Seeking Margo

The Diamond Princess in Auckland, New Zealand

Two and a half years ago, I took myself on a two-week cruise to New Zealand with a couple of stops in Australia. The cruise was one of the most memorable things I've ever done, and one of the reasons for that is that I met a pair of Aussies on my first day on the ship, a mother, Rosemary, and her daughter, Philippa (thankfully called Phil or Pip, so I don't have to figure out how many l's and p's are in her name). We hit it off instantly and had become family by the end of the trip.

Last year, they decided to take another cruise--and they invited me to share it with them. We spent a week in the Inner Passage of Alaska and then five more days in Los Angeles. Almost as memorable as the first cruise, and a wonderful chance to see them again.

This year, no cruise, but still closeness through emails, etc., with my two friends--except that I haven't had any emails from Rosemary since, I think, before the new year. So I wrote to Pip: what's up? Is your mom okay? Not nagging, just want to be sure she's still out there. And Pip wrote back, ". . .what you are feeling is the neglect of a long distance friend who has found a close friend in her neighbourhood. Mum and Margo have found each other. They text like school girls. They walk together nearly every day, they are at each other's houses most days, eat dinner together many nights, etc., etc."

Rosemary and Pip in Tasmania

So now I know what's going on, and I'm so happy for "Mum" (Rosemary), who's found her Margo. Before Margo, Rosemary was a very busy woman, taking a law degree in her late sixties, managing a house alone, with several dogs, but not completely fulfilled. There was a Margo-shaped hole in her life, and now finally there is a Margo to fill it.

I'm retired now, living by myself here in Kentucky, with my sister and her family nearby whom I see at least once or twice a week. I have friends, not here, but in places I've lived. However, they're not close, either emotionally or geographically. I have a brother who calls two or three times a week, children who call not quite that often, but as often as they can, and two or three friends who (better than I) do keep the lines of communication going.

But I don't have a Margo. I've had a Margo perhaps twice in my life. Once, nearly fifty years ago, when my children were toddlers, my next-door neighbor and I were Margos for each other. We had coffee every day, we shopped together, when her first baby and then her second came, we all grew together. Her husband worked with mine and one day he was transferred--and that was the end of "Margo," whose name was actually Sue.

Ten years later, when my children were in school and I had returned to get my undergraduate and then my graduate degrees, I met my second Margo. We taught and studied together, we shared ideas, teaching methods, dreams, and summer vacations together. But one day, that Margo, too, was gone. Since then, there have been no Margos for me, at least not in the sense that Pip describes her mother's new friendship.

And, until I got that letter from Pip last week, I didn't realize that, just like Rosemary, I, too, have a Margo-shaped hole in my life. I'm a very happy solitary person, with a life that follows a schedule I love, that provides me more than enough time to write, but that doesn't include heart-to-hearts, high-school-type closeness, a kind of familiarity that means you can walk in the side door of her house without knocking--you know, that kind of Margo-ness.

My "Margo"--when I find her!

I'm sort of sad to find out about this hole. On the other hand, nature abhors a vacuum, doesn't she? So I'll bet that, if I expect a Margo-shaped person to show up in my life in the next few whatevers, she's gonna show up.

I'll let you know. . . . unless my "Margo" keeps me too busy.