St Patty’s Day is here again and that means only one thing… Yes, I’m gonna probably going to wear green and No, I’m not going to have green beer, but I am going to be thinking about my old friend all day.
It was in 3rd grade when I moved to a new elementary school across town that I met Pattie! My last name began with an ‘A’ and hers began with a ‘B’ so of course we always sat next to each other in class because in those days everybody was seated alphabetically. I often wondered about the people whose names begin with ‘W’ and they had to sit in the back of the class. Could they see well enough? Hear well enough? Somebody should do a study of people with A, B and C last names to see if they got better grades!
Pattie lived a little north of town and I lived even further north of town. I think the development she lived in was called Holly Hills and I loved it!!! Beautiful brick homes with and manicured lawns. The best part was at Christmas time, the whole neighborhood had the same decorations in their yards; it was a perfectly decorated winter wonderland… with no snow (south Texas). All the people living in Holly Hills put up big candy canes and lollipops in their front yards and they all had lights around all the roof-lines. It was beautiful, uniform and perfect.
Truth is I always used to envy Pattie, she had her own room, she was tiny and petite, pretty, an only child and it was always quiet in her home. We were also in the Girl Scouts together, my mother was a troop leader and we often did things together.
I left Texas just before the end of eighth-grade and moved to many different places but I never forgot my friend Pattie. Every year without fail, when St Patty’s Day rolled around, I would think of her; I wondered where she was and and how her life turned out.
In 1997 ‘Classmates’ had been around a few years and I joined. I searched what would have been my graduating class of 1974. Pattie was on there and I sent her an email. Months past, months became a year and I never heard anything from her. Then about a year and a half after I first wrote her, I got an email. She’d been without a computer for a while and had just gotten back online. It was the rebirth of something wonderful. We exchanged long emails and we had long talks on the phone. It was one of those weird things that you can be friends and not see each other for 30+ years and just take back up where you left off.
However, now our conversations were deeper and more meaningful. We shared are joys and sorrows of where life’s path had taken us. The grandiose life that I had a imagined Pattie lived, was just that… in my imagination. She, like a lot of us, had many wonderful moments and good times in life fringed with heartache and disappointments. The deeper conversations got, the more it became clear that our childhoods were also even more intertwined than we knew. My childhood perception of her perfect life behind the lollipops and candy canes was not reality.
So we stayed connected, sometimes months between calls and e-mails but always at Christmas, my birthday and always, always St Patty’s Day . One year on my birthday I got a card and inside were several pictures of the candy canes and lollipops in Holly Hills. On the back Pattie wrote, “Here Trish thought you’d like these.” Not quite as my childhood eyes remembered but a great gift just the same.
In 2006, we finally got together. Pattie came to Seattle we had a fabulous week together, we took the ferry to the islands, we toured Pikes Place market, we went to the glass museum, we shopped, and we talked… long talks.
The next year in 2007, a friend whose daughter had just moved to Texas, and I went to see Pattie in Seabrook/Kemah. She was living there and loved the laid back beach life, loved the people and breezy atmosphere near the water.
Pattie and I talked last in December 2007; she said life had been hectic, she had lost her mom earlier in the year. She told me when things settle down would have a long talk. It was our last Merry Christmas to each other. March 2008 came and I sent her birthday greetings on the 17th but heard nothing. St Patty’s Day past; I tried to call, I tried to e-mail, but could not reach her. my birthday nothing, Christmas 2008 nothing. Then it was St. Patty’s Day again…2009 and I had not heard from Pattie in over a year. I knew something was not right. I searched the internet, went back to ‘Classmates’ left her message, left messages with others that I knew she stayed in contact with…. nothing. After weeks of searching, I found her obituary online. Gone… far too soon.
Heartbroken but eternally thankful for the time we had reconnected and the fabulous week we spent together in Seattle. We changed, but had not changed. Our path crossed for a second time in life and we could see more clearly, with adult eyes and no misconceptions about what formed our bond.
So, here it is St Patty’s Day again… but it is really Pattie Kay’s Day and will be forever to me.
With the tearful heart of a Mother,
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