Friends of the Upper West Side: An Occasional Series About the Friendships of Upper West Siders

Editor’s Note: Maintaining childhood friendships can be hard, but what a special place in our hearts early friends can hold if we can hold onto them. I know because one of my closest childhood friends and I took a 30-year hiatus before reuniting in old age.

Do you have a story about friendship you’d like to share? At least one of the friends (counting you) must be an Upper West Sider in this new occasional series, meaning we’ll post interesting stories as often as they come in. Send your stories (750 words) to info@westsiderag.com with the subject line: Friends of the Upper West Side.

By Carol Tannenhauser

Santa Monica, California, is the kind of place that can make New Yorkers question their life choices. It is idyllic: palm trees and cacti, sand and waves, mountains and cliffs, hills and hiking trails I’ve only heard about.

I just spent three days in Santa Monica with my oldest friend. We met when we were 15, counselors-in-training at a rundown summer camp in the Catskills, and ended up going through college together. It was the mid-1960s. She was six months older than me, but a year ahead in school and miles ahead in maturity. She taught me how to smoke cigarettes, turned me on to marijuana, and later, after we both moved to New York City upon graduation, introduced me to my then-future, now-current husband (one and the same).

Then something happened that I just don’t remember. All I can imagine is that I was completely lost in my first experience of true love.

At 23, I married the guy I met in my friend’s apartment. Right after the wedding, she left for California. (She remembers calling me from a phone booth on the side of the highway crying, she says.) By the time I was 30, I had two kids and, then, like a flash, another 30-plus years passed and my friend and I had no further contact at all. We had started out together as teens and young adults, but missed the entire middle of our lives – the young married and parenting parts, the children growing up.

Then, when we were both 65, we were brought together by my daughter, who was creating a book of photos and remembrances from our friends for her father’s 70th birthday. She had heard of this woman who had introduced her parents and somehow found and contacted her, asking for a contribution to the book, which my friend sent. That was a decade ago and we have picked up where we left off via marathon phone conversations. In one of those conversations, she told me that what had happened between us was that I had “dumped” her.

I was horrified. Was love really blind to all but the newly found other? It was possible, and so I decided to go out to California and visit her, by myself, to prove how important she is to me and how sorry I am for hurting her in the past. Whether I dumped her or not didn’t matter; she felt dumped and even that was enough to make me cringe.

In-person is a very different experience from a phone conversation. She caught me staring at her at one point and asked what I was looking at. We are 75 now. I was looking at my bunkmate, my sorority sister, old. I was looking at a stranger, as I do every time I catch a glimpse of my gray hair or my hanging neck in a passing mirror. We are two old ladies, getting to know each other all over again.

As for Santa Monica, my friend loves it with the kind of fervor and fierce pride I feel for the Upper West Side. It is her place, as this is mine. When I got home, I was surprised at how happy I was to be here. I immediately leashed up my newly returned golden retriever and headed to Central Park, my version of paradise. Cars were whizzing by on Central Park West, horns were honking, bikes seemed to be coming from every direction. Babies in strollers, children on scooters, tourists with maps speaking different languages, all crossed the avenue with me….carefully! I felt a surge of adrenaline — or was it joy? I was literally singing a happy tune as I entered the park.

Then it rained for three days and three nights straight. And even that did not dampen my renewed love of home.

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