This is both a true story in the lives of my wife Judi and myself, and one of our most beloved memories of our time together, but it happens to be missing a key detail, a detail that we are both happy to say has faded into the mists of memory.

In 2002, the year we were married, Judi and I went on two trips. One trip came before we were married, the other afterward. We count both of them as honeymoons, by mutual agreement. The week we spent in and around Orlando after being wed need not concern us today. We consider it the not-a-big-deal trip, in the sense that we only live a few hours away and a trip to Orlando has never been the big deal for us that it may be for those of you who live elsewhere in the country.

The first honeymoon came as a surprise to us. I had received a piece of mail declaring that I’d won a four-day trip to anywhere I wanted to go in the country. Life had trained me to be skeptical of such things and so I said, “Whatever,” and let the mail sit, unattended, in a pile of other junk yet to be thrown out; it was Judi, looking through that mail and encountering that letter, who took the step of investigating the fine print and confirming what she later reported to me, that the letter was what such letters almost never are, which is to say legit. They weren’t even any time share presentations attached. I had indeed entered a drawing I no longer remembered but upon this reminder could now dimly recall, and I had indeed come up a winner. Four days of hotel accommodations, multiple free restaurant meals, plus attraction tickets at wherever we chose to go.

As it happened, we wanted to go to that year’s World Science Fiction convention in San Jose, California, and so we used this unexpected largesse to add four days of sightseeing in San Francisco to our itinerary.

I had been to the city before. Judi had not.

One of the most fascinating historical sites in the city is the legendary now-shuttered Federal Prison on Alcatraz Island.

Again, I had been there before. Judi had not.

We took the boat over and commenced the climb up the hill. If you have never been to Alcatraz, I need to explain that the prison occupies the summit of a very steep slope; shuttle rides are available, but most people attempt the walk, which many, I’m sorry, regret. There are two steep switch-backs and the road between them can be a difficult trudge for anybody not in the best of shape.

Judi and I were game as we ascended, if vocally complaining to each other, but halfway up the second segment of the climb, we saw that were gaining on a pair of very old, very frail-looking women, one white, one black, clinging to one another as they struggled to make it to the top. Hundreds of people were passing them on both sides, but no one was sparing any attention to these two determined, but very much out-of-their-element, old ladies as they struggled to reach the summit. Their difficulty was palpable.

Judi and I noticed them at the same time.

One of us said, “They’re having trouble.”

The other of us said, “Let’s go help them.”

We had been walking side by side but now we parted, putting on an extra burst of speed to gain the ground we needed to catch up with the old ladies in the distance, Judi approaching from the left, me approaching from the right.

Just before we reached them, we heard one tell the other, “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to turn back. I can’t make it.”

Judi arrived at the side of the old lady on the left. “Hello, ladies.”

I arrived at the side of the old lady on the right. “Don’t worry. We are making it our business to make sure we get you up the hill.”

We each took one of them by the arm and, proceeding at their pace, taking breaks when they needed to, got them to the prison gates.  Further, we didn’t leave them alone inside, either. The four of us took the tour together, and during that tour we got to know them. They were both in their late 80s, and had been friends since their childhoods in Georgia; always in touch, always part of each other’s lives, always dear to one another. Though they now lived apart, they still took vacations together, hence their appearance on Alcatraz on this August day, on occasion that, it went unspoken, might very well be the last time they were both up to traveling to see one another.  We helped make this last day, one that pushed the limits of their shared endurance, a success, and we both got hugs for it.  On parting, the two old ladies told us that we would have great lives together.

Judi and I still remember this as one of our best moments.

I could pass a few words about what it meant to me that one of those old ladies was white and one was black, and that they were, for all intents and purposes, sisters, even though they came from a time when that was not always possible in the region where they grew up; also, that it lasted, and that they were aunts to each other’s children and great-aunts to each other’s grandchildren. Had we stayed in touch, what stories we might have learned from them! As it is, I remember them fondly. The knowledge that they are almost certainly gone, fifteen years later, is bittersweet. I do not know whether either still lives, but can testify that they lived, in the best sense of that word.

But this is about the detail that neither Judi and I can remember.

One of us said, “They’re having trouble.”

The other said, “Let’s go help them.”

Of the hundreds of other tourists climbing that hill on that August day, we were the only two who had that conversation. The only two. The only two who acted on it, at any rate.

We remember the conversation verbatim.

But, happily,  neither of us can remember who said what.

Tags: Life Wisdom, Science Fiction Conventions, True Stories | Category Life Wisdom, True Stories