Fifty Years of Splendor

When I was in sixth grade at Hermitage Elementary School in Virginia Beach, an exotic creature joined my classroom. She had thick blond hair and deep blue eyes. She wore pointy blue-framed eyeglasses, seemed quiet & shy, and had recently moved back to the United States after living in Europe for several years.

I instantly fell in love with her, so - being a boy - I teased her mercilessly. Her name was Susan, and she hated me. Little did we know at the time that we were forging a friendship that would endure all these years. Together, we went through the Virginia Beach school system until college took us on separate paths. When Susan went to the University of Virginia, she became Suzanne.

Today, Suzanne celebrates her 50th birthday. I am amusing myself this morning with memories of our capers and misadventures. With thirty-nine years of friendship behind us, there are too many to tell today, but I'll share a few.

Suzanne's mother was a foreign language instructor at a local college, so Suzanne spent her afternoons after school practicing the piano. Sometimes. Frequently, Suzanne & I would work feverishly on homework assignments play together before her mother got home from work. When we saw the mommy-mobile drive up, Suzanne would scramble to set the kitchen timer for seven to ten minutes ("Look, Mom, almost finished!") and dutifully work the ivories, while I sat quietly and read a book. Her mother never caught on.

Our mothers would cringe when Suzanne & I got the urge to create a culinary masterpiece, because it meant that one of their kitchens was going down. Most of our finished products were edible, but there was one notable exception. One day, Suzanne, Fred, and I decided to make chocolate mousse. Fred's father, a single parent, was out of town, so we had his kitchen all to ourselves. Suzanne & I had scouted out a recipe from one her mother's gourmet cookbooks, and we selected chocolate mousse because it only had three ingredients. Plus, Suzanne's mother had a set of elegant, individual dessert pots - delicate things with twin gold handles and cunning wee lids with gold knobs.

Oh, they looked scrumptious when they came out of the oven! The lifted lids presented glossy, dark chocolate, and we couldn't wait to sink our spoons into our high-brow desserts. We were so proud of ourselves. Our delight turned to dismay when we our spoons revealed that thick slabs of unsweetened chocolate hid a revolting, viscous stew of sugar and partially cooked egg.

One of my vivid memories is of a hike through Seashore State Park (now First Landing State Park) in Virginia Beach. It was just the two of us, and we parked at the Shore Drive entrance. We wandered through the wild beauty of the park's cypress swamps, salt marshes, maritime forests, and dunes. We were pretty well exhausted when we found a quiet place to rest on the sandy shoreline of Broad Bay. It was very peaceful, and we felt that we had left civilization behind. Indeed, we had; the park encompasses 2888 acres of undeveloped land, and we had worked our way back through the less-traveled trails to a place where few people ventured. We hadn't seen a soul for quite awhile.

Lost in our own thoughts, enjoying the natural serenity of our view across the water, one of us finally turned to the other and remarked "What a beautiful sunset."

"Sunset???" we both cried in alarm. We were impossibly far from the car, and in an unfamiliar section of the wilderness. We wasted several minutes trying to decide which way to exit the park. It had taken us hours to reach our sandy beach, so we opted for the back exit at 64th Street near the oceanfront. It meant unfamiliar trails, but we weren't thinking clearly. Darkness came swiftly.

We stumbled along as fast as we could, sometimes feeling our way. It was fully dark by the time we saw the lights of 64th Street, and we still had quite a walk before we found a motel with a payphone.

Both of our mothers were in high-intensity panic mode; each possessed a keen ability to leap mentally to the worst-case scenario. My father was quietly alarmed, because he knew that more than one lonely trekker had become hopelessly lost in this wild place and perished. Poisonous snakes and other beasts roamed these woods and swamps. Park rangers had found my car at the other end of the park, and were organizing a search & rescue team. Our parents were too overjoyed that we were safe to muster up much anger with either of us.

Even though she is an ocean away in Amsterdam, I hold my dear friend Suzanne close today as she turns fifty, and wonder what our next adventures hold in store. Happy Birthday, Suzanne!
1959 was an excellent model year!