By Peggy Sturdivant

It is not my imagination that the month of May, especially in Ballard, explodes with too many activities. The grand finale combination of flowering bushes and Syttende Mai is stressful enough in Ballard; the addition of boomtown construction equals relentless.

My car resembles a book mobile as I collect for the Literacy Council of Seattle book sale on June 6th. It’s also a traveling road show as I tote banners, tri-folds (and soon a wheelbarrow for the parade) as Seattle Green Spaces Coalition member. By the front door is a stack of egg cartons to deliver along with ten pounds of organic butter to a neighbor. The heirloom tomatoes that I bought at last week’s Abundant Greens sale still need to be planted.

Oh May! Our new Ballard library is 10 years old, to the day on May 14, 2015. The 17th of May Parade will be bigger than ever, both in participants and crowds. Then there’s the return of the King of Norway to Ballard. Which is why I was beneath the Ballard Bell during a trial ringing in advance of the King’s visit on Friday, May 22nd. Who knew we’d have to deliver on our Department of Neighborhood’s grant promise to ring for visiting nobility?

Yet there was another date that had been on my calendar for months, between Mother’s Day and the “Don’t Listen to Your Mother” reading I was organizing for May 19th. My friend Janice P. Nimura was going to be in town, from New York City, for two events for her just released non-fiction book, Daughters of the Samurai.

I was 18 years old when I responded to a classified in the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette for a part-time au pair. Then Janice Pomerance was a strangely adult 8-year old with more factual information already on file than I have today. I tried to stay ahead of her by appealing to her imagination. We already shared a love of libraries and reading. In my version of our history I give myself credit for turning a budding scientist into an English major. My version is pure myth.

That classified advertisement in 1979 began a relationship that now includes my daughter and Janice’s children, as well as our parents. We live on different coasts, although her husband grew up in Seattle. The ten-year age difference varies in its manifestations, but since meeting the little girl with tight braids I have always felt a need to catch up with her in wisdom.

Without stopping to unload my car and with obligations beating in my head as persistently as the bell I went to pick up Janice from a friend’s house and accompany her to her book event at Eagle Harbor Books in Winslow. It would be a long day away from home.

“Everything on this trip has worked out so well,” Janice said of her West Coast book tour, the pronouncement proving fateful. We visited another independent bookstore, then parked easily and walked straight onto the Bainbridge ferry. I began to relax about the stress of venturing so far from Ballard, the parade prep, the tomatoes, the need to get Janice off Bainbridge and to the airport in time for her overnight flight. It was a beautiful day for a ferry crossing. We were mid-way when Janice realized that she’d booked her flight home for the wrong day.

Janice began a desperate and futile attempt to reach Travelocity, work with US Airways and consider options while our blood sugar dropped, the ferry landed and she pictured her 10-year old son bursting into tears if she was delayed. The afternoon had completely changed yet Winslow was still charming, chairs were being set up for her talk at Eagle Harbor Book Company, her phone was chirping as her husband in New York began trying to work miracles. The woman who’d seemed a glamorous stranger the night before at the podium became a friend in distress. Because the realization that you yourself have screwed up something like a plane ticket brings up so many other issues. We immediately question our overall competence, as individual, parent, daughter, spouse, adult. We all carry baggage even when we’re not checking a bag.

We gulped food in a courtyard as a woman counted in German for three children, “Eins, zwei, drei…” in the hide-and-seek of toddlers; they were hidden when they covered their own eyes. A one-way ticket on another airline was booked. We had time to compose ourselves, browsing Eagle Harbor’s shelves. The seats for Janice’s talk filled and I listened again as Janice revealed an untold part of history, three Japanese girls sent to be educated in America and return to enlighten 19th century Japan. The audience was rapt.

As we waited for the slightly delayed ferry Janice split a Fran’s chocolate and gave me half. We watched almost lazily as the 1st Avenue South Bridge went up, oh so slowly. We had just spent longer in one another’s company than in the last 24 years. Internal drama was over. Over the course of eight hours we had alternated roles, as though revisiting all the iterations of our 36-year relationship. Janice lifted her bag from the back of my car at the airport drive. Then I quietly watched this incredibly accomplished woman, who will always be young to me, step to the other side of the automatic doors.

To contact Peggy email her at peggy@peggysturdivant.com