I met Judy in the fall of 1967 -- she and Thea and I lived in the same college dorm and I at first, in my adolescent omniscience, thought Judy was "very young". Nevertheless, the three of us became life-long friends. I learned a lot from Judy, though probably not as much as she had to teach me... There was a lot of hands-on learning: planting bulbs in the fall to see those irises she loved so much come up in the spring, finding good clothes in thrift shops, and making sure you read Consumer Reports before buying anything! Some lessons took. Others, sort of…

            Long after college, one December when she and Thea were planning to host dinner for a group of friends, Judy managed to convince me that, since I’d lived in Brazil all those years, it was perfectly possible for me to cook a Brazilian dinner for 12 from scratch… (I’ve never been much of a cook, and any entertaining my friends and I did generally involved beer and large quantities of spaghetti sauce!) Well, with a lot of help from Judy, dinner did come together. I wish I could remember all the dishes we made, but I know there was an abundance of exotic food. In the Cozinha Brasileira cookbook from which I took the recipes, I still have a yellowed slip with a shopping list for feijoada and a scribbled reminder to serve creme de abacate (pureed avocado with sugar and a little cream) as dessert. There was a slight glitch: having been invited for 6 p.m., our guests had to survive on wine and hors d’oeuvres until 10 p.m. when dinner was finally served. The following year, the December dinner with friends was a potluck affair. I guess Judy learned something from me, or at least about me. But she didn’t give me a hard time -- she was generous, flexible and very practical.

            Through visits to Judy’s house while we were in college and later over the years, I got to spend time not only with her mom, dad and brother, but also with her Aunt Wally, and Evie and her family, as well as her friend Rosemary and her family. Judy, for her part, paid visits to my family and me in Guatemala, and got to see Atitlan, Antigua, and Chichicastenango. She even accompanied us on a day trip to Poza Verde despite having developed an allergic reaction to ceviche the day before. She was a trooper! On one of her trips, she lugged a tote bag with Webster's Third International -- a jumbo gift for my dad which he treasured all his life. My mom and brothers and sisters remember her fondly. She stayed in touch with my brothers in the U.S. I seem to have tons of photos of Judy with different members of her Guatemalan fans up here and down there.

            When she came to visit me in Brazil she was eager to explore, while I was figuring she needed to recover from jet lag. After a day-and-a-half of chatting, eating and catching up, Judy subtly mentioned that she had flown across a whole ocean to this foreign country... Wasn't it time we got out of my apartment and saw more of Rio de Janeiro and maybe other parts of Brazil??? I got the message! We went sightseeing around Rio, rode the cable cars to Pao de Acucar, walked up to Corcovado and, of course, took in a couple of Brazilian restaurants. We also took a bus tour to Minas and Bahia where we happily climbed hills, checked out churches, watched capoeira on stage and on the street, caught a play, and shopped for pewter, soapstone, and an emerald for her Mom.

            Back in the U.S, Judy and Thea helped me get settled, made sure I had a place to spend the holidays, and welcomed Bill into the fold at one of their summer picnics. In fact, Bill remembers that after he met me, life was a blur of parties and outings with Judy and Thea –- there was work, too? Judy definitely had a gift for hosting gatherings and bringing a diverse selection of friends together, making them all feel welcome. Even while being the gracious host, she was willing to go out of her way, literally, when people needed her. When we celebrated Thea's PhD graduation, my brother and his family came down from Massachusetts, but got stranded by car trouble just past the Connecticut border. Judy was willing to help, and somehow managed to keep one set of guests happy, while driving out to rescue the stragglers.

            Judy had already moved to California the first Christmas Bill and I spent in a house, as opposed to an apartment. As usual, she surprised us. A big, beautiful wreath from L.L. Bean showed up at our front door. (It was a proper New England gift from a newly-minted Californian!) She was thoughtful and creative about gifts –- many of them intangible. She wrote often when I was alone in Brazil. She also provided moral support by attending the oral presentation I was required to give in order to complete my master’s degree, at a time when I was experiencing a near-terminal bout of anxiety. Her graduation gift was a Krupps coffee maker, which kept me joyfully caffeinated for many years. I should mention that she did point out how appalling it was for someone who cared so much about coffee not to own a “proper” coffee maker. She had her candid moments...

            When she came back east, Judy would give plenty of notice. Sometimes she criss-crossed the east coast, with layovers to visit friends and family. She’d stop to see Bill and me and we’d go looking for a good place to eat lobster. Often, Mary would extend her bountiful hospitality to Judy and to whomever among our mutual friends happened to be close by at the time – it seemed as if these visits always ended with a party, or had one in the middle. It was great when Judy’s visit and Thea’s coincided, and a large group of us could get together for happy eating and catching up. On two different years, sometime in the mid-2000’s, Judy rented a big house near Mystic, and invited family and friends to visit, somehow managing to stagger groups of guests throughout the week. Even when living on the other side of the country, Judy could instigate a good get-together!

