The End of an Era, Once Again

 Los Angeles, California

Last weekend, a friend cryptically texted me: Another of our beloved, favorite actresses lost. No clue. My brain flashed through possibilities which I won’t list (kinda gruesome). Reminded of pre-internet days when good friends had postulated the usefulness of a toll-free service 1-800-deadyet, I googled: Who died today? And Diane Keaton’s name and photo came up. I texted my friend, Cindy: News is reporting that Diane Keaton has died. She was the first person I thought of when I heard the news. Later, when I pondered this, I remembered the nights w/ Tom, Cindy and Michael at our first home. They were our best and closest friends and we spent many a summer night with them on the patio of that first home, back in the day when we listened to albums on a turntable. And the Gershwin-based soundtrack from Woody Allen’s film Manhattan was a frequent musical backdrop to our evenings.

After Cin texted me back, I responded: I’m still not over Redford! And it did seem vastly unfair to lose another icon from our younger days in such rapid fashion after the first. But alas, we have learned that life is like that in its inequities.

So, Diane Keaton. Le sigh. I first saw her in the film Play It Again, Sam. I saw it with David, my college boyfriend, at a long-gone movie theater out at Valley Circle in Calabasas. It is very possible that we had come there to see Harold and Maude and that PIAS was the second feature (the ‘70’s version of ‘binging’). It wasn’t long before we had seen Diane Keaton in The Godfather and another Woody Allen film, Love and Death.

After my relationship with David ended, Annie Hall was one of the early films Tom and I saw together shortly before we married. But my favorite Diane Keaton film is Reds. I saw it at a theater in Westwood with Cindy and Michael on Super Bowl Sunday in 1982. Tom was working that weekend and couldn’t join us. Before leaving to meet them for the movie, my mom called. When I told her I was just leaving to go see that film, she responded (SPOILER ALERT!): He dies in the end. Which, if you knew my mom, you would be inclined to remark in unison with me: That is So Betty…

Reds is a complex and interesting film, with one of the most memorable scenes in over a hundred years of filmmaking. It is the scene where Louise Bryant searches for Jack Reed at the train station in Moscow, her face reflecting the death and destruction she surveys until she and Jack find each other and embrace. Scenes like that, epiphanies in film viewing, are why we watch and study fine films. It doesn’t get a lot better than that. Ok, maybe Rick and Ilsa. Here's looking at you, Kid.

Losing Diane Keaton is shocking. But as Cin and I reflected recently, time is passing. We are no longer the thirtysomethings who worked out at Jane Fonda’s, had breakfast then shopped at the Gap at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Our mothers were right, I remarked. It does go fast.

I watched Annie Hall last week. I actually own a dvd of Reds, so when the time is provided (it’s a very long film), I will watch that too. Hard to believe she is gone. I’m still not over Redford. Le sigh…

The Bracelet

 Los Angeles, California

Lynnette came to visit last weekend. It's what we do. We schedule a time each month for her to come and be what I call my weekend roommate. We schedule this in advance, generally four to six months at a time. The goal is to see each other twelve times during the year, but we're lucky if we hit two/thirds of that. This was a rough year, and her visit last week was the first since May. We now spend three nights instead of our original two. But once we switched to the three-night business, it seemed to go just as fast. I wish she would stay for a week.

I have always loved spending time in the same place with people I love. I loved visiting my favorite cousins in Reno, and the time they spent in LA was even better. We went back and forth a few times each year. Throughout my youth I spent overnights with my friends in both our homes. And girlfriends were always invited to Carmel when I rented the homes up there.

As I have written before, I call my closest friends, Fristers. But, truthfully, Lynnette seems more like a sister. A sister, in a good way, that is. I think because when she is at my house, there is a complete ease. We tend to do more or less of the same things each time, though varying the meals, activities, and games but only slightly. This was a Yahtzee weekend, as Joel and I taught ourselves to play Yahtzee when we were in Santa Fe last month. And we varied our fast food lunch by going to Cupid's hot dogs one day.

I grew up near one of the three Cupid's hot dog stands of the day. It was a walk-up stand, and I don't even recall the three tables that were eventually installed alongside the stand. They served hot dogs with chili, mustard and onions. And sodas. That's it. I recall the hot dogs being 35 cents when I first began meeting my best friend, Debbie Clevenger, there. It was about halfway between our houses. Later, after we bought our first home in that neighborhood, Tom would make a Cupid's run at the mid-point of a full Sunday of gardening. And by full, I mean about ten hours. At the end of the day, I would sit on the front porch writing in my gardening journal and sipping a shot of tequila from a bottle stored in the freezer. I no longer put tequila in the freezer (sacrilege), but remember that ritual well. Our dog, Taz, was always with us, supervising our work.

