I believe I can, uh, bounce on my buns

I had a housemate in the 70’s who went to Fairfield Iowa to learn to fly. It was before the days of the Internet so she never saw the videos of people jumping with their legs crossed, the maharishi equivalent of levitation. She was an odd girl, really odd., but if it had not been for her I would never have met my husband. Her cats used to pee on her bed and she blamed my toddler because she said he traumatized them. She once screamed to my baby, “Benji, cats are people too!” It echoed through the house along with his delighted laughter as he tried to catch the cat’s tail when it raced around the dining room table. I glared at her without a word. “Well, almost,” was her lame ass response.

Good judgment was not Cora’s strong suit. I once flushed her pot down the toilet because she left it on a lawn chair in the back yard. I had only made one request of her when she moved in, no dope in the house. My parents would have declared me an unfit mother in a heartbeat and taken my child away to be reared as a southern Baptist if we had been arrested for drugs. Cora was mad as a wet hen over the loss of a nickel bag but I was unwavering in my principals. Later that summer she pulled up in front of the house on her bicycle with over 50 rolls of toilet paper strapped to her back and the handlebars. It seems she heard a rumor that there was going to be a shortage and she was stocking up. I was never able to explain to her why it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think her summer living on the Navaho Indian reservation with no running water, eating only fried bread and goat meat had permanently altered her prospective on creature comforts.

Cora’s mother was a gem however, a classic Virginia lady, tough as they come, and not afraid to share her opinions on how you should be living your life. I loved her dearly at the same time I found her infuriating. She was the crazy mother I should have grown up with and I was the daughter she wished she had birthed, the one who would have supplied her with grandchildren. A practical woman, she just adopted mine as her own. Once in my frustration about her interference in our lives I told her, “Gertrude, you are like a mother in law to both of us,” meaning my husband and myself. It was such a perfect description of our relationship that we all started laughing, diffusing the annoyance we felt. It became a running joke.

Gertrude moved in with us in 1985. Her alcoholic bipolar husband had finally drunk himself to death and her two daughters were living thousands of miles away. We lasted about six months before we realized the friendship was not going to survive that much togetherness. In the meantime Cora went to India for spiritual enlightenment and then, not finding what she was looking for, moved bag and baggage to Fairfield. That’s where she met and married one of the maharishi’s devotees. Gertrude went to the wedding and described the group as “nice, clean cut lunatics”. Imagine my surprise when she decided to go there to live. I always tried to picture her sitting among the meditating vegetarians on a foam cushion with her cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other.

Cora still lives in Fairfield with her husband, no children, her life devoted to meditation. The last time I saw her was when I was uncharacteristically late to her mother’s funeral in 1991. I spoke to Gertrude once in the hospital, right before she died, but the stroke she suffered had taken her voice. My husband told me this week that he used to talk to her late at night. Now he knew she wasn’t really there, but sometimes that’s exactly the kind of friend you need, silent and non-judgmental, like she never was in life. I suppose that’s why I thought of Cora and wondered how the years have treated her. We’re traveling to Iowa this summer for our annual volunteer thing and I think I’m going to try and find her again. I really need to know if she ever learned to fly.