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| Purple Rose for Our Theatre Queen |
Wild, funny, big-hearted, snarky, wonderful crazy woman. We met in high school backstage. One of the first things she did for me was wrangle a furious girlfriend who just found out the guy who'd started dating me had stopped dating her. Opening night, minutes before curtain up, that girl was going to deck me. The show must go on! Cheryl Ann did big deeds for people and spurned gratitude, but wow – cross her, and she'd take you out at the knees. She always loved her people wholeheartedly.
Many years later we were roomies in my Detroit house we called The House For Women on Their Way to Do Something Else. She would hear of a woman who could use a room, and in she'd move. Tennessee had a cousin Alabama, who just moved north. Come on in. Cheryl Ann had Tennessee roots her own self. Stinkin' Creek Road, if I remember correctly. We got introduced to peanuts in Coke.
Cheryl asked - soon after moving in - if she could use the oven. Sure! I said. She came back into the living room - did you know there are books in there? Oh, that's where those went! We both read the books she dragged out of the oven immediately. Forget dinner.
We all pitched in for household bills, and had a Chinese puzzle box on the coffee table for other stuff. Like psychics. And parties. And stuff. If you couldn't get the puzzle box open, you'd had enough stuff already.
She had pet names for all of us. She always called me Linda Ruth. She called my sister EA. I called her Cheryl Ann, with a hard CH and a twangy Tennessee accent.
Cheryl ran phone interference for everyone in the house. Is she here? I'll check. If she got a head shake no, she'd tell the person on the other end whatever story she thought up. If it was my mother, she just told her I wasn't in. She always knew what her friends needed.
I left the Christmas tree up until April one year. Cheryl Ann told people I wasn't going to take it down until the hostages came home. She always covered our foolishness.
So many wonderful memories. We laughed more than we did anything else. She loved to laugh, and did often and deep.
One of the men I was dating was older. Cheryl called him Dad. We'd take the roomies who were home on dinner dates. Cheryl would start a ruckus before we got down the driveway. "Are we there yet?" "Dad, she's poking me." "I have to go to the bathroom."
At one of the parties, 3 men I was dating all showed up. The house was big enough, and this party was on all 3 floors and in the back and front yards, so Cheryl would find me, warn me, head him(s) off, and I'd duck up down and around like a cartoon whodunit. She always had your back.
She saved me more than once, and with love and, when appropriate, a good scold.
We said when we were old ladies in the nursing home, we'd have a big couch. She would read on one end, and I would read on the other. She's now reading on the big couch in heaven, and one day, I'll take the other end.
I will always love her. Always.
