Noreen

I started dating Bonita in the summer of 1967.  I had just graduated from college and moved to suburban Detroit.  One of my brothers and his wife lived there and I thought it would offer me a good social life.  No sooner than I got there than all Hell broke loose.  A riot erupted in the city and federal troops were called in to restore order.  Was it something I said? 

On a more peaceful note, after a few dates, Bonita invited me to her home for a Sunday brunch and to meet her family:  mother, father, older sister, younger brother, and younger sister.  The youngest member of the family was a fourteen year-old named Noreen. 

I don’t think Noreen liked me in the beginning.  She thought I was a nerd.  Maybe I was.  Anyway, I proved to be useful.  I had a car, a used blue Corvair, and she would beg Bonita to get me to take her and her friends places:  to someone’s house, to a store, or to a mall.  I usually agreed as I was trying to make a good impression on Bonita.  However, Noreen had the annoying habit of giving directions at the last possible moment, as in, “turn here” while I’m driving through an intersection. 

Noreen had a difficult upbringing.  When she was a little girl, her mother became ill with multiple sclerosis (MS), which turned her into an invalid.  Her father had to work a lot, at odd hours, in order to support the family.  Her three older siblings each had their own issues and could not provide the guidance of a mature adult.  Thus, Noreen was on her own a lot. 

As her father was the lone authority figure, he did his best under the circumstances. However, like many parents, he didn’t know the right way to raise a child.  Where do we learn this most important work of our lives?  I remember an incident when Noreen said, I believe, “Shit!  Excuse my French.”  Her father slapped her across the face.  Noreen ran to her room, humiliated. 

I could understand Noreen to some extent because we were both the youngest in our families.  And similar to my situation, she got to spend the most time with her widowed father when all the other siblings had flown the nest.  She developed a real bond with him.  I remember when he died, it was January of 1982 when the Super Bowl came to a freezing suburban Detroit.  At the cemetery, she didn’t want to leave her father because, as she said, he hated being cold.

Sometimes, in spite of a lack of good parental support, children grow up well.  I wonder whether it is the exception or the rule.  Well, in Noreen’s case, she did great.  She pulled herself up by her proverbial bootstraps.  She got herself an education and a profession.  She supported herself, bought a house, and, as a single mom, raised an adorable child, Lauren, to become a successful young woman.  At one time, she owned and operated her own business, a bagel store.  Noreen was loyal and devoted to her family, friends and colleagues.  To me, she was always kind and generous.  I always looked forward to spending time with her and enjoyed her company.

I remember the first time Noreen came to visit us in New York, as a teenager, in the late 1960s, when we lived on West 21st Street.  This was a street in transition from a rundown Puerto Rican neighborhood to one for Yuppies.  After dinner one night, she went outside to sit on the front stoop of our brownstone.  At first she was all alone.  However, within a few minutes, she was surrounded by more than a dozen boys, all Puerto Rican.  I was a little nervous for her at first, but she assured me that everything was cool.  The leader of the group, a boy named Junior, later told me she was the first white girl that had talked to them.         

Another time, now in the 1970’s, Noreen came to our apartment in Queens.  During this period, she was a bit of a hippie.  She brought some “weed” with her.  She asked me if I would like to try some.  As I have never smoked cigarettes, the idea of putting something burning near my face does not appeal to me.  Then she suggested brownies, the kind known as Alice B. Toklas brownies.  How could I say no to a brownie?  Well, I had three of Noreen’s homemade brownies in short order.  Then, my world starting moving back and forth, very rapidly.  I started saying things without any inhibitions.  I was scared and wanted it to stop immediately.  Noreen and Bonita had to help me to walk up the stairs and lie down on my bed and sleep it off.  Noreen assured me I would be fine in the morning.  She was right.

I think it was the summer after my daughter, Rachel, was born and Noreen came to visit.  Someone dreamed up with the idea that we (Noreen, Bonita, and me) should take advantage of having three drivers and drive our Fiat 124 Sport Coupe through the night from New York back to Michigan.  We left at 4 PM and arrived at 6 AM the next day making a minimum of stops.  And everytime we did, Rachel, in her car seat, would wake up.  It was an exhausting, but fun trip for the three of us.  I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anybody other than Noreen. 

For some years, Noreen lived in Washington, D.C. and worked at the George Washington University Hospital.  That was the same hospital President Reagan was brought to after he was shot in March of 1981.  Noreen would have been in the center of that activity at the hospital, if she had been on  duty.  Instead she had kindly agreed to help Bonita and me paint the interior of the new house we had just bought in Queens. 

Noreen was always a cat lover.  I think she had a cat virtually her whole life.  In Washington, she had a beautiful Siamese by the name of Lucy, named after Lucille Ball.  Technically, having a cat was in violation of her apartment lease, but her landlord looked the other way, until one day.  She either had to get rid of the cat or leave.  So Noreen begged us to take Lucy.  I had two dogs in my life and they had not been good experiences.  And a cat?  I’m sure I was a victim of an anti-cat culture (think of them in cartoons).  Well, I agreed on a trial basis.  Thank you, Noreen, for giving us Lucy for five good years.  We missed her when she left us.

I’m a little embarassed about mentioning this last anecdote.  Years ago, Bonita and I were visiting her dad and Noreen, who was then a young woman.  I had dutifully gone out to run an errand and was returning to their two-level apartment.  I could hear Bonita and Noreen talking upstairs in the bedroom we were staying in.  As I was walking up the stairs, they were unaware of my presence.  When I got to a certain point on the stairs, I froze.  The door to our room was open and Noreen was not, as the saying goes, “decent.”  Noreen was not only a beautiful person, but a beautiful woman as well.

Last July, I called Bonita’s older sister, Helaine, when her husband died to express my condolences.  Noreen got on the phone and we talked amiably for some time, sharing some memories of the past and hopes for the future.  She, with her shy laugh, said she would invite me and my new wife, Cristina, to her daughter’s wedding, whenever that was in the future.  I was touched.

Some months ago, Noreen was diagnosed with cancer in both lungs.  The day after last Christmas, I called to wish her the best of luck and to try to boost her spirits.  As usual, she was trying to be optimistic.  Our conversation boosted my spirits as was always the case when I talked to Noreen. 

Noreen died on Monday, March 2, 2015 after the second of the two surgeries on her lungs.  I am among the many who will miss her, but who feel blessed from having known her.  And we will never forget her.  We are born in a chronologic order, but we don’t die in the same chronologic order.  Such is life.  She died much too young.  Farewell, Noreen.