I have no shortage of friends. In fact, I’d say my best talent is that I cultivate strong friendships. Some people have heirloom tomato plants. I have heirloom friends. Many from before my good haircut and fenced-in teeth. So, when I met Dr. Mary one evening at an Introduction to Sociology course almost sixteen years ago, I wasn’t looking for a friend. As a non-traditional student – a young mother with two small children, attending night classes at an off campus location, working toward a law degree – I wasn’t looking for anything other than three credits toward the end of the road: a college diploma, then law school. Mary would have other plans.

I remember buying books for the course. Rather than one large textbook, we were required to purchase three smaller texts. One was titled, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. The cover featured the Italian sculpture, The Rape of the Sabine Women. I remember getting an arched eyebrow from the cashier as she totaled my purchase. "I might be returning that one," I said, anxious to be in on the joke.

We gathered that first night, a group of students, all female, nervously shuffling our stack of intimidating books. Then there was Mary. She burst into the room with a robust "Hello!" She was at once serious and animated, plain and charismatic. She eyed us warmly and smiled broadly, as if she knew us well. As if to say, she liked us all (instantly) very much, but even so, we would not be escaping this class without strenuous effort, sweat and maybe some pain, but she would be by our side the whole way, and wouldn’t that be fun? I thought, "Yes! Yes! I’m ready to sweat phenomenologically!"

I was probably an easy sell because I’ve always loved teachers. My mother was a teacher. She retired after teaching first grade for thirty-eight years. She retired with all of her hair. That’s how good she was. I had a great number of college instructors and professors who were highly competent and who I strongly admired, but Mary was a different kind of teacher than any I had ever met. Mary was a teacher with power. In a world that runs on currency, Mary had a pocketful of knowledge, in large bills, and she threw it around like it was nothing. Her power was benevolent, gently electric, always illuminating.

She was no paragon. At times she was strident and stubborn, prickly if her sensibilities were offended by a perceived slight or even a small injustice, and she was not quiet when riled. A northern transplant, she never mastered the weapons of the southern arsenal – the chilly smile, the shoulder snub, the ruinous comment dropped as casually as a dinner napkin. Or maybe she refused to use those tactics, though it must certainly have caused her some personal and professional pain, particularly in the peculiarly politicized world of upper-level education.

Her contributions to my academic career were extraordinary, but ordinary by her standards. To accommodate my complicated work and parenting schedule, she created directed study classes for me; to save me an hour of driving, she often met me halfway between our two cities to pick up assignments; when I needed lecturing experience, she handed over her classroom.

Our relationship survived and thrived, even as I disappointed her. When I left college before completing my graduate program. When it became clear to both of us that my writing style was more Ladies Home Journal than Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. We still met for lunch frequently when one of us traveled toward the other. We wrote back and forth, sometimes jotted notes, sometimes long, chatty letters. I saved them all, a four inch stack of postcards and letters, filled with her exuberant scrawl. I’m sure she saved mine. She asked me to design and edit a newsletter for a non profit organization she founded, and we happily worked on that project together. When I released a CD of original music, Mary was my first customer; she bought ten copies, insistently paying full price.

I’m typically early for all appointments and over the years I remember sitting in a variety of cafes waiting for Mary to come through the door, relishing that first glimpse of someone dear who you didn’t realized you missed so much until just that very moment. The light on her face when she realized the same thing. The huge hug. The sweet tea. The limitless conversation about serious things and inconsequential things. The hug goodbye that wasn’t sad because we would meet again soon.

Mary died unexpectedly of an infection at the end of February last year. I say I have no shortage of friends, and now I am obviously one friend short. I try to take comfort in the serendipity of Mary’s presence in my life, a blessing I never expected or likely deserved. Those who never had a professor like Mary, who never had mentor like Mary, or a friend like Mary will never know what they are missing. Those who knew Mary, know exactly, and year after her death, we are still missing every little bit of her. Sweet dreams. Great teacher.