“The four of us are a perfect square,” Louise said as she traced her finger along the edges of the square table where the four of us were seated for lunch. The name caught on immediately, and four working women from different backgrounds became “the squares.”
A mom who wrote a column on single parents, a grandmother who was starting a new business with a widowed mother, and a mother navigating a later-life divorce who ran her own catering business became family. We were an unlikely grouping, different ages, different religions, different careers, and yet a bond that blended into forty-some years of friendship.
As the youngest of the group, it was likely that at some point I would be the last square standing. Yet even now I refer to myself in the plural: the squares. I was thinking about them as I created my new little garden, so I decided to put the plants in pots, a tribute to each of them.
Louise and I once did a consulting job for a nursing home to determine the morale of their employees. Lou painted a wicker basket bright yellow and called it the “b—h basket.” Each person wrote down their concerns with no name attached, and we were able to report a composite of their complaints to management.
From then on, if any of the squares had a “complaint,” we put it in the yellow basket, and we had so much fun creating silly ideas. “How come we’ve never tried pole dancing?” Louise’s namesake plant laughs up at me from a bright yellow flower pot.
Even without her cello, Zandra brought music with her. She believed life was meant to be lived with joyful purpose, even in the toughest of times. We were together after my cancer surgery when I got some disappointing news.
Wistfully, I said I just wanted to go to an island and live out the rest of my time on a beach writing poetry.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, and I knew she would. She was that kind of friend. The third square to pass away, Zandra died three weeks after George, leaving me in a stillness repeating her last words to me. “I’m so sorry I won’t be here for you.” Her plant smiles at me from the elegant white pot in which her flowers arrived on my last anniversary with my husband.
When George and I announced our engagement, Tonie insisted we get married in her beautiful rose garden, fulfilling my long-time dream of an outdoor wedding. She created a setting filled with a loving energy that stayed with us during our entire marriage. Even today, 38 years later, I bless her for the joy she brought to our lives. An amazing cook, Tonie, enhanced my life by quietly catering to my delicate tummy. At her dinner parties, she would make sure my serving was exactly like everyone else’s, minus the ingredients that were troublesome for me. No one else knew. She just did it to make me comfortable.
A talented gardener, she could just look at a flower, and it would grow. Her home was filled with plants in lovely pots, many of which live on my deck now. It was not easy to select one for my garden, so I have several in a Tonie cluster sending me love.
I have configured the flower pots into a square to honor the memories of the “Perfect Square.”
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com.