Roommates, the Risks and Rewards

When my cousin Donna slept over my house in Linden for the weekend, we stayed awake through the night, giggling, telling secrets, pretending we were movie stars. When I slept over her house in Elizabeth, we did the same. Neither of us had sisters, and anyway, sometimes cousins get along better than siblings.

On the other side of my family, my mom’s, I was one of seventeen cousins. All of us visited our grandparents at their house in Glen Cove, Long Island throughout the summer. Only one room had an air conditioner—my grandparents’ bedroom. Grandma spread blankets all over the carpet and handed out pillows to the children of various ages and both genders.

To this day, we all remember the long afternoons at J. Pierpont Morgan Beach and the cool nights in the luxurious air-conditioning, giving no thought to our otherwise spartan accommodations.

The more cousins, the better.

After that, rooming with others became a more serious, even life-changing, experience.

COLLEGE DAYS—RISKY BUSINESS:

🛏 🛏 In late summer of ‘62, each incoming Douglass College freshman received a letter with the name and address of her new roommate. I wrote to Elayne (not her real name) telling her about myself and asking what colors she liked, as the tradition was to buy matching bedspreads, curtains, and scatter rugs. She answered with a detailed letter in kind, on flowered stationery in neatly rounded script. This was promising.

Well, I hardly ever saw her. She met a boy on the Rutgers campus and managed to sneak into his dorm and spend the night, frequently. Silly me, I thought we came to college to learn wonderful things, not to you know what.

I never saw Elayne read her assignments or write papers, but before midterms and exams she’d pull an all-nighter. I think she read Janson’s History of Art, from primitive through the Italian Renaissance, in one night and aced it. She left school after first year, taking her brilliant photographic mind with her.

I was assigned a new roommate for sophomore year, Diane. We each had different bedspreads from our previous rooms, but that was okay. She majored in Russian and moved into the Russian House the following year—and I was off to yet another roommate experience with Amanda (not her real name).

I’ll just say that our concept of allowing dirty laundry to accumulate through the semester and cover every surface of the room differed dramatically.

For senior year, I cashed in on my status as an upperclassman and found an apartment off campus in which to study in peace and keep nicely organized.

ON TO NEW FRONTIERS:

👩🏻‍🎓 After graduation in 1966 and one year of employment in a federal government office in Newark, I decided to flee New Jersey. My Aunt Jean took a watercolor class at a Berkshires resort and chatted with the young instructor, an art student in Boston who needed a roommate for her Beacon Hill apartment. Bingo, it was arranged.

Life moved quickly as the sixties unfolded, with assassinations, anti-war protest, the sexual revolution, the Beatles, drug culture, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation. I lost touch with Diane, the only college roommate that I considered to be a friend.

I arrived in Boston in the fall of ‘67. My little cousin Sherry from Brookline came by for a visit with a stray black and gray tiger kitten. I decided to keep him, my first cat ever, and named him Columbus.

Tina’s (not her real name) boyfriend, a Swiss cellist, stayed in our apartment for weeks at a time between his European concert tours. Julian (not his real name) practiced his cello in his fine burgundy silk bathrobe and leather slippers, Columbus the Cat curled up at his feet. A charming tableau.

On New Year’s Eve, Tina and I stopped in at the Open House for apartment residents. She had invited a gentleman whom she had met at the cafe where she worked, and was occasionally baby-sitting for his two little boys. Eventually, Paul and I started to go out off and on, and after I finished law school, we were married. I have nothing but gratitude  for my gregarious Aunt Jean and roommate Tina for bringing him into my life.

Update: Tina and I did not stay in touch after leaving Boston. Unbeknownst to me, Tina had relocated to Japan. If I had wanted to find her, it would have ben impossible in the days before internet and facebook, as she had a common last name and I had no idea where she might be. Recently (in 2023) by an amazing coincidence, we discovered each other through an online haiku group. It was our respective destiny to become published haiku poets and find each other at this point in our lives. We had shared an important time –  our coming of age years as young women – and it was a joy to renew our connection.

REAPING THE REWARDS:

Fast forward more than forty years later, when my Douglass roomie Diane and I discovered through Facebook that we both still lived in the Boston area. She had attended Tufts Medical School while I went to BC Law, then we lost track of each other to focus on our respective careers and families.

Now we are reunited for good. Diane invites me to stay at her summer place in Maine and we spend the night again, recalling our college days but most importantly, renewing ties from formative years that never really died, connecting at a time when we can support each other in a renewed and deeper friendship.

To me, she looks no different than when she was a college girl, with her carrot-red hair and a sparkle in her eyes, seriousness and effervescence in one adorable package.

We shared an important experience in our coming-of-age years. We will always see the college girl in each other.

If I didn’t have serial roommates in college and after, I wouldn’t have tales to tell—many of which I have censored—nor would I have the friendship with Diane that enriches my life now.

🎨 If my aunt hadn’t taken the art class and Tina hadn’t mentioned that she needed a roommate, I cannot imagine the alternative arc my life would have taken. I would have moved to Boston, but then what?

I don’t need to know. Looking back, I accept with gratitude that what happened in my life then, and what is happening now, is the way it was meant to be.