That location closed last year and there is only one remaining in the Valley. I had never eaten at that one! When we ordered our hot dogs the woman working asked me about the bracelet I was wearing. I have several of these, from a company called Little Words Project and have given some as gifts. You choose the wording which is strung together with colored beads, the words spelled out with small alphabet blocks. The one I was wearing said: Frister. This woman, taking our orders for chili dogs, asked if the word was a portmanteau. I'm sure I gave her my best imitation of Gen Z facial vacuity. Yes, I had heard the word. No, I have no idea what it meant. And, I was an English major! She gave us a definition and example: Frenemies. Yes, I replied. That's what it is. Closer than friends, better than sisters. Of course I have the luxury that many of my friends don't have sisters so I can just slide in there. But truly, fristerhood is special. And that's why I wear the bracelet. My other ones say: Kindness; salsera, and my first one: Cafe Con Leche which has a special meaning for me and for Joel.

So I told the Cupid's woman Lynnette's and my story: That we have been friends for ten years after she was my dentist for twenty. I like that story. And I like her being my weekend roommate. Maybe in 2026 we'll get closer to our twelve-month goal. Or, eleven months to be exact, as we spend a weekend in Phoenix, usually in March, when we attend MLB Cactus League Spring Training. Lots to look forward to as this season marches towards the fall and winter holidays. And we already have our frister weekends booked for November and December, all things willing.

End of an Era

Los Angeles, California

I woke up on a Friday morning and uncharacteristically reached for my phone to search the news. My text feed from NYTimes read: Film Icon Robert... Hmmm, wonder who this is about, I thought, as I clicked on it. And thus the news was delivered to me that Robert Redford had passed away. Oh my God, I exclaimed out loud to no one. Sure he was old, but it felt so unexpected to me. And I immediately recalled the same feeling when I had sat down at my old Dell computer one morning in 2008 and learned that Paul Newman had died.

I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the fall of 1969, after I had returned from a summer in Hawaii. The best summer of my life. My sister and I went to see the film at Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, walking over the hand- and footprints of the stars of yesteryear before entering the theater.

But I was already familiar with Robert Redford. When I was in elementary school, I was diagnosed with anxiety. Yes, this malady didn't only just crop up with millennials. For an entire school year I underwent medical tests and was put on a shortened schedule at school. What followed that first, unbelievably frightening panic attack that seemingly came from nowhere, was a yearlong bout with agoraphobia. Anywhere I went out in public, I was fearful that another panic attack would occur. I now know this to be anticipatory anxiety. But no such knowledge was available to me at that time. Epilepsy was mentioned. Also, a heart murmur. But overall, my medical tests came back clean. After our family physician mentioned psychological counseling, my mother stopped taking me for appointments with him except when necessary to fill the prescription for librium.

During that time I couldn't go to markets, theaters, nor anywhere else where my anxiety might peak. Just thinking about being in those places, amidst crowds of people, could cause a surge of anxiety. So for a good part of the year, my older sister would take me to drive-in movies on the weekend. And it was on one of those nights that we saw Inside Daisy Clover, and I was introduced to Robert Redford.

Since that time I have dealt with anxiety to some degree throughout my life. But I finally committed to the counseling that my mother had shunned, and through it I received the tools to deal with the life-altering issue of chronic anxiety. I once heard Rob Reiner say that he spent decades in therapy, his presenting issue being depression. When he finally left therapy after many years, it was with the knowledge that sometimes he was going to be depressed. Sometimes I am anxious. I meditate. I breathe. I utilize the tools I worked hard to acquire. And, a greatest of those is acceptance.

I always hoped I might meet Robert Redford. I wanted to tell him that my uncle had worked for his grandfather, a land developer. And I also wanted to ask him a question: Was he naturally left- or right-handed? If you are observant watching movies like Butch Cassidy, All the President''s Men, The Natural, you will see him go back and forth between his left and right hands. After learning that he had celebrated his 70th birthday at The Kona Village, I asked some of the employees, who had become our friends, if they noticed which hand he was using. They looked at me like I was crazy. So, no resolution on that mystery.

I live in LA, so it's not uncommon to run across celebrities. I've seen Barbra Streisand twice, once at a nursery and then at a theater in Costa Mesa. I saw Steve Martin at a California Pizza Kitchen in Studio City. Once, on my birthday, we followed Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner into a restaurant in Beverly Hills. But I never saw Redford, nor Paul Newman. Nor Cary Grant. Still, I can see them whenever I want, thanks to a large DVD library. I can even watch Inside Daisy Clover. And remember a different and more difficult time in my life. That era ended. And so does this one, with the loss of this Icon of film, Robert... Redford.