Maiden Names
To Diana Conway from Judy Busk
We were young girls together,
Eleven or twelve at most,
Yet our conversations soared to galaxies afar.
We carried books by wagonload,
Dug for fossils, climbed a rock or two
And swore that they were mountains.
We lost each other later in a maze
Of married names that easily removed all trace
Of those two friends together.
I think of you, Diana, and I know
Our paths must be in parallel.
I only hope someday they’ll cross again.
People who have read my book of poetry, After the Fire, may remember the above poem and the story that went with it. The Conways came to Bisbee, Arizona, and moved into a house at the top of Yuma Trail, just up the street from ours, in the summer of 1955. The Conways had two kids—a boy and a girl. Diana was a year older than I was, and her younger brother, Joey. was the same age as my younger brother, Arlan. Diana and I quickly bonded. We both loved reading, and we made weekly treks to the Greenway School Library—which was open one day a week during the summers—hauling books back and forth in our family’s Radio Flyer wagon.
Mr. Conway had been hired as an announcer at the local radio station. Unfortunately, his new job lasted only two months. At the end of the summer they left town, moving on to California. After that Diana and I stayed in touch as pen-pals. The summer before I started high school, I took a train from Tucson to LA and spent a week with Diana and her family at their home in Sherman Oaks. We continued to correspond through college, but after that, we lost touch.
In the early eighties I began looking for her—to no avail. It was as though she had vanished into thin air, and that’s when I wrote the poem, hoping that someone who knew Diana might read it and put us back in touch. That didn’t happen, so a few years later, I tried again. While writing the first Walker Family book, Hour of the Hunter, the main character was named Diana in honor of my long-ago friend, and part of the dedication said, “and to Diana Conway, wherever she is.”
Eleven years later, that dedication paid off. While attending Left Coast Crime in Anchorage in 1991, I met a woman who said, “Who’s the Diana Conway in this book,” she demanded holding up a copy of Hour of the Hunter, open to the dedication page. “I know someone named Diana Conway, and she lives right here in Anchorage. Minutes later, I was speaking on the phone—well, blubbering rather than speaking—to my long-lost friend. She had attended seventeen schools in the course of grade school and high school. I attended two. She was a bit taken aback because she hadn’t been searching for me in the same way I had been searching for her. Just like that, our long-interrupted friendship was back on a penpal basis.
It turns out, however, that Diana Conway wasn’t the only one of my childhood friends who had disappeared into the ethers. Before the Conways moved into that house on Yuma Trail, another family lived there—a large family, complete with seven kids, just like ours. We mostly paired off by age, and Donna and I became pals. They were Catholic, so the kids went to St. Pat’s school in Bisbee rather than Greenway, but from kindergarten through third grade, Donna and I were thick as thieves.
In Bisbee, Phelps Dodge was the major employer. Each summer, the company shut down the mines and everyone involved went on vacation. People who didn’t have family members employed by PD stayed home during Shut Down. (By the way, the Busk kids made out like bandits watering lawns for people who were out of town.) In 1953 Donna’s family went to California during Shut Down and never returned—with no explanation. Like the Conways would do several years later, they simply vanished into the black hole of California. Just like that, my best friend Donna was gone.
Since putting Diana’s name in a book had finally given me back my one missing friend, when it came time to write Web of Evil, Ali #2, I tried pulling the same stunt. I didn’t put Donna’s name in the book—I used her brother’s name for one of the characters, and guess what? It worked. Months later I received an email from someone who knew the brother. I wrote back to him, explaining the whole story and giving him my contact information in case Donna was interested in being in touch.
Months later, Donna called me. We spoke on the phone for the better part of an hour. She explained that life in their household had been anything but perfect. Domestic violence wasn’t something that was even hinted at in Bisbee, Arizona, in the fifties, but clearly it had existed in that household. When the family left on “vacation” during Shut Down that year, their mother loaded her kids into the car and set off for California with no intention of ever returning. For months she and her kids lived in a relative’s garage somewhere in the LA area. Donna’s parents never divorced, and when her father was ill and dying, her mother took him back and cared for hm until his eventual passing.
Donna grew up. Eventually she had returned to Arizona, living in the Phoenix area where she married and had a good job, achieving a level of stability in adulthood that had been absent from her childhood. During that phone call, she told me that it never occurred to her that she might have been a good enough friend that anyone would have been looking for her. So although she was complimented to know that I had searched for her, she had no interest in resuming our friendship. Remembering those “old days” was just too painful.
I’ve abided by her wishes, but this week, as I was re-reading Web of Evil, I encountered her brother’s name and all of this came back to me in a flash. Now I’ve shared the story with you. Why? Because I’m guessing I’m not the only person my age who has lost and found friends. And the thing is, sometimes, when you find them again, the best thing to do is to let them go.
