advice to all of us.

During the winter months, inside the stifling bubble that the city put over the pool to make it a covered facility, we lifeguards lived for 1:00 when we knew Murphy would arrive. He entertained us and broke up the monotony of the day. I don't think anybody ever charged him for swimming.

He stopped going to the pool a few years back after he had some melanoma cut out. He thought he should stay out of the sun. He joined a gym instead. He still exercised up until this tumor showed itself, causing him to have seizures and eventually brain surgery.

He has lost mobility in his right side, but he is slowly working to build it back. He is in a rehab facility. He is undergoing radiation. He is still talking loudly, and he's still singing. What he wants more than anything is to swim. I'm hoping that that will be something we can do just once more. 
Soon.

That's What Friends Are For

I have been going through this whiny period for the last week or so. I am not only at a loss of what to do with myself now that my children are in school all day, but I have begun to realize that the friends I have made are people who I share an interest with...that being our kids.

When the kids are in school, what do we really have to do with one another? Each of my friends has a different interest, and most are not compatible with my own. They are fun friends, and I enjoy them when we are together, but for the most part, we are together for our kids.

I start to get even weepier thinking about the loss of my steady friends who know the real me-- me before my body was corrupted--me before my hair turned gray. The me when I had something to talk about other than my children and the wonderful things they do. The me that was me!

The whole thing was causing me to come home from the gym, slurp down mountains of Fritos and chocolate covered raisins, and then either A) sleep the rest of the day away or B) bury my nose in a book until time chauffeur the kids. I didn't even want to clean!

Then last night, after returning home from ballet, there was a message from one of those reliable friends.

"Give me an E," she shouted on the recorder. "E," her husband could be heard in the background (he of the Eagles mentioned above fan that I hadn't heard from). "Give me an A," she shouted and so on down the line until she had spelled out "Eagles." "Anyway, I don't care about all of that," she said, and she doesn't really, but she is the ever-faithful wife, "Just call me back when you get a chance, and we'll talk."

I called her back, and we were off and running. We had an adult talk. We laughed and giggled and eased into our silly before-we-were-married talk. We talked about children, mine, and hers-to-be, but it was just a blip in the conversation. What we really cared about was us.

I felt the tension of my week-long worry ease. My friend was here. My friend who knew me. My friend, who somehow sensed that I needed her and picked up the phone to let me know she was there. Just like a true friend does. Today I got some cleaning done. I'm back and feeling somewhat whole. Thanks to my friend.

Thanks, Sharon. Love you.