I met Mary Anne Hilker in 1980, almost forty years ago. We began as colleagues on a three-year grant to study child support enforcement. We shared an office, as well as the hard work of carrying out the overblown, poorly-designed research. In an organization dominated by men we shared outrage and laughter, as well as stories of her marriage and my ceaseless honey-hunt. In the course of our long friendship we have shared a great deal more.

When my son was twelve he went with my boyfriend on a weekend fishing trip in the Gulf. In the middle of the first night the boat began to leak, and my son and the four men spent the next ninety hours clinging to the overturned boat, without food or water, subject to rain, lightning and the merciless sun. Shortly before the Coast Guard helicopter rescued them on Tuesday evening, one man died. Meanwhile, my own weekend was carefree; my ordeal didn’t begin until their failure to return on Monday night. (read Mother/Ocean, my poem about the accident. https://elizabethmccullochauthor.com/?s=Mother%2FOcean )

My memories of that time are mercifully fragmented and confused. The small hospital in Crystal River was overwhelmed by four victims at once. Recently Mary Anne reminded me, as we reminisced about nasty motels we had known, that she had stayed with me in Crystal River until my boyfriend was discharged from the hospital, in a motel that earned the Nastiness Blue Ribbon.

Mary Anne and Larry didn’t have children. There is an unbridgeable chasm of understanding between people with children and people without. I’ll never forget, when I was complaining about some outrageous prank by my then 16-year-old son, how Mary Anne asked why I didn’t just kick him out. She understands now. In their early fifties the Hilkers became foster parents and took in two adorable and accident-prone little boys. Then they got an eight-year-old boy, followed a year later by his newborn sister. The agency sent the boy elsewhere, but the Hilkers adopted the girl a year later. That was eighteen years ago.

Meanwhile, my own former foster daughter had a baby, who lived with us at intervals until we adopted her at age seven. The two girls consider themselves sisters; as my granddaughter Amanda says, “She’s known me since I was born.” I can see them, ages four and two, toasting marshmallows in the fireplace, covered with white goo, particularly fetching on Amanda’s dark skin. I see them parading around the living room, Ariel in her mermaid costume, Amanda in a yellow Cinderella dress. Sharing a cabin at Roosevelt State Park in Georgia, roller skating around the lake, marshmallows again at the campfire.

Squabbling, estranged, coming back together closer than ever. And I see me and Mary Anne over the years sitting in our special corner with glasses of wine, sharing the obsessive joys and worries of parenthood. Schools. Bullying. Boys. Our hopes and fears for their futures.

We didn’t only share troubles. We traveled for pleasure, to New York and New Orleans, Denmark and England. In London and Bath we wandered through gardens and recalled together all our favorite English novels. On the city bus in Copenhagen we discovered that, contrary to all the guidebooks, not everybody in Denmark speaks English. In our little B and B, with our internal clocks askew, Mary Anne had to ask me at 2AM to please stop humming. We took the train ferry to Aarhus, and left our train below to sit on the deck, enjoying the breeze while I sipped aquavit, which we had discovered in Tivoli Gardens.  Mary Anne went on ahead, but when I returned below as the boat docked there were THREE trains, and I had a tipsy time finding our train, our compartment, and Mary Anne, who was wondering if she’d ever see me again.

 

In New York we stayed with my sister Luli, in her cramped third-floor apartment on Eighth Avenue and Fourteen Street at the edge of the Village. Delicious food, long walks, hilarious, intimate talks. I was a little jealous of the rapidly-growing friendship between Mary Anne and Luli – the three year old in me cried, “She’s MY friend.”

Nevertheless, when Luli visited me in Gainesville I would arrange visits for just the two of them . And there was the memorable occasion when Luli, Joe and I lunched at the Hilkers’ with the two adorable boys. The three-year-old finished his slice of pizza and promptly threw up what seemed like a quart of vomit all over the food. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Luli, who had always proclaimed her aversion to children. Mary Anne and I still laugh about the look on her face.

My long honey-hunt finally came to an end when I met Joe, and after four years we married. Our two families gathered the night before the ceremony at Mary Anne and Larry’s, in the back garden – there are few places lovelier than a Florida garden in October. Mary Anne and Luli prepared numerous side dishes and desserts, and we celebrated and feasted on burgers and hot dogs grilled by my nephews, two bushels of oysters, Mary Anne’s salads, and Luli’s desserts.

