She was bereft at the thought that we wouldn’t write weekly. We were a close-knit group and loved reading and commenting on each other’s stories. We had become long-distance friends and in one case, even met and spent a lovely day together. But when Suzy reached out, I told her I needed some time off. I realized I spent 8-10 hours a week with Retrospect, writing and editing my own stories, reading and commenting on all the others. While I enjoyed it, it consumed a big space in my life and, frankly, I was looking forward to a little breathing room. She, rather wisely, asked if I wrote for the love of writing, or out of loyalty to Patti and John. Some of each, I replied. I am also co-chairing my Brandeis 45th reunion at the moment and didn’t need to put another big commitment on my plate. When I do something, I go all in. So I declined to be one of the leaders of the reboot.

But here I am, writing to the first prompt. As soon as I learned that Retrospect would rise again, my writing brain turned back on (I always think through the story before I put word to virtual paper). I tried to write several times before the site was actually live, since I knew the story would drop on March 1 and I wanted to be ready. I’m just wired that way. Couldn’t disappoint Suzy.

Here’s what’s gone on in the intervening two months since I last wrote:

With friends, we went to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for 11 days. We saw all sorts of international films and documentaries, some great, some not; most will never find commercial distribution. The best part of this festival are the awards. Being close to LA, they get fabulous people nominated for Oscars to come do Q&A sessions and be presented with awards, so we really get a peek into their lives (better than 7 minutes on Colbert). We saw a panel with all the nominated directors, then Rami Malek, Viggo Mortensen, Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, Michael B Jordan, then in more of a group discussion, Elsie Fisher (from “Eighth Grade”), Richard E. Grant, John David Washington, Tamazin McGregor, and Sam Elliott; a really fun event.

The weather was cold and rainy, but we got by. Oh yes, and the Patriots won their 6th Super Bowl while we were there. We had to fit in our viewing between Glenn Close and Melissa McCarthy. Torrential rains caused mud slides, which closed Highway 101 for part of the day before the Super Bowl, so Glenn Close couldn’t get up to Santa Barbara and was postponed into viewing time; what a dilemma! On the other hand, not much happened during the first half anyway. Viggo was more resourceful. He drove as far as he could, pulled off, then found a private pilot to fly him up to Santa Barbara, arriving an hour late. He told us that he wouldn’t disappoint us. He was beyond wonderful in this setting; charming, funny and articulate.

I came home and had cataract surgery. This one didn’t go as easily as my other eye. It took three tries to get the IV needle in (I have tiny veins). After, I looked much more beat up, with bruising under my eye and blood in the white of my eye. The eye tired easily. Now, two weeks later, that is almost all cleared up, but having had an early form of laser surgery on my cornea about 24 years ago, it is more difficult to get a good correction now, so it seems I will wind up with 20/30 vision in that eye.

I had to rest for a week, but am now back to the gym and full activity. Also in full-steam mode on my reunion work, setting up the activities for my class and contacting as many classmates as I can. People seem to think 45 isn’t a special year (unlike 40 or 50) so we are not receiving a great response, though it is early. Brandeis alumni (at least from our year) tend to be apathetic anyway, which bothers me a great deal. Many made great friends while there and say, “I see the people I care about, why do I have to come back to campus? I see them anyway.” I think you should come back to the source, it will give you a new perspective. And besides, give back to the institution that created you.

I’ve contacted about half my list so far; people have been slow to respond. So it just blew me away when I got this email yesterday from an old friend. He came to one reunion, but not the last several. I’d also been in touch with his best college friend, who has never come to a reunion, but I still contact every five years, just because I like to stay in touch. They taught martial arts at Brandeis and were just great guys. Here is part of his response to my email: “It is such a pleasure hearing from you. My memories of you always make me smile and feel good. You have a special gift and are blessed. I have lunch with R once a month. He mentioned your text and echoed the same high regard for you as I have. We don’t always agree on things but we agree that you rock…I hope all is well with you and your family. Tell them you love them.”

I have always been forthright with this community and I will continue to be. The people closest in my life have been slow to praise and quick to criticize, so I do not always hold myself in high regard. When I get feedback like I did in that I email, it just knocked my socks off. So to anyone who might ever read this, take time to love yourself and those close to you. And don’t be afraid to tell them. When I am banging my head against the wall because reunions can be so frustrating and the people I really hope will come don’t, I will look back at that email, and try to love myself a little more.

I really should, at the end of this Retrospect enterprise, tell the story of meeting John and Patti. So much good has come in my life as a direct result of sitting down, in about the fourth pew from the front of the church, about three seats in from the left-hand aisle, next to a sympathetic looking second soprano. Little did I know then, in August (or September) of 1983, that she would become my closest friend, keep my spirits up through a miserable divorce, cheer for me at nursing school graduation, and be a solid refuge over and over. Patti, the sympathetic second soprano I met on my first day singing with Schola Cantorum in Los Altos, California, eventually stood up with me when I got married to the right guy, became godmother to my first child, and just this afternoon, called me to wish me love and best wishes in the new year.

