THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504040490
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines
SOPHIE'S FROM TEXAS. Elda's from Jersey. Sophie speaks Spanish. Elda, Italian. Sophie has two young boys, both still at home. Elda is grandmother to three.
Sophie Nance is 41. Elda Esposito, 73.
For 13 years, the women have been the best of friends.
Since they met, said Esposito, ``It's been like two peas in a pod. We sit, we talk, we cry, we laugh. Her pain is my pain and vice versa.''
They dissect life and its problems, sitting at each other's kitchen tables, talking over mugs of coffee. Nance never drinks the stuff unless she's with Esposito. Their hands fly in animated conversation and they reach across often to touch each other.
This kind of May-December friendship is special. When friendships jump a generation, the buddies say they forget their age differences.
Nance and Esposito admired each other from the start.
``I'd see her working out in the yard all the time, so hard, and that really impressed me,'' said Esposito, recalling when she lived with her daughter and son-in-law across the street from Nance's Lago Mar home in Virginia Beach. The older woman even thought she knew why: ``I saw her and I said, `Look at that, what a nice Italian girl.' ''
Dark-haired Nance laughed. The Texan said she'd only been trying to keep up. ``You were always out in the yard yourself, Grandma.''
They grew to be friends after Nance's second son, Tommy, was born. Now 9, he's grown so close to Esposito, a widow, that he recently made her promise to be his flower girl when he got married.
The women go out to dinner together, to special events, to movies. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, after Nance's Jazzercise class, she pulls through Taco Bell for Esposito's favorite - bean burritos - stops by her Dam Neck Road apartment and visits.
They share a love of each other's languages, translating back and forth into Italian and Spanish. Both went to Catholic schools. Both have strong European traditions and trade stories about their parents and families.
In fact, families, and family problems, made their friendship even tighter. Several years ago, Esposito's adult son, John Charles, was diagnosed with cancer. About the time he died in November 1993, Nance separated from her husband. The women leaned on each other.
``She was there for me when John was sick and I was there for her when she had trouble with her husband,'' said Esposito.
``She didn't date right away. Her morals are high.'' Once Nance was ready to play the field, Esposito became her occasional magnet for men.
``When we go out together, if there's a guy I want to meet, Grandma can get us to talk to each other,'' said Nance, a preschool teacher.
Guys stop to talk, drawn to Esposito's teasing humor, ``In Italy they say, `Gallina vecchia, fa buon brodo,' '' she said, laughing - an old chicken makes good broth. Esposito's flair for style - a pair of stretch pants, boots and flowered sweater - belie her age.
Even though Nance often calls her friend ``Grandma'' as she leans across the table in conversation, she does not define the relationship as a mother-daughter friendship.
``I can talk to you about anything,'' she told Esposito. ``There are certain things I can say to you that I can't say to my mother. You're more open-minded.''
Esposito's wealth of experience comes into play now and then.
``Sometimes I tell her, I'm older than you. I know how this is going to turn out,'' said Esposito, laughing. Other times, she tells Nance to go ahead and do what makes her happy. Like reflooring the kitchen.
``I took her with me to HQ and I said, `Look Grandma, this is the floor I want. It looks almost like Spanish tiles,' '' Nance said.
Do it, Grandma told her.
Latonya Ferguson and Helen Cason are so much alike, they often wonder if they're related.
``Miss Helen and I are chronically late,'' said Latonya Ferguson, 40, an English teacher at Cox High School in Virginia Beach.
``Like they inherited it from each other,'' said Ferguson's husband, Timothy, 43, shaking his head.
Latonya Ferguson and ``Miss Helen,'' Helen M. Cason, 59, met in 1978 when both worked with the youth choir at Mt. Zion AME Church on Princess Anne Road. Latonya Ferguson's great uncle, since deceased, was pastor then.
It didn't take long for them to discover they both loved children - anybody's kids - loved to cook, loved to sing, loved nurturing people.
``The Lord told him to put us together,'' said Cason. ``Amen.''
The Lord figures prominently in this friendship, which has grown over the years to include both women's spouses, Timothy Ferguson and Robert L. Cason, 64. The four share a friendship built on admiration for each other's values. The couples pray together, fast together, invite each other to cookouts and birthday parties and go out to dinner together.
They're such good friends that when the Casons come to the Fergusons' Ocean Lakes home for dinner, Helen Cason brings along her green terrycloth bedroom slippers to wear.
Perhaps the key to their friendship is how they feel about ``family.'' The Fergusons, married 18 years, have two children, 9 and 12. The older couple have four grown children and have been married 31 years.
