Portrait of a Girl in Glass

Titanium is more like it. Oh, she says she's fragile, but my friend Stephanie is as tough as they come. In a good way. God knows, she's been something like my right arm for nearly twenty years. She's seen me through weddings, births, deaths and God knows how many moves. She's even lived with me, poor child!

I had dinner with her last week, and realized that she's unique among my friends, in that she's stayed in my life the longest. Oh, I've known people longer, but they've not been as consistently there in my purview as she's been. Not anybody's fault you understand, its just the way life happens. I've been lucky with her. She has a clear eye, and in my moods and tempers she can see clearly what the root of a problem is. She smears me intellectually, which is rather irritating, as I'm used to being thought of as rather bright. But she's so self-effacing about it, that you sit there, too much in awe of her powerful mind to really be irritated at all. She's an actress, she's a playwright, she decided to take up technical writing, and now works (in her own office) as a proposal writer, she's even had her own business for heaven's sake! THIS is not a fragile girl! She's saved me countless times with dinners, loans, pep-talks, clothing - I'm serious! One shirt she bought me for my birthday got me laid more times than Mae West in BELLE OF THE NINETIES.

AND she cooks. Didn't I tell you? OHMYGAWD. For my birthday, in addition to HOSTING the party herself (on a night where she found out that night that she had to be at work EARLY the next day) she decided she was going to make me (from scratch) a 3 layer lemon cake. She's never baked before. She didn't even have baking stuff! Its a testimony to how good it was that I ate HALF the cake, and I don't even LIKE lemon cakes ordinarily. THIS ONE I LOVED. I would have ate more except that I passed out from too many martinis.

Oh I don't know, I could go on, but she'll probably kill me just for writing THIS much about her. I've known her since university, and I've watched her ups and downs, and I've seen her give one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen any actress anywhere, give. Like all of us, she's had her rough times in life, but she's persevered and triumphed and is one of the funniest women I know. She has a beautiful home of her own, two gorgeous cats and one of the most generous spirits I've ever seen. What else can I say? She's one of those people that you know will be there holding your hand at the end of the ride. For all that she's an everyday ordinary woman, Stephanie reminds me of so many extraordinary characters I've read and adored in so many of my favourite books, Claire, the omniscient best friend in Joe Keenan's hilarious novels, Aurora Greenway the hilarious and outrageous transplanted Boston widow from Terms of Endearment, and fragile Laura Wingfield, from the Glass Menageries. Its from that play that I first heard the phrase, Blue Roses, and I never forgot it. It was meant for Laura, but when I hear it, I think of Stephanie; a heroic rare flower in a field of common place Forget-me-nots.