Her example

Molly O’Neill’s memorial service was last Saturday, held at the progressive, seasonal Presbyterian church on Main Street. Maybe 100 people showed up for it—a lot for this tiny town. A half dozen of Molly’s friends and one of her brothers spoke about her. They remembered her via their stories they way I remember her: ambitious, inclusive, generous, demanding, revisionist, gifted.

Rev. Donna Schaper, who presided on Saturday, and whom Molly knew well, described her as “a person on the edge.” She came to that description by telling about the Molly who loved the Presbyterian church here in our town, but rarely came to Sunday service. Sometimes, when Schaper lead the service, after not seeing Molly file in with the congregation, she said she would look up mid-way through and see her, sitting in the back, not necessarily in a pew, scribbling, and that Molly would later message Schaper with: “that was pretty good…here are a few suggestions for how you could make it better.”

Yes, Molly was a person “on the edge” in many ways—despite her big, center-stage presence. She was visionary, always pushing the outside bounds of what was possible, always projecting new ways of thinking and doing. They were her ways, of course, featuring her and enlisting you and your resources, but they were (mostly) good ways. She created new venues, be they restaurants and columns in her early years, or The Good Cause Club, a summer theater production here in town for local kids, or the food writing seminar she operated out of her Main Street house in her late years, culminating each September in the Longhouse Food Revival, a weekend-long cooking and feasting event that brought community together—food writers, bloggers, photographers, stylists and editors, chefs near and far, and the local community, her friends. 

“Feasting” was the message at Molly’s memorial. As told through the Parable of the Great Banquet [Luke: 14: 15-23], and Schaper’s reminder that God wants us to gather, to feast. Though I’m not religious, the reading was an apt reminder: feasting was the way I met Molly eleven years ago when I first showed up as a summer resident on Main Street. Her e-mail—how did she have my e-mail!?—said “come Thursday night to the Big Butts Potluck.” Come I did, and met a dozen or so of the women I still know today: Mame, Cynthia, Katherine, Ginny, another Katherine, to name a few.

Molly, as maddening as she could be at times, was good to me. She welcomed me. She cooked with me when I told her about my love for the Lebanese dishes my mother-in-law was teaching me. She encouraged me in my writing career, and included me at her seasonal parties, workshops and events. When illness overtook her, she went big yet again, embracing the Radical Remission movement and working on her final book, a memoir. Her example is enduring and important to me.

Sitting at Molly’s memorial on Saturday reminded me of another—less famous, but equally important—woman I met here in this out-of-the-way town.

Betty.

Just over a year ago, we lost her.

Our thoughtful, stylish, wry, exacting, impeccable Betty.

Dudley’s loving, generous, creative, supportive Betty.

The week she died last August—after a five-year battle with cancer—I knew one thing for sure. And it’s what I felt at Molly’s memorial last weekend: her example is what I will miss. With Betty, it was her grace and graciousness. Her kindness. Her exquisite blend of private and social. Her radiant example of how to live.

When I think of Betty, and I often do, these are the things I remember her by.

Her rituals: morning cappuccino with Dudley served in lovingly collected drinking bowls. Setting potato chips out with the prosecco when she invited you over for an aperitif. The exquisite ice creams and sorbets she and Dudley made by hand. Always asking me if I had seen the recipe for this or that in Wednesday’s New York Times. Her loyalty to her butcher in the West Village. Her love of specific restaurants: River Café in London, Another Fork in the Road off the Taconic (when it was still open), the Rose Bakery in Paris.

Her preferences: a penchant for white—in her kitchen, her bedroom, her upstairs parlor. The very specific pink that she loved in flowers—notably the geraniums she and Dudley planted in pots outside in the garden each year. It was a pale pink almost whispered in to the petals. It was a pink not unlike the Farrow & Ball paint color she so loved, and used in both her New York City and her upstate house bedroom.

Last spring, when I brought her a bouquet of roses while she convalesced at home in Manhattan, she sent me a message: “Those flowers brought me so much joy. They were the perfect calm, spiritual shade. You totally aced it.” It was immensely gratifying reading those words, and knowing I had made her happy with the flowers.

Her loving what she loved: so many things French, for example. Espadrilles, straw baskets, the Marais district in Paris, Isabelle Marant clothing, the Paris flea markets, the chalky landscapes of the southern French towns that she and Dudley spent many spring seasons visiting.

Her friendships: she was generous, discriminating and considerate—someone who collected your joys and sorrows—and held the thread of your life in her memory, asking you questions that reflected the space she reserved for you, for tending you as her friend. This is a rare quality, and it is consistent with Betty’s example of living well, of living deliberately and sharing that life quietly and steadily, with integrity.

Once, during a crisis of my own, sitting at her morning table over coffee, she shared her story about not speaking all throughout her childhood and adolescence. With the lightest touch, she made the point that she realized she would need to overcome not speaking in order to live a proper life in the world, in order to join the world as a young adult. I still don’t know why she chose not to speak as a child—though I have an idea that it was based on principle. But her story helped me at a time when I needed to hold faith that everything would be okay. Betty was canny that way.

I knew Betty and Molly for a little more than ten years. I wasn’t either of their closest friends, and they were so different from one another—in temperament and habit. But from them both, I learned important lessons about friendship, and community.  

There’s much writing about friendship among women. The exhilaration. The heartbreak. The complications. But the fact is, friendship is always a possibility. Friendship is not always easy, but it is a reason to live.

And losing these two women makes me remember a line from Miranda July’s quirky book of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You:

Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can’t see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees. 

I’m lucky enough to live in a community of people—one thick with remarkable, thoughtful women—who can and are willing to be there for one another. Women with outstretched hands, willing to be a friend, and a good friend, if I’m willing to be one, too. None of them is perfect. All of them have flaws—I’m thinking first and foremost of myself. But to a person, they lead vibrant lives that set a standard in terms of generosity and camaraderie.  

I’d give anything for both Betty and Molly to still be with us. They deserve to be. They each had a lot of feasting left in them. I remember them both in their example of what friendship and community is—and I’ll honor them by living my own example.