An e-mail exchange with Mark, back on January 26, 2006:
(no subject)
from: Mark Gresham <megresham@****>
to: Amanda Pape <****@gmail.com>
date: Thu, Jan 26, 2006, 7:33 PM
I enjoyed our visit. I hope that your job is going well.
As I recall, you sometime were compulsive about things, and that is not good for you. I suggest that you take the time to do something that is completely useless, but fun.
Let me know if I can help.
Mark
from: Amanda Pape <****@gmail.com>
to: Mark Gresham <megresham@****>
date: Thu, Jan 26, 2006, 10:00 PM
Being compulsive* can be a positive when there's a lot to get done, but you are right, overall it's not good. I try to take at least a little time every day to be fun and useless. Like tonight - watched the second period of the Stars hockey game with my cousin, even though I'm not a big hockey fan (or TV fan either for that matter). In fact I don't watch TV unless it's with someone else, making it a social event.
"Let me know if I can help" - that brings back some memories! I do remember spending a lot of completely useless but incredibly fun hours with you! What do you have in mind? ;0
I'm trying to get all the stuff I HAVE to do out of the way to free up some more time for fun later (particularly as spring approaches). Multitasking helps too - such as tonight, worked out for over an hour on the elliptical trainer as I had a very dry 32-page article to read [for a library school class]. Reading it any other way would have put me to sleep.
* on the other hand, I suppose dropping in on you Monday WOULD be considered a bit compulsive. I figured you were just as curious as I was about how the other had changed...and hadn't. A lot hadn't, and that was good.
A
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It had been about 11 years since Mark and I had last seen each other in person. I had moved to the Seattle area in October 1984; he moved to California sometime between January 11 and February 9, 1994, after retiring in Grand Prairie, Texas, the previous year. We'd kept in touch over the years (he even saved a Christmas card and another letter I'd written to him in 1993, as well as a Christmas card and e-mails in 2003 and 2004).
Mark's parents had lived since 1960 in Bremerton, Washington, which is a ferry ride away across Puget Sound from the Seattle area. His father died in December 1990 and his mother in November 1994, and in early 1995, he gave me a call to let me know he'd be in Bremerton to prepare his parents' home to put on the market. He suggested that we meet for lunch along the waterfront in downtown Seattle (I lived in Lynnwood, a suburb to the north, at that time), as he could take a ferry over from Bremerton.
I do remember that we ate at Ivar's Pier 54 Fish Bar just north of the ferry landing. I probably had clam chowder. I remember what I was wearing - a nondescript, rather shapeless denim jumper (long gone) over a brown short-sleeve scoop-neck top (still have), so it must have been a warmer day - spring, rather than winter. I don't remember the exact date, other than that my kids were in school (so before the end of classes in late June - besides, his parents' house sold on August 30, 1995).
I do have a clue as to the date from a pocket calendar I still have from that year (see image below; click on it to view it larger). I had a note to "Call Mark Gresham" on Friday, May 12 (written on the Saturday, May 13 box, because there was too much stuff already written in Friday's box). My son was in third grade and my daughter was in kindergarten, which met all day every Monday and Wednesday and every other Friday. If I had to make a bet, I'd say we probably had lunch on Monday, May 15, because the kids were in a testing period (so I wouldn't be volunteering in their classrooms), and the only thing I had on my calendar that day was a workout (which I'd either skip or do very early). I was a volunteer extraordinaire and had a rather busy calendar for a stay-at-home mom.
Above: Part of my May 1995, with a note to "Call Mark Gresham" circled.
Of course, back then, nobody had cell phones or digital cameras, and film (and processing) wasn't cheap. I didn't take my camera with me (and Mark did not have his either), so there are no photos from that day. I do remember thinking Mark looked about the same as in October 1984, when I'd last seen him, except for some gray in his hair. And the only real change in the next eleven years, from 1995 to 2006, was that now that hair was white.
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