Graphite on paper, 1993. 16" x 20" (including matting) Friendship (for Robin) I drew this for a friend of mine many years ago, when life was good and we shared a house with a beautiful Maine Coon cat. She called him Buddy. I called him Spot. (What else would you call a striped cat with a big fluffy tail?) We used to sit around on Saturday mornings having coffee, talking, kicking back. A few years ago I learned that when she and I moved in together, there were more than a few people who thought we were lovers. We weren't. Just two women with lots in common. Just two women being how women are. You know how it is. Everything totally normal and astonishingly special at the same time. Just depends if you squint or not. She taught me to love gardening. I'd never been interested before, but I would sit on the porch and read a book and watch her dig in the dirt. It wasn't long before she had me down in the garden with her, pulling weeds while she talked to the flowers. She cooked. I paid the bills. She vacuumed. I made her a pair of pants. I did the dishes. She dusted. We raided each other's jewelry boxes. We did jigsaw puzzles together, trying to keep all the pieces on the table and away from the cat. She went to massage school and I helped her study. ABduction. ADduction. Gastrocnemius. (Is there a clutchstrocnemius in the other leg?) Tensor fascia latte. (Are you SURE that isn't coffee?) She fell in love and moved out. I got my own place and put in a garden. Her man and I were friends (and still are), and we all had some good times together. One sunny day we took the ferry to Kingston, just because it's so beautiful here when the sun is out, and being on the water is the right thing to do. She and I made up stories about our fellow travellers during the whole trip until he threatened to kill us both. (It's only a 30 minute crossing - get a grip!) She started having some lower back pain. Turned out to be cancer, a tumor inside her kidney the size of a small football. Then in her spine. Lungs. Thigh. They drilled a hole in her skull to check her menenges, to make sure it wasn't in her brain. She was sick, in and out of the hospital, for two years. I had blood drawn from the back of my hand for a routine test one day. I came upstairs to her hospital room with my little band-aid, whining about how mean they were to me. She clucked and fussed over me and my poked hand. Her with her bald head and her Groshong tube, both of us laughing our asses off. I taught her man to play gin rummy. The first five games I kicked his butt. I seldom won a game after that, but it gave us something to do in the hospital while she got better or worse or stayed the same. I wonder how many games of gin I lost, sitting in her room with the lights down low. We never kept track. She died at home, where she wanted to be, with her man and me and the cat. This summer she will have been dead for ten years. I miss her still. February 25, 2007