First, there are my parents.
. My friends were starting to lose their parents, and I thanked God everyday for the blessing of my parents continued health. They had met when my English father had been posted to the Pentagon to work as one of the liaisons between the Royal and the US Navy. Phillip fell in love with my Irish-American mother Siobhan at an Embassy party celebrating the Queen's birthday. Though neither side of the family had been thrilled at the prospect of the other's background (read in minor titled, upper-class British vs. spunky self-made Irish American), they realized that at thirty-eight, both Phillip and Siobhan knew their own minds. My unexpected arrival a year after their marriage had caused my Grammy Fee to exclaim "Saints preserve us, miracles really do happen." Unfortunately as a peace offering, I had been saddled with my grandmother's names. While Fiona was not so horrid, Phillipa was definitely not a common name here in the States or in England for that matter since around 1910. Pippa had been settled on as a reasonable nickname, but it had been a big no fun being known as "the girl named Phil" in junior high, and my thick glasses hadn't helped. Almost thirty-one years later they were still madly in love, and after my father's second retirement from his civilian job in DC, they had settled full time at the beach, and spent a good deal of their time traveling. From my mother, I inherited my "Black Irish" coloring of almost black hair that shone with auburn highlights in the sun, blue eyes, and fair, freckled skin. From my father I inherited a love of the sea, sailing, history, and reading. The biggest puzzler in my family was how I ended up being only five feet tall, when my parents are both of above average height
Number two, Annie. How many people can say their best friend since their junior year of high school has turned out to be more of a sister than a friend?
Annie and I had been there for each other since the day we met. We're both military brats, with Annie's father reaching the rank of General in the Air Force. Neither of us had been in the popular clique, but we both were well liked and straight A students. I coxed the men's eight in crew and sang in the choir, while Annie played the piano and was a demon field hockey player. After high school, we had gone our separate ways, me to William and Mary to pursue my dream of becoming a history teacher, and Annie to Johns Hopkins for pre-med. We reunited when Annie was accepted to Georgetown for Medical School, and I started my first teaching job. Shortly before we graduated from college, Annie inherited her Grandmother's Old Towne Alexandria town house, and she invited me to come live with her. This comfortable arrangement had continued as Annie started her pediatrics' residency and neonatology fellowship at the Children's National Medical Center. Annie was everything I wasn't: tall, red hair that always did what she wanted it to, brown-eyed, tan, with a figure to die for. She also had above-average intelligence and a stingingly dry wit.
Naturally, Annie had come to my rescue when I discovered what color panties my fiancé's secretary wore. As a true friend, she realized the situation called for an enormous amount of both alcohol and bad country cheating songs. She bundled me into her car and took me home, where we proceeded to get spectacularly drunk on Annie's famously lethal Manhattans. By the end of the evening, she even managed to help me find the humor in the situation by saying, "Pipster, did you expect any other outcome when you agreed to marry a man named Dick?"
"Annster, the thing that really bothers me is the absolute ordinariness of his unfaithfulness. I can admit now I knew how deadly dull he was, and he couldn't kiss worth a damn, but my god, couldn't he have shown more flash in his indiscretion. If I wrote this as a story for Mrs. Baldwin's journalism class, she would have taken out her purple pen and written trite all over it!" This sent us both into drunken giggles at the memory of our adventures on the high school paper. Giggles turned into drunken hiccups, and we decided that bed would be the best place for us. Neither of us was ready to face the next morning until it was afternoon, but Annie figured it was her off-call weekend, and what are best friends for anyhow? I had done the same for her when her college boyfriend dropped her because he wanted a woman whose career would come second to his. He then proceeded to marry the most insipid woman we knew whose only dream was to take care of him, stand by his side and stare adoringly at public functions and produce the five children he hoped to have. Last time I'd run into them at a Junior League fundraiser, he was balding and she was as whiny as ever!
My third blessing was my job, and the friends that came with it.
When I graduated from W & M, I was able to find a job teaching 7
th
grade Social Studies. I know that most people think I'm certifiable when I say I like teaching 12 and 13 year olds, but I really do. One minute they are all-knowing sophisticates, and the next minute they are telling you about the latest episode of Hannah Montana. It also helps that the curriculum is World History from the Exploration of the New World to current times. How could you not love this part of history with its crazy dictators, wars, plagues, and epidemics? My students were a mix of the upper crust of Northern Virginia society, whose parents know me as the granddaughter of the famous society hostess Lady Phillipa, and immigrant kids from the low economic neighborhoods. One hundred and seventy-five days out of one hundred and eighty, I looked forward to getting out of bed and going to work. On those other five days, I could count on my 7
