Requiem for a Southern Belle

It was almost exactly thirty years ago. I would turn thirty the next day, and it would mark the first time in recorded history that I would be working on my birthday. Never mind that it would be in the wooded beauty of central Wisconsin. I was not happy about it.

For reasons lost to the mists of time, my colleague Mona and I took a flight out of O’Hare that even with the seven-mile drive from the airport got us to the meeting site by ten or so in the morning. Given that nothing was going to happen until the evening, what were we to do but spend the day poolside, even though neither of us had brought a swimsuit or shorts… or sunscreen?

So there we sat in our business wear for hours. We got food for lunch from the bar when it opened. We also did a fair amount of drinking, fuzzy navels for her and gin gimlets for me because that was what women our age were doing at the time.

And we talked. And talked. That was what women our age were doing at the time too, even though we saw each other at work every day and had had numerous madcap escapades: The Night Mona Drove Us Ninety Miles Home with the Convertible Top Down in January While It Was Snowing and We Sang All the Aretha Franklin Songs We Knew. The Night Mel and Mona Went Out for Dinner and Ended Up Drinking with Some Rug Dealers (yes, rug). The Time Mel and Mona and About Two Dozen of Our Friends Lost Each Other at Taste of Chicago. Mona was the kind of person who spawned madcap escapades.

But the poolside day wasn’t madcap. We talked about our employer, which had just been sold again, and whether it was time to leave. We talked about turning thirty and how much that was bothering me and how it had bothered her the year before. We talked about how she had gone from being the belle of her small hometown in the Deep South and her college to not being able to find a man in Chicago worth spending time with.

Around five, we went back to our rooms and started getting ready for the evening reception. I remember barely being able to move… not so much from the gimlets as from what would prove to be the worst sunburn of my life.

The next night at dinner, there was a card with dozens of signatures. A client got up and made a nice little speech about how kind I was to work on my birthday. And there was a cake–Mona and my husband had arranged for it. It ended up being one of the best birthdays I’ve had.

Within a year, Mona and I were working for other companies, her in Atlanta and me in Chicago. We never saw each other again after she left for Atlanta, but stayed in touch for a while as she moved to New York, found true love, moved back to her hometown, and had a son who left for college last fall. In recent years, we were Facebook and Christmas card friends.

Recently, I found out Mona died in February. The cause doesn’t really matter. She told loved ones she wanted to “ease on out” and didn’t even have a published obituary, which is why I’m not giving her last name or posting a picture with this. That said, I do believe I’ll have a fuzzy navel this weekend in honor of one of the most alive people I’ve ever known, who in my heart will always be thirty and looking totally gorgeous sitting poolside in Rothschild, Wisconsin, in a tailored olive green jacket and skirt.