Touched by Friends

By Tiffany Field

In this book, Tiffany Field relates meaningful experiences she has shared with her friends and family across her life span. She has modeled this memoir after the Spoon River Anthology, with one page allotted to each friend and family member who is given initials, not their real names. She is very grateful for her friends and family, who appear here in brief sketches, and knows she has other friends and family she has yet to remember in a future volume. The photos with faces are near and dear friends who gave their permission, and those who cannot be identified are random photos taken here and abroad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543437393

Tiffany Field

Tiffany Field, Ph.D. is director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine and faculty at Fielding Graduate University. She is the recipient of the American Psychological Association Distinguished Young Scientist Award and the Golden Goose award from the National Academy of Sciences. She has had a Research Scientist Award from the NIH for her research career. She is the author of Touch, Heartbreak, Infancy, The Amazing Infant, Touch Therapy, Massage Therapy and Complementary and Alternative Therapies, the editor of a series of volumes on High-Risk Infants and on Stress and Coping, and the author of over 500 journal papers.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Tiffany Field.

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5434-3738-6

             eBook       978-1-5434-3739-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/25/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

765123

Contents

JW

TW

LS

RA

NK

DR

JB

BR

AC

TF

BF

AO

MR

JG

SY

DB

SS

CM

TB

JF

MHR

JG

BW

NM/RG

GS

ST

LSW

MK

BB

AW

LS

RB

EV

MP and TB

PG

LR

TL

DM

LO and AO

JL, AM & HM

JR & BR & JR

HEM

HM, JM, MM

PS

C & B & S & D & P & D & M & H & J & D

1.jpg

JW

JW was great at chess when he was six- years -old. He taught me how to beat him at his own game and would smile when I did so. He was also unsurpassed at climbing the jungle gym. Our grade school- part American-Indian, part deaf children- had a playground full of jungle gyms. We became very adept as we navigated our way around children who didn’t understand our language and others who couldn’t hear us. The other best sport was clammering through the thick brush down the hill to the haunted house of the wicked old man, getting spooked out and racing back up the hill. That was the last time I saw JW. I assume he got married some decades later but didn’t invite me to his wedding.

TW

TW was my second boyfriend, many years later. TW was the only red-head in our school, and he was the only boy who laughed a lot and out- loud. Tall and handsome, he was the only athlete you could invariably see from among the first string of every team. Gazelle-like, he towered above everyone in his high jumping. Loving the game and laughing throughout was probably the best coaching for his teams. I was his cheerleader and I was also his occasional drive-in movie girlfriend in the red mustang convertible or the 1932 Ford rumble seat. Having only a summer dress borrowed from my mom to wear to my first college winter weekend at his school, I was mortified that we were knee- deep in snow and me in my cotton dress. He went to the party without me. Later he got married and I wrote lots of poetry and almost flunked out of school for the next two years.

2.jpg

LS

LS had a very calming influence on everyone around him. He played the cello. The mellow sounds of our string quartet came mostly from his instrument. There was a sadness about him even though he was a very fine intellectual and very comfortable to be with. He did laugh occasionally but usually at some mishap like the time my strapless dress bones broke as I was attempting to play a violin solo by Berceuse. Though we both played first positions in our travelling orchestra, my mother ended that by turning my violin into an ivy hanging pot when I went to college. I am sure LS still plays his. The girl who always wanted him was by his side at our high school reunion.

RA

RA lived down the street from me, so I always knew when her mother was making another suicide attempt. The emergerncy vehicles went by our