            Judy always connected with children, She took my brother, his wife, and their kids to see the Nutcracker in the winter, and Etaville Railroad in the summer – Bill and I tagged along. And, in California, Pam, her husband, and their kids were like family to Judy. When I visited, Judy had orchestrated a trip to the Monterey Aquarium with them and invited me along. It was a great day all around! The kids had a ball, while Pam, Judy, and I watched and talked and talked.

            Perhaps it’s the talking I miss most. When Judy and I got together, we talked. When we were in opposite coasts, we could talk for three hours on the phone – eventually we had to pre-schedule these calls to fit them in as life got busier. She even had relatively long conversations with Bill, who tends to be on the quiet side… I miss hearing about what’s happening in her life and sharing what’s going on at my end.

            Judy partook of a good part of my life and I of hers. I am grateful for all she shared of herself with me, and for the time our lives overlapped or intersected. She was indeed a friend for all seasons, and I miss her very much. In that, I know I’m not the only one.

     My writing teacher once gave us a prompt – ten years. We were to write a piece that conveyed a time frame of events over ten years. The next week, our prompt was ten minutes. We had to fill pages of events that were crammed into ten minutes. How does one do this? After I tried these exercises, I learned that the approach is the same: time is conveyed in the details. The reader both feels and experiences the passing of time in the details.
     How does one sum up a friendship that lasted 47 years?
     Judy and I used to drive to a restaurant in the center of Windsor. It was our default relaxation place, not because it was fabulous, but it was comfortable. Close by and friendly, we could see the manager running around to keep the salad bar stocked. The noise level in the room was annoying and we always thought some sort of strategically placed room dividers would help. Why I’m thinking about it isn’t so much about the restaurant, but about the drive to the restaurant. We always commented on why it seemed longer to get to the restaurant than to get home. Once, when it was raining, it took even longer than usual.
     But I knew the answer. I was studying neuroscience and knew about anticipation and attention and all the things the human brain does to construct reality. How we sense the world and make sense out of it. How more processing power is needed to traverse an unfamiliar route and how anticipation can make time go slow. And then, lost in reverie recalling a smiling face across the dinner table or thinking about the comfort of recalling a day over shrimp scampi, time zips by and one is home.
     John Golini said Judy made the best lasagna he’d ever eaten. We were at his house in Arlington and he had just finished playing Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag. I didn’t know a human being could connect with so many notes. He didn’t know Judy had a secret to making lasagna.
     I remember the visit to Judy’s house in Santa Clara when she taught me to play Bejeweled on the computer. She was hooked on it, and then I was too. Sometimes when I visited her, we’d go get clam dinners at The Lobster Shack. Or go to an Indian restaurant where we ate pakoras and garlic naan bread. Then we’d go back to her house and light a Firestart log in the fireplace and continue talking.
     Within walking distance of her house was another Indian restaurant called Thali. We went there when I got stuck in northern California after the 9/11 attacks. I woke up that morning and came into the kitchen. Judy had the TV on and we stared at the images of the burning towers. We had both worked there, we both were helpless. Minute by minute, nothing changed. It reminded me of endless footage of the OJ Simpson car chase: media hype to hold your attention. We turned off the TV, we went to work. How were we to know the buildings would collapse? Bush grounded all commercial airlines. I stayed with Judy an extra week. On the door of the Thali Indian restaurant was a sign, “We are Sikhs. We are peaceful people.”
     Judy did so many things for people. For me, she made a big surprise party the day after I defended by PhD dissertation. Renting a tent, inviting my sister and friends from far away. She took Evie and her kids to the Everglades, she brought Aunt Wally to Epcot Center and Key West. She took the Crouch kids to an amusement park. She rented a cottage in Milford and invited everyone she knew. When I ran the New England Clown Convention in Hartford, she organized the judges and used her calculator to tally up the scores. When I first started clowning, I dressed up as a jester and she made me curly-toed boots on her sewing machine. When she wanted to buy a house in Windsor, she traveled around with a real estate broker from Keene, New Hampshire til they found our house on Dudley Town Road. We went to Sears and bought a frost-free gold-colored refrigerator. Two days later, we saw it coming down the road on the top of a pickup truck. She laughed because it was bigger than the truck itself. When I started studying the trumpet, she took up gardening. And when I practiced with the 8 year old neighbor, she started wearing a Walkman with earphones.
     She decided to go to law school after she was on jury duty and was watching the lawyers. She wanted a job she could explain in just a few words. She made index cards when she was studying for the bar. I would test her on the concepts. The only one I remember is possession is 9/10ths of the law. The story behind that phrase made her laugh.
     Judy wanted to go everywhere, climb every mountain. When the Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984, Judy wanted to go. My parents lived there and we had a free place to stay. Judy heard about the ticket lottery for the Olympics and we got into the pool: you had to place your order a year in advance and you had no idea if you would get some, many, or none. We put in for a lot figuring we'd get some. We got a lot. It was a great time to be in Los Angeles. The businesses shut down and everyone left. We had free bus passes and traveled around to all the sites: USC for diving and swimming, the Colesium for track and field. Watching Greg Louganis dive. It was amazing to be there, just as it had been amazing to go to the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid in 1980. Judy's idea as well. We saw the last hockey game where the US beat Sweden and saw the gold medal ceremony.
     Judy loved kids and adopted any family that had them. The Richmeyers with their four kids who were befriended so long ago that they became family. The Crouches with their 3 kids across the street. PJ’s family out in California. The programs Judy volunteered for as a mentor, as a child advocate.
    She loved music. We installed speakers upstairs and downstairs in the house so that we could hear the stereo wherever we were. It meant buying a foot-long drill bit to drill down into the garage and into the family room. We got so good at drilling that she decided we should install a whole house vacuum system. When I anchored the motor to the garage wall with boards and huge bolts, she said a basketball team could hang off of it and not move it.
     Christmas. Judy loved Christmas, and she went all out for it. Every year, the house would fill up with the smell of spicy fruit cakes and savory butter cookies. We picked out a tree at a lot and carry it home in the back of my hatchback. For half a year afterwards, I vacuumed prickly brown needles out of the crevices. While we decorated the tree, Judy played Christmas carol tapes and we got further and further entangled in strings of Christmas lights.
     I pulled out the tinsel. “No, there’s an order to decorating the tree,” Judy reminded me, pointing to the other box.
     “I know, I know. ‘First the lights, then the ornaments, and then the tinsel’,” I mimicked. Each year, we repeated the same dialogue we had had the first year. It made us both laugh. Out came the Christmas ornaments: the silvery blue cloth balls, the creamy white ones, the bright green ones. The little mirrors went up, reflecting all the lights.
     Then came the small grey box stuffed with our special Christmas ornaments that we collected on our yearly vacation trips around the country. As we listened to pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, we hung up the swinging glass angels with red wings, the wooden cats, the cloth and plastic clowns, and my miniature trumpet. Then Judy and I sat on the couch, looking at our masterpiece, taking in the fresh evergreen smell, and toasting Christmas with glasses of rum-spiked egg nog. It didn’t matter that I was Jewish and she was no longer Catholic.
     Thank you for all the memories, my friend. I think the secret to her great lasagna was cooking it with love.  Thank you, Judy, for all the love and lessons and enthusiasm you brought to life.

