The Stand In Birthday Girl

I got a birthday call last week despite the fact that my birthday isn't until August. It wasn't unexpected though and I knew that it was Daria as soon as I heard the phone ring. I was half on my way to bed but I picked up the phone because Daria is a special lady and her annual call means a great deal to me and I know that it means just as much to her. Daria was my mother's best and longest friendship. They met shortly after WWII as displaced youngsters in the strangeness and cold of Northern Ontario. My mother came from England and Daria from the Ukraine, they probably felt equally lost and foreign and maybe for that reason became best of friends. Years later my mother said that Daria looked like a little Russian doll with her long golden braids and her pink cheeks. Daria said that she found a protector in my mother who would stand up to teachers with a heavy rod and classmates who were ready to poke fun at her cabbage sandwiches.

Daria and my mom remained good friends. They moved away from each other. Marriage, children, travel and life in general separated them over the next fifty years but years ago, when I took mom out for dinner to celebrate her fifty fifth birthday Daria surprised her by meeting us at the restaurant. I remember that night very well. I remember drinking cognac with them, back at my apartment and listening to them talk about Billie Holiday and Chet Baker and Mary Quant and watching them evaporate all the years spent apart. It was lovely to watch. I don't think that I fully appreciated the kind of friendship that did not require maintenance to survive and prosper.

When my mother died, Daria was, apart from relatives, the only person I called.

So every year on my mother's birthday I know that I will get a call from Daria and her voice makes me feel that we are, for a short time, joined by the real birthday girl.