``If Tim can look at me 20 years from now the way Mr. Bob looks at Miss Helen, I'll be happy,'' said Latonya Ferguson.
When Helen, a school bus driver, was sidelined by a stroke last year, Robert stayed home from running his hauling company.
``He took care of her for days and would just say, `Oh, I can't haul today, it's raining.' We wondered what he was going to do when the rain stopped,'' said Latonya Ferguson, smiling affectionately at the Casons.
Latonya Ferguson used to teach at Princess Anne Junior High, where Helen Cason drove a bus. They worked together after school when Ferguson became student activities coordinator. Timothy Ferguson was a naval officer then and often away on deployment.
``When Tim was at sea, Miss Helen and I would go out together in Tim's truck and go see the Christmas lights. She was a support for me when he was gone. It was like having my mother here,'' said Ferguson. She encouraged Helen Cason to go to college when she expressed an interest.
``She was an inspiration to me,'' said Cason. Cason took college classes and is studying to be an ordained minister.
The Fergusons say the Casons inspire them with their quiet volunteerism. Through other friends, they discovered that the older couple helps feed and entertain patients who've come here for medical treatment with Operation Smile. They've offered financial help when the Fergusons had to travel out of town repeatedly when a family member was ill.
``It's almost like they anticipate for us when we need something,'' said Latonya Ferguson.
It's almost like they're related.
Charles A. Rock, 43, doesn't go long without a hand from his friend, Robbie Arrington, 21.
``If I need something, I know I can call over there and he'll help. We've got a good thing, a good give-and-take friendship,'' Rock said. ``We'll go for a while and not hear from him. Then he'll call up and say, `What are you doing?' and want to come over and watch a fight on TV.''
They work in Rock's yard together, fix up the house, fiddle around on the computer, shoot skeet, go to boat shows and NASCAR races.
Sometimes Arrington knows more about Rock's life than Rock himself.
``We'd had birds in the chimney so Robbie went up on the roof and measured for a chimney cap,'' said Rock. ``When I went to get one, I couldn't remember how big the chimney was so I had to track Robbie down at his friend's house to ask. He knew.''
The two Chesapeake residents met when Arrington was just 11 or 12 and hung around with Rock's daughter and other neighborhood teenagers in Etheridge Woods.
``The kids used to come over to our house because we were more liberal and didn't give them a hard time or run them off,'' recalled Rock, a civil service management analyst at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.
``Then he got a boat,'' said Arrington, a mechanical engineering student at Old Dominion University.
The 19-foot fiberglass boat and its outboard motor were in pretty bad shape.
``He used to want to come over here all the time and work on it,'' said Rock. They fixed it up, overhauled the trailer and then went fishing.
``I taught him how,'' said Rock. ``We did a lot of shark fishing, cobia, offshore trolling. We'd go for 24 hours at a time.''
Conversation never got too deep.
``We talked mostly about the fish and whether we had enough gas to get back to the dock,'' he said, rocking back in a brown corduroy recliner.
During that time, the teen-ager's father was transferred out of state without his family and the two friends spent even more time together.
``I don't know if I wanted to play dad or what,'' said Rock. ``But I wasn't an authority figure; I was just a buddy. We just hung out.''
Four years ago, Rock sold the boat. The friendship stayed.
He watched with satisfaction the next few years as Arrington took a turn toward his books in high school and headed for college. He never gave the younger man any advice; it's not his style. ``I just talk about what I think,'' he said.
His friend appreciates that.
``I know he'd never be judgmental.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
BETH BERGMAN/Staff
Sophie Nance, 41, and Elda Esposito, 73, are close friends. ``We
sit, we talk, we cry, we laugh,'' says Esposito. ``Her pain is my
pain and vice versa.''
L. TODD SPENCER
Charles Rock, 43, right, has known neighbor Robbie Arrington, 21,
since he was 11 or 12.
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
Helen Cason, left, is 59 and Latonya Ferguson is 40. They both love
children, love to cook, love to sing, love to nurture people. And
Robert Cason, rear, is friends with Ferguson's husband, Timothy (not
pictured).
Graphic
THE APPEAL OF MAY-DECEMBER FRIENDSHIPS
Jim Forrester is clinical director of Sentara Mental Health
Management in Virginia Beach. He has no scientific theory to fall
back on in discussing the appeal of May-December friendships.
``But I have some hunches about it and the hunches have to do
with the friends having a sort of mentorship,'' said the licensed
professional counselor.
``The gain goes both ways. The older person and their experiences
are validated by the mentorship and someone who's younger is trying
to gain from that experience in terms of their day-to-day life.
Another hunch is that there's a vacuum - an absent parent - and the
older friend would be a substitute.''
by CNB