Tea with Ima

Ima was one of the best friends of my life. Today is her birthday. She died five years ago.

And even though she is dead, she is always with me.

We met in Colorado when I was only about 15 and she was perhaps in her 60’s.

She was a children’s librarian and was handling theater props for a production of either Elmer Gantry or Mame that I was going to see our mutual friend perform in. We met briefly in person, passing by each other in the parking lot, but it was really this friend Matte who introduced us by his way of simply saying to each of us, “You would love each other.”

And we did.

She had a lemon tree which grew phenomenal and enormous lemons.

One day in the mail in Washington State where I was then living, a box arrived and inside was this enchanting fruit from a stranger.

The lemon began our friendship and correspondence which stretched on for decades. We did not get to see each other as often we might have liked but she did visit me in WA and I did visit her in Colorado. We rode the ferries out to the San Juan Islands and went to Butchart Gardens in Victoria to see flowers. We walked around Garden of the Gods and wandered around high up in the Rocky Mountains.

And actually the first time we really met in person was in Pennsylvania, when I was on a cross- country road trip and she was visiting her childhood haunts. So I even have a photo of her visiting an ancestral grave. She had grown up in Pennsylvania an only child. When she graduated college she took a train out west to see an Aunt, fell in love with a cowboy, and went home only long enough to pack up and say a fond farewell.

We met up somewhere around Hershey and Three Mile Island (or at least a sinister view of some other nuclear powerplant). We spent the day having lunch and visiting antique malls. She collected ruby glass and refrigerator magnets. She was as charming in person as on paper.

The truth is, everything about her was loveable. It was just the way she was.

Pansies are her flower. Every year I plant a new pot for her, and line the edges of the flower garden with them. At her home she had window boxes filled with them and when I couldn’t see them in person she would mail photos to me.

So we had a virtual tea party of correspondence for all those years. And I can still hear her lovely voice in my head.

The last time I saw her she wasn’t feeling well but we still went to the casino in the mountains of Colorado and I think she still won the nickel slots. We went to Michelle’s and ordered giant hot fudge sundaes. And we sat around and had tea and read books and were cozy. It was very snowy and the moon was full.

We wrote to each other constantly over the years and when she died, I was supposed to inherit my letters to her, and the letters of that mutual friend who had introduced us. Since she was a librarian through and through, the letters were in the top of her closet neatly organized and labeled in gift bags. They numbered in the hundreds.

After her death, her son was cleaning out the house and apparently he took all these letters to the dump. They were never to be seen again.

It was like losing her twice.

Each year I donate some books to her library there in the mountains of Colorado so right now I am in the process of choosing my recent favorites. What are yours?

Today I also especially want to make us a pot of tea, and talk about frogs and sunflowers and pansies and children’s books and Wild West stories and animals and angels and squirrels and bears and pigs and horses and books and the world, and about the lemon that began it all.