Amen
This weeks blog touches me in many places. I have tried for years to reconnect with a few friends from my childhood, but to no avail. At my age, 86, I don’t even know if they are still alive. Most of the friends who I did keep in touch with have passed.
This blog could have been from my life as well. Making friends as children, losing them when we or they moved, finding them again as adults, keeping some as friends and others just as memories…
Thank you, Judy.
Your story reminds me of friends I myself have lost through moves–MY family’s moves this time. Mom counted 26 moves in my first 24 years, and the first friend I remember losing was Sandra Hodgkin, whose address must have been discarded somehow during the packing-up process. The trouble with losing GIRL friends is that they usually have a married name by now, so even looking for them on facebook doesn’t work. It’s heartwarming that you’re pen pals with Diana again after all these years, but yes, sometimes one just has to let others go, because they belong to a previous time and a previous place.
I too have looked up long lost school friends. Lots of stories of the past
Thanks
This struck a huge heart-note with me. It’s not easy to let a re-discovered friend go, but you made me see that trying to hang on can be ultimately selfish and destructive to the friend. Thanks!
Your story today is both happy and sad because of those long ago friendships that you remembered and sought didn’t materialize again when you eventually found them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who followed along with your story and had recollections of their own of childhood friends lost long ago. As kids those friendships are so intense that I could never imagine that they wouldn’t last forever. None of them did. Sorry to say. I guess that’s just how life is, unfortunately.
Thank you for sharing your lost friends’ stories.
I recently encountered a similar experience. I had reconnected with two high school friends about 20 years ago. The 3 of us kept in contact through email, and I had met with both separately on a couple of occasions. After a few years, one of them stopped corresponding and attempts by to reach out via phone and letters didn’t work. It was through my remaining friend’s sister that we would hear snippets from Facebook. My friend asked her sister if she knew why our friend stopped writing and it turned out it was due to me, something I never knew about. I was so upset that the friend never contacted me directly about the issue that I deleted her information from my phone. About 2 months ago, the friend reached out to my current friend and my current friend contacted her (she had asked me what I thought and I said go for it but please don’ t give any information about me). My current friend did speak with her and was asked about me. The other friend did bring up the issue, my current friend was vague. When that other friend asked, “Is she still with that man,” referring to my husband whom she had met, I decided I did not want to make contact with her. My current friend and I are in contact daily and I’ll keep it like that.
You still cared.
I’m teary eyed. This hit home, not because it’s happened to me–my best friend from 5th grade on died a couple years ago from kidney failure. But because as life happens, some of us have gone through crappy stuff, while others have gone on to amass massive amounts of money and lived good lives and even though you’ve gone through grade school, high school and college, they suddenly ‘forget about you’ when your life has gone to hell, with divorce, diseases, etc. They are off on a cruise while you sit at home with a torn meniscus. It hurts.
You’re right. It’s time to let go.
jdo
Good story. I have one friend from my childhood that I still am in touch with and she is in a memory care center but she appears to still remember me.
So true
Through “Googling” their names or searching on “Facebook” I have discovered information about some past friends and acquaintances–Most of my high school friends died in the late 1980s and early 1990s usually from cancer or auto collisions. My college boyfriend broke up with me when I graduated and moved out of state. Three summers ago I searched his name and discovered that after returning from Vietnam, he died of complications from ALS. His best friend survived being shot in a rice paddy and is now a very successful businessman in Texas. My best friend during my first year of teaching in Superior joined a religious group which does not allow friendships outside the group (definitely not this Presbyterian). I am grateful for their friendship and memories of our fun times together, but I have had a very different and mostly happy life in the last 60 years. I would not go back or drag them into my life now. One surprising re-connection is a new friendship with my former sister-in-law who looked for me.
This brought tears to my eyes—many of my childhood memories rolled into reading one blog. You have the courage I don’t, JA, but the world is a much nicer place with your thinking in it. <3
AH………memories of people, places and the age THAT I WAS BACK THEN:-)
I have had some doozies BUT they are memories of the time, place and people. In my 80plus years I have met and loved a lot of people who have been very nice to me and my family. And of course a few “stinkers”! You have to chose what memories you want to carry forward! Don’t let the bad ones get you down and when you look back on them, just think! I SURVIVED and made my own way in life. And don’t get mad at how someone/something treated you personally. Smile, pick yourself up and get on with your life! And yes, I grew up “Shirley Temple”……..hahahahaha.
Painful but true. Letting go the second time may even be more painful.
Your email about your friends from school I like it. I had friends in school that we stuck together from grade school through high school. Then we lost touch after high school. One of my friends we did try to keep in touch. But then I did not hear from her until I heard she had died. A person should try to keep in touch with your friends from high school. We all need that human contact.
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