No good friendship is perfectly happy all the time. We struggled a time or two. Any longstanding friendship stretches and even cracks sometimes as lives change, jobs come and go, people move away, move back, move on. But Patti is someone I can count on. She gets my marriage, she knows my kids, she knew my parents. She’s a Giants fan. She picked me up after my first endoscopy, drove me home and put me to bed. I held her hand and kissed her cheek before her cancer surgery. We’ve frolicked in the waves on Maui and hiked hard and fast around Windy Hill. I’ve written her poems and she’s come to hear me read. When I needed help really fast at the last minute to make a flower girl dress for my daughter, two days after my father-in-law died unexpectedly and three days before my brother’s wedding, Patti came, cut and sewed with me. Who else but a sympathetic second soprano would do that?

I don’t know what it was I saw in her face that evening, 1983, ten minutes before 7 pm. Her smile? Her kindness? Her good taste in clothes – comfy and pretty all at the same time? It doesn’t matter. That was a turning point for me, that choice to sit next to her. So much good has come from knowing Patti (and of course John) for me and my family. I have so many photos, but none of that night, we didn’t know then what we were embarking on.

Oh well, she’s such a beautiful woman, and I’m grateful to her for her love. That’s enough I hope. This photo is from the 80’s at least, so you’ll get the idea. Long may she sing, my sympathetic second soprano.

We’ve all known since we were little kids that there is magic in storytelling—in finding out what happens next.
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To everything there is a season. . . .

The first time the prompt Turning Points appeared was in August 2016, and I wrote Universe ablaze with changes about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. That event was a major turning point in my life, setting me on the political course that I have followed ever since. In the subsequent fifty years there have been undulations in the path of my life, but nothing else quite so dramatic. . . until now.

In my adult life, I can hardly think of a more momentous turning point than the end of Retrospect, which occurs tomorrow! Even as I write this, I have trouble believing that it is true. For the past three years, reading and writing stories for this site has been a major focus of my time. I first joined Retrospect when it was in beta testing. College classmate John Zussman posted on our class listserv in December 2015, telIing us about a new venture he was launching and asking for beta testers. I was intrigued, and wrote to him immediately to volunteer. I had to sign a confidentiality agreement, and as a result, I didn’t even tell my husband about it. He was amazed, months later, to find out what I had been doing so secretly, but I had signed a promise not to tell anyone, and that included him! I think there were only about a dozen people writing and reading then, and we got to know each other well. Some of the beta testers stopped writing after the site went public, which was puzzling to me. I’ll admit that I had a small twinge of fear, thinking about the fact that anyone on the internet could read my stories, but I soon came to feel that I liked that idea, because they were stories I was proud of.

While I didn’t write every single week, I certainly tried to write most weeks, and I read and commented on the stories that were posted every week. I have posted more than one hundred stories over three years, for an average of thirty-five stories per year. I wrote the most stories in 2017, the second year, because the first year I was a little bit slow to get started, and by the third year there were many repeat prompts where I had already written one story and didn’t have anything more to say in another one. Monday was always an exciting day, because that was when the new stories went live. And after I posted a story, I was on tenterhooks until the comments started coming in. I am going to be at quite a loss without all of that.

In May 2017, the Retrospect team interviewed me and then posted the interview as a blog entry entitled “Retrospect changed my life.” Since I spent a lot of time thinking about my answers to their questions, I am reprinting some of them here.

How did Retrospect change my life?  “One way is that it introduced me to a community of writers who have become valued friends. Another is that by writing every week I have become a better writer. A third is that it has inspired me to delve into many experiences from my past that I might never have remembered if it had not been for a Retrospect prompt.”

Why do I want to tell my stories?  “I feel that it is important for me to write down these memories, because even though my children are not interested now, I think they will be some day, and by then I may not remember, or may not even be around. I wish my parents and grandparents had had a place like this to share their memories.”

What is my experience with the community?  “Getting comments on my stories from the other writers at Retrospect is part of my incentive for writing. It is always so satisfying to read what they have to say about what I have written. On three different occasions, my story has led another author to write a story in response to mine, which is also extremely gratifying.”

The amazing friends I made in the Retrospect community are a significant part of my life, and I hope to keep in contact with them even after we are no longer reading each other’s stories. We got very close without meeting in person, because we learned things about each other from our stories that even our closest relatives or friends might not have known. In those instances where we finally did meet, it was like greeting an old friend, not making a new one.

Perhaps I will find a new place to write stories, but nothing will ever take the place of Retrospect.