A good life: The story of Magdalen and Matilda

This week's post is a short story inspired by four things: a quote from Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir An Unquiet Mind (“Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.”); a photo of two young girls (below); the painting titled “Tea” by the astonishing American artist Andrew Kowch (see it here); and a piece by my writing friend Darlene D that she read aloud in one of our "Spark your Writing" sessions.

While writing is a solo act, it is most fun -- and often most productive -- when pursued in the company of generous and willing writers who share their talent and uplift my own efforts in the pursuit of story of every kind. 

The story below is fiction; the core message of loving friendship is not. 

Magdalen and Matilda: A good life

The lifelong friendship between Magdalen and Matilda began in kindergarten and persisted into their old age. The abiding love between them overrode the niggling annoyances that any genuine friendship contains.

Since that first day all those decades ago, they had recognized themselves in each other. They looked quite similar, ate the same lunch of egg salad on white bread with the crusts cut off, and always ensured that their hair ribbon matched their outfit.

Over the course of their long friendship, they continued to look quite similar, continued to eat egg salad on white — though kept the crusts on after they reached culinary maturity in Grade 8, and let their hair go to its natural frizz by the time they had completed their first term of university.

Magdalen pursued art history, while Mathilda chose to study romance languages.

Liberation came in many ways for them — the state of their hair being maybe the most evident external manifestation thereof. Though the day they decided to ditch their formal first names and go public with the familiar forms they used with each other marked another highlight in their liberation: Magda and Tilly announced themselves with these shorter more sassy names one Saturday morning while the gang they routinely met at the local diner was gathered for their usual fare of bad but hot coffee, crispy bacon and endless rounds of well-buttered white toast.

They each liked men and dated widely and, in Tilly’s case, wildly; however, neither ever landed on the perfect match. Magda was less bothered by this than Tilly and, by the time she was 30, she was well into her career, such as it was, and settled in her life with a fair degree of acceptance.

Tilly, on the other hand, put her energy into being the rather energetically bohemian conversationalist she had fashioned herself into. That she could converse with the most eligible of men in one of several languages — French, Spanish and Italian were her favourites — made her both an entertaining dinner companion and an interesting one for she followed the politics of the countries whose languages she studied and spoke.

In what Tilly considered her ‘spare’ time, she gritted her teeth and earned a BEd degree so that she could teach ungrateful junior high students about the joys, in which they were uninterested, of French and Spanish grammar and conversation. She spent several decades gritting her teeth while elucidating the mysteries of French irregular verbs to bigger and bigger classes of less and less interested youngsters. “Why do we need to memorize je suis, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont when we can just use Google translate, Mademoiselle Tilly?” At least they respected her enough to address her with that formality.

Magda accommodated to the lack of success she experienced in the heart-romance department, and, with time, gave herself over to the routine but vital administrative job she had found in the city’s main art gallery. This position brought her into the heart of the local art world, and she had become invaluable to the director and her colleagues not only for her knowledge of art history but for her skill and stamina in researching new ways of bringing art to the gallery’s members and visitors. Not an exhibition was mounted that did not have Magda’s influence evident in its presentation. If she didn’t have power, then she certainly had influence: soft power they call that. And she would take …and wield it for the good of the local arts community.

Every year, the months dragged on — more for Tilly in the classroom than for Magda at her desk, but they both looked equally forward to their summer vacation time, during which Magda always organized a trip to a city somewhere where a gallery and art exhibition awaited them. She was the lead and Tilly happily followed. Though Magda’s love for Andrew Wyeth escaped her. Nonetheless, Tilly went along with whatever if it meant lovely days of wandering and looking and then talking about the experience together with her best friend.
One day, in New York at MOMA, Tilly realized that she was happy. No man to distract her, just the genuine affection she felt for Magda. And that was enough, she realized. Well, that and inspiring art, interesting conversation and good food and drink.

Love is stranger than she had realized. And this — this was enough to make a good life.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo credit: two young girls in front of Dégas statue "The Dancer": photographer unknown. Credit gladly given.