Things Change

Esther Cohen

I read a wonderful  and horrifying memoir this summer by Jonathan Rosen called The Best Minds.  The book’s about many things, including friendship.  When I finished the book, I decided I’d find out what happened to my freshman roommate,

We’d lived in a room with four others in a very large building of 4,000 women called the Superdorm in Washington, D.C. at The George Washington University, a big school in a big city.  A big city was where I wanted to be.  I knew I’d live in New York eventually, and thought I should be in another city for four years. I never liked Boston much, and Washington was a good interim step.  The dorm was downtown – in walking distance of pretty much everything.

My freshman friend and I were very different from one another, which may be why we became so close.  Both Jewish, still our families were very different.  Her father was an Army officer who actually supported the Viet Nam war.  Mine had a store in a small Connecticut town,  My father was Talmudic.  Hers was military. She’d grown up in Brookline, an affluent Boston suburb, the third of three children.  She was purposeful, organized, careful, and neat.  She ironed her clothing, She wore shoes that would endure. Her notebooks were organized. She knew what she wanted.

I was a burgeoning hippie, happy with chaos, happy with colors. My first college clothing purchase was a pair of high heeled purple suede boots. I joined SDS, read my poetry in dark coffee shops with Greek names in downtown D.C. , often went out late to hear music. I wanted to read everything, to travel forever, to live without a plan.

Even so, we were inseparable – she with her clarity, me with my curiosity.Oddly enough, she with all her notebooks and plans dropped out of school after our freshman year.  It was hard to say why.

She met someone, a likable man with ambitions of his own.  The three of us became friends.  He was funny, and  open. They married very young.  He went to medical school and became a psychiatrist.  She became a successful journalist.  They each did well, but were unhappy and eventually divorced.

I did not see either of them for many years. I heard through friends that they had both remarried.

In the pandemic, her ex-husband found me on the telephone.  He just called one day, the way old friends sometimes do, and we talked for hours about all the years gone by.  He told me about his wife (he’s happy), their two grown children, all the work he’d tried to do.  He liked his life, his work, seemed generally happy with his choices.   Happy enough to be an older man.  I asked him about my old college roommate.  What was she like now?  She’s a different person is pretty much all he said.

This summer I found my old roommate on social media, A successful journalist, she posts very often.  I messaged her (I’ve never messaged anyone) and asked her the same question I’d asked her ex.  What would you say about your life?  She wrote right back and all she said was this:  I’m a different person now.