Mayfield High School - Crossroads Yearbook (Pasadena, CA)

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T CPOSSPOGJS, ne Q fast Reason told me that I did not know the tall, dark girl. Yet, as I watched her running with lithe grace over the basketball court, I seemed to know her. I rejoiced in her skill, even as she used it to defeat our team. She evaded our guards. She also evaded the strong outposts of school spirit and of that feeling that is not school spirit at all but a kind of hysteria. Without warning she darted into my heart. Why should I care so much for her-a girl that I had never met and probably never would meet? What was there about her that I seemed to remember? She smiled at one of her team-mates. She reminded me of a picture in a book I loved--a picture of Cardinal Manning, drawn when he was young. Her lips were like his. Lips like Cardinal Manning's-that was itl Katherine had had lips like that-thin, delicately formed lips. The strange girl was Katherine. There, running about on the basketball court, was the Katherine who for me had died four years before. Suddenly I was glad I would not meet her. It had been enough to lose Katherine once-or rather, twice. The way, I remembered, had been long and hot. It was a First Friday morning, and Katherine and I were still fasting as we walked home. I was a little sick. Perhaps actu- ally I was just depressed. This was the end-the end of eight years at the parochial school, the end of having Katherine. No, it was not really the end of having Katherine. That had come long before. As slowly, gaily, surely, the chunky little girl had come into thequiet round of my days and made them noisy, excited things, so slowly, surely she had slipped out again. After that, we had been in the same class. We had gone to the same parties. We had played the same games. But we had done these things separately. We had been friends, but not companions. What we had talked about before I can no longer remember. School affairs, probably. Surely we must have had some common bond. For me a new, romantic world was opening up. I was often carried away by my interest in it. I tried to make Katherine see and feel. Perhaps she did. Surely our relationship was colored by a flaming, lovely thing that belonged ordinarily to neither of us. Whatever it was, it made Katherine the most fascinating, the most lovable playmate I had ever had. We drifted apart after awhile as we parted on that last day, because circumstances forced us to somehow. Our homes were on different streets. Our natures went in different directions. A chance had brought about this last walk together. Necessity ended it. We said good-bye and went our diverse ways-alone. The next time I saw Katherine she had already begun to grow up. Like so many people in growing up she was losing an elusive quality-perhap it was imagination. She no longer heard the horns of elfland faintly bIowing. More and more she had come to rely on sources outside of herself for amusement. Once she had pretended that she was a duchess. Now she had to read a book to capture romance. I had been learning some of the tragedy of growing up, myself. I was clutching wildly at that queer magic thing that was slipping away. To see Katherine and to talk to her -when we did talk--made me sad. Along with the bonds of school and of comradeship, another bond had been broken. It was made of more delicate stuff. It was, nevertheless, stronger--and more necessary. People can be divided into three classes--those who talk about other people, those who talk about things and those who talk about ideas. Katherine talked about people. All my life I had been trained, all without my wishing it, to talk about ideas. People, perhaps, are more interesting, but those who concentrate on them alone lose the world of adventure. They forget, somehow, that romance comes from within. Those who talk about ideas never wholly lose the hint of magic, They never become wholly immersed in commonplaces. In that lay our difficulty. Katherine and I were too young, too intolerant to make the necessary compromise. We could not force our worlds to meet, so there was nothing to talk about just then. The vital bond had been broken. Perhaps the symbol of that brjeaking lay in Katherine's lips. She was wearing lipstick. Voluntarily, she was making ordinary, undistinguished lips out of her beautiful ones. Page Twenty

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Crlossmacls THE JUNIOR scHooL Sitting, left to right: Mother Mary Febronia, Susan Hotchkiss, Maria Warner, Diane Sinclair, Rita Maloney, Louise McNeil, Jane Bolinger, Mother Mary Bertrand. Second Row: Natasha Guiglia, Maureen Sullivan, Sheila Twohey, Georgia Nibley, Ann Quigley. Third Row: Nancy Newhott, Patricia Fitzpatrick, Marlene Craig, Marion Ubil, Ann Have- korst, Myra Johnson, Therese Bannon. Fourth Row: Barbara Kassebaum, Patricia Caughlin, Virginia Hotchkiss, R uth Alice Frauenheim, Marlowe Boyes. Fifth Row: Louise Leddy, Coralie Close, Dorothy McNeil, Josephine Doleshal, Kathrine Randall, Erdine Musselman. Page Ninetee

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-I-I lQ CPOSSPOCI S She was indeed growing up , but she was also throwing away a gift that had been hers. She was a high school girl now. She had forgotten the charm of a child. Or maybe she now thought that that charm was a thing compounded of round cheeks and dimples and ringlets. Maybe she had already forgotten the secret of the spirit. ll wonder sometimes if the forgetting hurt her, as it was then hurting me.l Yes, Katherine had died, the Katherine I knew. The other Katherine, the half adult Katherine, I did not really know nor really care to know. She was dull to me and I to her. -Oh, terrible to say it-I dreaded, a little, meeting her on the street. I hated the mockery of what had once been a living, lovely thing. It was as well we went our separate ways. Katherine, my Katherine, was dead. Yet, there on the basketball court, she lived again. Just as she used to, she was playing beautifully, gathering to herself some of the romance of a jousting knight. Gallantry, gaiety, the lust for-no, more than that, the very essence of-adventure all Iurked in her action. Again I saw her as a member of a race of heroes, of demi-gods. It didn't matter much that our team was losing. Mortals may not contest with Olympians and win. That is a child's wisdom. Perhaps the mortals are fortunate to lose at such hands. The game was over. We had lost. There had been a kind of bond-the technical name is probably coordination-that defied defeat. It had been a mixture of skill and of spirit. The girl who looked like Katherine had been responsible. The time had come to say good-bye again, to go again along different ways. This time the parting was not sad. The girl was lost in a crowd of green gym suits. The crowd moved away. That was all. Suddenly there was a singing in my mind-the germ of something that suggested a poem. It had been a long, long time since poems sang themselves to me-almost as long ago as the time when I had first known Katherine. The words were repeating themselves: I love thee for the shadow that thou art Of one I lost so many years ago That just a hidden corner of my heart Guards now the flaming love I used to know. Yet I see in thy face-thy lips, thine eyes, That old and lovely image live again. I watch thee, happy in my swift surprise That such a perfect likeness should remain. In thee still burns that soft, enchanting fire That now has died within my childhood friend. O shadow, thou canst yet arouse, inspire The joy of which thy substance made an end. Comparing thee with Katherine-of the two, Thou art more truly she I loved and knew. -Patricia Duff, '45 Page Twenty one