Judy decided we should do something for our 50th birthdays. Lupi was turning 50 before us and we put on our thinking caps and started working on a plan. At first, the ideas were small (e.g., send Lupi a birthday card) but as we discussed it, the plan got bigger and bigger. We wound up sending Lupi a birthday card and told her to pack insect repellant, a flash light, and her passport, and then sent a limo to pick her up and take her to Logan Airport. We flew her out to San Francisco to visit with her brother. Then Lupi and Judy flew down to Los Angeles, where Mary and I met her at the airport and took her to the Los Angeles Port. We boarded a ship for a 4 day cruise to the Mexican Riviera with stops along the way. Judy made sure we visited the San Diego Zoo, the Botanical Gardens on Catalina, the blow hole at Ensenada, the markets.  We went on to Universal Studios. See the pictures.

For my 50th, I had a party in Long Beach that everyone came to. For Judy’s 50th birthday, we had a great party at Mary’s house, lots of friends. For Mary’s 50th, Judy and I met in London before we went on to Ireland. I remember the prices in London, everything was so expensive. There were things Judy wanted to see and do: fish and chips (and smashed peas or something like that) at St. James Tavern, multiple visits to the British Museum, Indian food, a ride on one of those red double decker buses, plays at the West End.  We took a boat to Ireland (where they checked us for mad cow disease) and then we stayed at the University of Dublin dorms. We took the train to Dingle, Ireland where Mary was renting some cottages for the celebration. Judy and I had debated taking the bus or train to Dingle. We decided we preferred the train, but it broke down and we wound up on a bus anyway.

Great parties, great times with close friends.