Anne’s Diary (Page 94)

Whitley and I recently helped save a friend?s life. It’s a strange feeling. We don’t feel heroic, only grateful, because he’s one of our favorite people.

We didn’t run into a burning building or jump off a bridge into icy water. We accepted an invitation to a beach house a few weeks ago and had a lovely, lazy weekend with our friends. While chatting in the living room, the husband happened to mention some annoying symptoms he’d been having for years.

Whitley recognized the problem immediately because he’s had the same symptoms of a troublesome prostate, the curse of middle-aged males. We urged our friend to have a blood test to check his PSA level and make sure he didn’t have cancer.
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November is a big month for Whitley and me. We were married 30 years ago on November 28 and our son was born on November 30, eight years later. And then, of course, there’s Thanksgiving.

I remember our wedding well. We were recent immigrants to New York, so poor that the super in our building took pity on us and loaned us some furniture. Despite our monetary situation, Whitley was determined to be married in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

We didn’t live in the right parish, so we had to wade through a lot of red tape (and there’s no bureaucracy like the Vatican), but we managed to do it. They didn’t let us use the main cathedral, but we did get access to the small Lady Chapel behind it.
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I’ve had post-party blues, postpartum blues (caused by baby Andrew’s four a.m. cries for food) and now, along with the rest of the nation, I’ve got the post-election blues.

On election eve, we had dinner with friends. We turned on CNN and as the evening progressed, we switched from wine to hard liquor. By the time we staggered home, nobody had yet been elected President. When the clock radio woke us up Wednesday morning, we discovered that this was still the case.

We had lunch on Wednesday with another good friend who seemed depressed, which isn’t like her. When I asked her what was wrong, she replied, “I don’t think I can stand another four years of bickering!”
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Yesterday was a typical Saturday. After breakfast, Whitley and I got in the car with a list of chores to do, but our final destination was a nearby theater, because we love the movies.

We were headed for a Hollywood tearjerker that opened this weekend, an uplifting fable in which blacks and whites were all good buddies and those in power recognized the value of the small people living in their midst. In other words, a typical Hollywood fantasy.
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