“When did I last see, Mary?” I kept asking Art, days before Mary Kurtin arrived for a visit in Asheville a week ago.
“I wonder if she will really come?” I was thinking to myself. So much time in between visits and yet I have always known we would stay close because we shared so much of our lives together in faraway places. Those experiences are precious as there are fewer people to share them with. And we knew each other’s parents…all of whom are gone now.
Dinner with Mom and Dad in Asheville in the 1980's
Last Tuesday we drove to the airport to meet Mary. Exchanging warm hugs, we picked up right where we left off which turned out to be 19 years ago! On the way home, we figured out that we had last seen each other in 1999 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY at Mary’s final photography show for her MFA. How could that be? It certainly didn’t feel like that long ago. As we came into our house Mary unexpectedly said,
“Kristina, you look just like your Mom!” Then she looked around at where she was and went on, “Your house reminds me of your Mom’s!” I suddenly felt teary. Mary is like family. I know her so well from what book she might like to read, to what colors she wears.
Montevideo 1970
We met in 1969 in Montevideo, Uruguay when we were 24. I was visiting my parents for what was to be a two-week visit. That turned into a year-long stay. Fate intervened when the Uruguayan American School needed someone to put together a library. As I had not settled on a job in the US and just had my new master’s degree in Library Science, I became that person. Mary joined the CIA as a secretary (yes, we called young women secretaries) looking to leave her hometown of Tucson and had been assigned to Montevideo. My father was her boss! Even then, having always been drawn to Latino culture Mary was fluent in Spanish which she spoke like a native. Her parents were first generation Czechoslovakian immigrants from the Midwest who had settled in Arizona. It was the Latino culture that rubbed off on her and not her Czech ancestry. She has never stopped loving all things Latino and still speaks flawless Spanish somehow adopting the appropriate accent and vocabulary for whatever country she is in.
We have always launched right into Spanish or Spanglish when we are together and during our phone calls. Even emails begin with “Hola, ché! (the Argentine greeting) or “Querida Amiga” (dear friend). We always end with “abrazos y besos” (hugs and kisses).
Traveling in southern Spain in 1973
Our Uruguay experiences were our carefree days as glamorous young women before “real life” began with husbands, children and job responsibilities. We spent hours this past week looking at photos of those long-ago adventures in Montevideo and others from all the places we had been together – Asunción, Buenos Aires, Tucson, Denver, Asheville, Southern Spain,Princeton, N.J. Rochester, Vt., Mexico, and Bard College, N.Y.
Denver, Colorado 1971
My studio apartment in Denver
Christmas in Asheville with my mother
Visit to Princeton, N.J.
“Opposites attract” is a cliché people say about couples, but it feels appropriate to use when thinking of two friends like us. Mary and I are different in every way and always have been. Mary is a night owl and slow to get going in the mornings. I rise early because mornings are my best times of day. Mary thrives in hot weather. I wither in heat and long for cool or even cold.
Mary is a free spirit while I follow the rules and do what I think is expected of me. Mary is creative and has several art degrees to prove it. She paints beautifully, makes wonderful jewelry, has sold her silk Thai dye blouses at Bellagio, an upscale dress shop, when she lived in Asheville. She has a degree in Photography from a real New York art school – Bard College.
Visiting Mary at Bard College 1999
Lunch in Rhinebeck, New York 1999
She has her ESL degree which I encouraged her to get years ago while visiting her at home in Tucson. She was at a crossroads trying to decide what to do next in her life. “Why not get an ESL degree,” I told her. She has thanked me ever since. I am practical, and she isn’t always. I tend to be critical and she rarely has a mean thing to say about anyone. She is fun and lively and wonderfully generous…more so than I am. She spent her life escaping her strict Catholic upbringing and embraced the world beyond Arizona where she grew up. She has gone back to live in Tucson now that she is widowed, where she has friends and loads of sunshine and hot weather which she loves. I, too, left home and travelled far but not as an escape …for my parents had done the very same thing.
What I will remember about our week together is that despite our many differences, we care about each other and we are comfortable with one another despite the passing of time.
Our visit came to an end this morning when Mary left early for Tucson. We teased that “perhaps we don’t have another 19 years “before we see each other again. That brought us both to the reality of being in our 70’s and the resolve to do things now and not wait.
Some friendships only ripen with the passing of time and with old age. Our friendship is one of those. Somewhere deep inside of us we are still those glamorous 24-year-olds that met and enjoyed life in faraway Uruguay so long ago.
Our glamour days in Punta del Este in 1970
Black Mountain, N.C. April 2018