Mary Anne and I usually exchange birthday and Christmas gifts. She has given me memorable T-shirts, which I reluctantly discard when they are faded and torn.

At Christmas I usually make her a tin of pecan brittle.  She shares it with her family, but keeps a secret stash for herself. Sometimes we give books or notecards. Luli drew wonderful notecards. She hoped to sell them and make her fortune, or at least enough to support her cats. I bought them, and her friends bought them, but as with most creative enterprises, income was less than outgo, and she was left with an accordion file full of samples, which she generously shared with me in her last year. Now Mary Anne and I each have a collection. We both find it almost impossible to send them off, as there will never be any more.

The hardest part of aging is the relentless succession of losses. Mary Anne’s sister died. My brother died. Her mother died. Luli died. While Mary Anne keeps her troubles to herself and refers to them only glancingly, she is my confidante, and though I come from a long line of stiff-upper-lippers, at times I have fled to her garden or our corner in the living room and poured out my woes. I don’t think I was much comfort to her as her family dwindled, but she sustained me through the months of Luli’s dying.

Like me, Luli was a writer, and we cheered each other on. She had instant success with her first book, a lyrical story of a young girl who finds a glowing egg in Central Park. { Luli’s book https://www.amazon.com/Falcons-Egg-Luli-Gray/dp/0395711282 } She found an agent on her first try and, shortly after, a publisher, and the book was a Newbery Notable. She dedicated it to me, “For my sister Elizabeth McCulloch, who led the way.”

Mary Anne read the original version of my first novel, Dreaming the Marsh. She loved it, though she dismissed one character as a stereotype: another Black woman who cooks and says wise things. I was appalled and amused; that character has grown considerably since then. I waited thirty years for the novel to be published, and thirty years to show Mary Anne the dedication, “To Mary Anne Hilker, friend and first reader.” I kept my secret all those years, and when the advance readers’ copies arrived, I found Mary Anne in her garden, and pulled the book from my purse. She was as thrilled and I was as happy as I had always known we would be.

Mary Anne is a voracious reader, and a gifted gardener. Now retired, with her daughter grown, she can focus on books and the garden. She also volunteers at the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings homestead in Cross Creek, dressing in a 1940’s housedress, and taking small groups through the house and around the garden and orange grove, sharing everything she knows. She knows a great deal, as she has read everything there is to be read about the author and her works.

Rawlings, though a non-native, wrote about Florida as well as any of the greats. She shared the prejudices of her era, as I surely share the prejudices of mine, but she is part of this state’s literary story. Her very modest cracker house, with the separate kitchen, is arranged as it was. The front porch is set up for her writing, typewriter on the table, chair facing out so she could see the occasional neighbor go by on County Road 325 and smell the tea olive shrubs by the door. Only the glass of bourbon is missing.

Recently Mary Anne called to tell me that the park ranger at the homestead wanted to meet me, and arrange a reading after my book is published. There may be more thrilling news to come, but I can’t imagine what it would be – a Nobel, perhaps?

The house itself is not accessible – even if they put ramps at the entrances, the narrow doorways and passages won’t accommodate a wheelchair. But the grounds and barn are accessible. That’s where the docents give their talks, and that’s where I will be speaking.

Mary Anne and I went out to meet with the ranger, Geoff Gates, and the park manager, Scott Spaulding. We were all enthusiastic – Rawlings wanted her house to be a center for writers, not just a museum, and they had long sought a way to begin that project. As for me, I feel I am being welcomed into the long tradition of writers who celebrate Florida – its beauty and natural wonders, its peculiarities, and the ordinary people who inhabit this extraordinary place.

After the long talk about plans and possibilities, the two old friends had to celebrate, and Mary Anne knew just the place. In Citra, hidden away inside Grand Lake, a golf resort of mobile homes and trailers, overlooking Orange Lake,  is The Eagle’s Nest. You would never know about it unless you already knew about it.

The menu is ordinary – fried fish, burgers, salads – but everything is perfectly prepared. I have long sought the perfect onion ring, and I found it here. The collards are as good as they get. (I love greens.)  We ate too much, talked about everything, sat a long time looking out over the lake. It was our first expedition together in many years. We were celebrating my book – Mary Anne is as excited about it as I – but more than that, we were celebrating our long love and friendship.