Family reunions, that’s what a lot of these games in The Season have been. Especially the conference games — it’s impossible to have hard feelings for any opponent in the Metro Catholic Conference because these boys are all our sons.
Spent the Vianney game catching up with old friends the Drazens and Hollmans; did the same Oct. 21 at DeSmet. College friend Carrie Farris Kramer married a dyed-in-the-wool DeSmet grad and now has her oldest there. And among my closest friends from our parish, St. Justin Martyr, are mothers of sons who chose their Jesuit education on Ballas Rd. What’s not to like about a visit to West St. Louis County?
And so the St. Justin moms (above) met before the game, comparing notes on college applications and freshmen schedules just as we had once compared notes on costumes for the kindergarten Christmas pageant and First Communion attire. These are the women who taught me that you can forge the same kind of lifelong friendships in your adult life as you can in your high school and college days. Accomplished, strong women, all of them — and great friends.
And one, Chris Carter (far left), was standing next to me when SLUH won the game – even with two DeSmet sons. Can’t say she was cheering wildly, but she was there ’til the end, and I wasn’t a bit surprised.
Friendship is a journey, one with stops and starts — one year you’re as close as sisters, the next you barely see each other. But once you start down that road with a good friend, there’s always a chance you’ll pick up right where you left off. And that’s exactly what happened the night of the Chaminade game, Sept. 30 at SLUH.
A story:
The next-to-last time I saw Andrea Chrismer-Still, she was wearing a white cap and gown adorned with a long, red and gold ribbon. We had just gone through Commencement ceremonies at the all-girls’ Incarnate Word Academy, and we were each in other’s hug path as we walked out of Incarnate’s Theater Building in May, 1981, for what would be the last time.
Andrea was that wacky friend with whom laughter was a daily occurrence: Lucy to my Ethel; Laverne to my Shirley. We sweated through Algebra II, pored over SLUH yearbooks, double-dated DeSmet boys once at a drive-in and plotted out prom date strategies. Once, in our senior year, when Andrea was driving me home from a party, she missed a turn-off and we ended up in Alton, Ill. We laughed the entire stretch of Highway 367.
High school went by way too fast. We lost touch once college started, and the next time I saw her she was visibly pregnant at our 10-year reunion. More plans to keep in touch, and more whatifs and whatmighthavebeens.
I kept track a little bit through other friends who shared parishes or schools, so I heard about her second son, and her divorce and her bout with breast cancer. But suddenly 20 years go by, and damn if I never called. Sometimes, you have every good intention to pick up the phone, but life gets in the way.
So when one of our classmates, Debbie Eise Borgmann, mentioned she was having lunch with Andrea the week after our 30th reunion, I hurriedly wrote a note on the back of a bar receipt and asked Debbie to give it to her. She did, and one email led to another, and that’s how I spent the entire SLUH-Chaminade football game sitting on the other side of the stadium amid red-clad fans.
Andrea’s son Andrew (right) is a linebacker for the Red Devils, and my son Matt is a defensive end/special teams player for the Jr. Billikens. What were the odds, two high school girls who had lived and died for the boys’ schools 30 years ago now mothers wearing school colors and our sons’ pictures?
When I got Andrea’s text early in the game, I made a bee-line over there, and then made a scene climbing over Chaminade fans to reunite with a long lost friend. We spent the entire night catching up – exactly what Chaminade did, and their team almost came back to win in the 4th quarter.
So in between long passes and first downs, I heard about how she raised two boys as a single mom, about how she battled breast cancer, about how she earned her PhD in the process and how she now hangs out her shingle as a counseling psychologist. I was in awe of the brave, remarkable, resilient woman she had become. But it didn’t surprise me one bit.
Andrea’s Andrew is a pretty good football player. Every time I looked up, he was making a tackle. And my son? Home sick with a fever and didn’t play.
But thanks to a visit with an old friend, I went from feeling sorry for my son and myself to feeling 16 again, sweating through Algebra II, poring over boy-school yearbooks.
Friendship will do that for you.
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