Memories of Karen

by Martha Hanitchak

A memory I cherish of Karen Guy senior year: a warm spring day...our driving around in her parents' car Baby, a retired Checker Cab...up into the Project...listening to "Groovin' on a Sunday Afternoon" on the radio...taking in the glorious sight of new apple blossoms: all was right with the world that day.

Though we had known each other since the beginning of that school year, sitting next to each other in homeroom and Spanish, a much deeper connection started one day in study hall. I was reading James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, for the second or third time. I pointed out a passage I thought she could well-appreciate. She read it: took a pen out of her purse: and wrote in my book. She told me later that my eyes had bulged. I looked at what she had written: in ink. Three simple exclamation points. I smiled at the perfection of it.

That year she told me of this wonderful book: The Hobbit. My love of Tolkien began. I shared the book with my father, so beginning his own love of Tolkien. So many, many thanks to Karen.....

She introduced me to my now favorite tea, lapsang souchong: and the full poetry of China. She loved Chinese poetry, I loved Japanese: we shared the two. She loved ancient Roman culture, I loved Greek: again we shared.

Another image of pure delight: our skipping along down the halls of Shoppingtown: barefoot.

Once in college---she at Albany, I at Binghamton---we visited each other frequently. Freshman year I got quite drunk on wine--one glass! (could there ever really have been such an innocent time??)---sitting in her dorm room. It became one of her favorite stories to tell.

After she got her BA in comparative lit, she soon got, in the outskirts of Philadelphia, one of her favorite--if not the favorite--jobs: head herdsperson on an organic dairy farm. (She once set me to work pushing a huge broom to push away the droppings of many many cows along one aisle of the barn.) She got so she was lifting hundred pound sacks of feed with not that much effort. The animals, the outdoors, the physical satisfactions of the work: she so loved it all!

We took trips together: once from Albany to Cape Cod : via Philadelphia. A number of times to Tanglewood. And she especially loved to see the NYC Ballet when they were at Saratoga.

Eventually we lost contact, as so often happens. But what she added to my life has ever remained.

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Memories of Karen

by Richard Lavallee

I had just returned from Germany in time to start Senior year. My head was swimming with all of the things I had experienced over there, I was still thinking in German and trying to re-adjust to America and school. I didn't pay much attention to the new girl sitting on the school bus next to Bev Dickson. I had taken this same school bus route since kindergarten, now I was finally a Senior so I was top gun on the bus. I admit , I was strutting. I think Bev and Karen were taking it all in, there might have been a little bit of giggling going on. Was I more of a fool for remaining aloof to these beauties, or was I protecting myself from two heartbreakers?

Karen was in the honors English class,she always sat in the second row. I would always be last in so I would have to walk in front of her to sit down in the front row. Sometimes she would smile at me. I liked that. I didn't really think about her until the night of the Talent Show. Karen and I were helping backstage with some other kids. She was wearing pigtails. Her blond hair was really cute in pigtails. We both stayed late after the talent show. We found ourselves alone, and I suddenly noticed her, and I found her irresistible. Her pretty eyes were inviting me to kiss her, and I did.

It was like falling into a dreamworld with Karen. She managed to keep me out of sight of her parents, and I pretended that I was going out to shoot carp with my bow and arrow, my hip boots on like a pirate, I would hike over the fields and down the railroad track to see her. The snow was just melting off the fields , I was the hunter in my woods, and Karen was the golden maid in the castle. She compared me to the gardener in Lady Chatterly's Lover. No one had ever given me a literary-referenced compliment before. Karen was wise in love, generous and gentle with my fragile young man's ego.

There are many things a girl can do when a boy is dancing with her and he softly sings a favorite song in her ear. Most of them have a great danger of making the boy feel foolish. But Karen did the one perfect thing. She pulled me in a little closer, and turned her head almost imperceptibly, to let me kiss her ear as I sang my song to her.

But the other part of the dream was like waking up at the wheel of a Formula One race car going 200 miles an hour. Exhilirating, breathtaking - but one slip,one miscalculation, and you're dead. And I had had too many crashes lately to risk another one. So I just took my foot off the accelerator and let it coast to a stop. I got out and walked away from my beautiful dream. I lost my nerve. A woman of her intelligence,sensitivity,and vulnerability required someone with a much more refined sensibility. I didn't measure up.

My limited abilities don't allow me to describe Karen without sounding like a bunch of cliches. She was so beautiful, so brilliant, so humorous. I can't describe how good it was for me to be close to Karen. No woman has ever made me feel as loved or as desired as Karen made me feel. No woman has ever paid me a nicer compliment as I received from her.

I was heartbroken to hear of Karen's passing. When you love someone, no matter how brief the time you had together, you never stop loving them. I was so fortunate to have had those hours with her, and I am so grateful that in our short time together , nor ever after, was there ever an unkind word between us.

Rest easy now, my darling girl.

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